Re: Thoughts on the standardization of Org

[Tim Cross]

Asa Zeren <asaizeren@gmail.com> writes:

>
> In these concerns I see one major flaw. The way they are worded at present
> implies that the Emacs implementation of org is the "one true implementation,"
> and that all tools in other environments are auxiliary. I believe that if we
> want org to grow, then it needs to become unbound from Emacs. It should 
> become a
> universal markup format, which just happens to have had many tools first
> implemented for Emacs (even if Emacs still will probably remain the best way 
> to
> edit org files).
>

I think the above is likely the biggest point of disagreement amongst
many org users. Org is not simply a different markup language. Org-mode
is primarily and Emacs mode to help organise *things*. The fact
non-Emacs users have seen it, like it and wish it was available outside
of emacs is great, but for me, not a significant objective. Anything
which took org-mode out of Emacs or made non-Emacs requirements a higher
priority than the on-going development of the mode in Emacs would be
misplaced.

For me and I suspect many others, the ability for non-Emacs users to
work with org files is a 'nice to have', but not a key objective. The
main objective is to make org-mode an even more useful and powerful
Emacs package. I do over 90% of my work from within Emacs - writing this
email, browsing documentation, writing code in various languages,
developing software requirement documentation, writing user manuals,
interacting with version control, compiling, testing software, working
with databases, tracking tasks and time, invoicing clients, planning and
managing projects, appointments etc. About the only things I don't do
with Emacs are general web browsing (because I need Javascript support),
playing music (though I can do this from Emacs as well) and playing the
occasional game.

The old cliche about open source is that it is about scratching your own
itch. For many org-mode users, that means configuring and extending
org-mode as an Emacs package. I suspect this is part of the reason there
are few org-mode tools outside of Emacs. Many of those which do exist
seem to be more oriented towards minimal org-mode support on platforms
where Emacs cannot run (or run easily), like mobile devices. There are
other efforts to bring org-mode into other editors, like vscode, but the
lack of a powerful elisp equivalent (particularly one with all the
editor oriented support of elisp) makes the effort prohibitive.

In many respects, the real 'genius' of org-mode was that it took many of
the separate features and existing functions of Emacs and elisp, wrapped
them all up in a consistent interface called org-mode. Many of the
features and much of the functionality which makes up org-mode existed
in Emacs before org-mode was developed (folding, overlays, font-lock,
inferior process buffers, latex fragment previews, hyperlinks,
encryption, networking, etc.). To implement all of this on another
platform is a large job. Even editors which support many of these
individual features can't easily achieve the same level of integration
because those features are implemented as distinct modules and lack the
consistent extensible power of elisp.

I'm sorry if all of this and other responses seem too negative. The
desire to bring org-mode to non-Emacs users is a worthy goal, but I fear
the size of the task is too large. What may be feasible are stand-alone
org-mode parses which can make up parts of tool chains for limited
processing of org files and perhaps basic org-mode modules for other
editors which enable basic editing of org files.

Tim