Re: section continuation

[abq]

tomas wrote:
> To me, it would be less intuitive (the material under this
> pseudo heading is intended to be level 1, not 2). So you might
> like to add this to the costs. Or not, if that doesn't make
> sense to you :)

As previously written, yes, it can produce the wrong impression. But 
swap the lone-dash line and the blank line, and it produces the 
impression of a subsection terminator:

  * General animals
    Some text about general animals

  ** arthropods
     spiders and things
  ** -

    More about animals in general

which has no impact on the proposed meaning or on how the software 
should handle it. Likewise no problem with terminating subsections that 
contain sub-subsections:

  * General animals
    Some text about general animals

  ** arthropods
     spiders and things

  *** venomous
      funnel web spider
  ** -

    More about animals in general


< You had one more compelling downside of
< dash (for dot: perhaps it looks too much like the ellipsis of a folded
< subsection). I actually liked the comma, which has already a job as
< an escape-character for line constructs in Org.

Comma is good for suggesting continuation, if used the way you currently 
use dash. But if used the way I propose, and in particular considering 
the formatting above, does comma still seem best? If the better 
suggestion is termination (because the number of asterisks matches the 
section being terminated, not the section being continued), then period 
would be more effective.

As for dot's conflict with ellipsis for folded subsections, the solution 
to that problem is to not use ellipsis. Better would be like graphical 
tree view systems do: a plus or minus sign inside a box icon to the left 
of the headline (in the gutter when not using org-indent-mode). This 
avoids the misleading dots that appear to be part of the text, and in 
org-indent-mode it avoids the misleading single asterisk. (In 
org-indent-mode, better to omit the asterisks entirely, and display just 
a plus/minus in a box icon.) Fortunately, this has no impact on Org's 
file format, except for the traditional ellipsis causing bias against 
choosing dot for the subsection termination character.


Anyway... more important is how org-mode interprets it.
First, tell everybody: If you want to avoid all this nonsense, then just 
don't ever use a lone-dash (or whatever it'll be) headline.

Second, did I cover all the necessary changes to make 
section-continuation generally useful? I.e.
Skip folding of lone-dash sections when folding all the sections at 
their level.
Unfold them when unfolding the containing section.
Skip them when jumping to next/previous section.
Skip numbering them.
Display them at one level shallower than currently standard in 
org-indent-mode.

This differs from inline tasks, because the latter don't terminate the 
preceding section.

And can anybody think of any costs besides the ones already mentioned? 
Any adverse interaction with other features?