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Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

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Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#51

Post by tel »

1313ed01 wrote: post #20
tel wrote: post #8

I've recently begun replacing Markdown with Gemini's .gmi/gemtext format. It is Markdown with fewer features. I appreciate the simplicity and it's tremendously easy for custom tools to parse. It has no inline formatting, only 3 levels of ATX headers (without trailing #s), one level of bullet points using only asterisk and not dash to delimit, does not merge touching non-whitespace lines (thus expecting one line per p…

I thought I was the only one. It is great for just having some text with headers and links, without any distractions. Only complaint is that it handles line-breaks the way some Markdown variants do, with each line being one paragraph of text. I much prefer line-breaks to be just treated as whitespace and using double breaks to end paragraphs, like e.g. Pandoc's Markdown format (one reason I always use that when I ren…

Definitely not common! Nice to hear I'm not alone either.

And yeah, I agree. Practically, it's the thing that annoys me the most day-to-day. I've mostly got wrapping set up to handle it now, but it remains a little finicky.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#52

Post by toolslive »

Groxx wrote: post #43

AFAICT org-mode has no spec. Still. Decades later. The only spec is a single implementation. Which is probably why approximately nothing else supports it. CommonMark on the other hand is very widely supported and all of them work great together. I'll stick to CommonMark.

You can say the same about Python. However, there the forces push in the opposite direction: Even when there are better pythony runtimes that provide almost identical behaviour (but better performance), everybody sticks to CPython.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#53

Post by leobg »

skeledrew wrote: post #17

I discovered and started using org-mode (and, as a result, Emacs) when I migrated from Evernote in '16. Today I use it for all my project, task and knowledge management needs, with some files going over 15MB in size. And I'm still loving it. Started out with headers only, and every time I wanted something more, it was always just there for the taking. Easy to use, and also crazy powerful. Can't think of anything else…

How do you handle PDFs, images, HTML/rich text snippets? Asking because Evernote supported all of those. It’s what keeps me using that app, even though I cringe every time I open it.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#54

Post by adityaathalye »

crazygringo wrote: post #32
babarock wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting I should pick the markup format for my private files according to the perceived popularity of another format? I'm not sure what's your point. Are you telling people who use org-mode that they shouldn't?

If you think you'll ever want to use third-party tools to process that markup, or if some of your private files will transform into public files at some point, then yes, considering popularity makes a lot of sense. If they're just text files you edit raw that will never interact with anything else but your text editor, then of course popularity doesn't matter at all. But in my experience, my use cases tend to expand…

OP here. I stuck with orgmode all these years /because/ of the interoperability.

If I'm writing in Org, I can tangle / detangle between other plaintext sources, including source code. As well as export to collaborate.

The proposition is "yes, and", not "either / or".

It's /fine/ to switch to the popular "team" standard and stay there when needed. Several of my workplace documents, including wiki entries start off as local org-mode drafts. Once I'm okay to share, I export to markdown or draft wiki page and solicit comments. After that, if the document is for shared maintenance, I let my org-text alone, and switch to the "team" format.

This is perfectly fine.

That and the many kinds of markdown. I've been bitten enough by having to look up yet another poorly maintained document on how to markdown for /this/ particular app or website or utility, that I'd rather pandoc translate between my (sane, well documented, fully extensible) org text and whatever I need to share with others, than learn edge cases of various markdowns.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#55

Post by drob518 »

binary132 wrote: post #18
throw__away7391 wrote: post #2

We do not need another competing standard here. Markdown is adequate and more importantly widely adopted and growing.

I don’t think anyone who gets really familiar with org can ever honestly say with a straight face that Markdown is adequate in comparison.

“Adequate” is a very relative term. Adequate for what? The fact that Markdown is widely used quite successfully demonstrates that it is adequate for a wide variety of tasks. Yes, Org mode might cover more of the long tail, but Markdown clearly covers all the important cases to the point that it has achieved wide adoption.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#56

Post by jrm4 »

jameshart wrote: post #13

Sure. And driving on the left is one of the most reasonable sides of the road to drive on, but in a country where everyone drives on the right, it’s good to accept that, though driving on the left offers just as many advantages, nonetheless you shouldn’t insist on continuing to do so. Markdown is also one of the most reasonable markup languages to use for text, and it has won sufficient share that it should be your d…

This is advice that I would have rolled with pre-Generative AI.

Today, I'm not so sure. I'm actually way used to zim-wiki syntax because that's what I started off with; and already "moving it around" is becoming orders of magnitude easier given the ability to vibe-code tons of little scripts that make it work better with everything else -- and while this might seem a bit counter to the point -- I think one can reasonably rely on the idea of "market share isn't that important anymore compared to 'you, personally, should use the thing that works the best for you because translation will get orders of magnitude easier.'"

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#57

Post by fipar »

rgoulter wrote: post #6
cenamus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

org-mode's first release was in 2003, Markdown apparently in 2004. So not just "yet another standard" And I don't think org-mode's babel features really exist in Markdown? It's more like having python notebooks right in there (any language really).

> And I don't think org-mode's babel features really exist in Markdown I think the neatest part of org-babel is the source code block execution, & the various ways it supports for configuring output. This allows for org files to be "plaintext notebooks" (like jupyter in plaintext"). -- It's really surprising that this part is not more common. More niche is the "babel" part of that: because the code blocks can take va…

I agree about the duct tape, which I also use often around the house, so maybe that's why I like org-babel :)

Just wanted to say that I share data between different blocks in different languages through files and env variables (I add :session shared to the src blocks that need to access this). That is useful also to have src blocks you can execute repeatedly and that depend on something like an aws identity being assumed (you just assume it in the first block that shares the session).

I agree it's messy, it's just a mess that works for me.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#58

Post by org3 »

arboles wrote: post #36
skeledrew wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use case for escaping its syntax? At top level it's just an arbitrarily nested list.

So you can type *word* without it becoming bold? So an article can contain: "The logs come to about ~300 lines once you start the server with ~systemctl start fnord~" The `code` equivalent in Org is ~code~. How do you type that without the Org highlighting removing the ~ from "~300 lines", thinking that the code snippet begins there? This is an example I got from grepping my org files for U+200B.

I wasn't sure how to do this, so I looked into it:

If you (setq org-pretty-entities t) below will render correctly in org buffers, and exports correctly too.

The logs come to about \tilde{}300 lines once you start the server with ~systemctl start fnord~

Here's a star: \ast

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#59

Post by jrm4 »

Groxx wrote: post #43

AFAICT org-mode has no spec. Still. Decades later. The only spec is a single implementation. Which is probably why approximately nothing else supports it. CommonMark on the other hand is very widely supported and all of them work great together. I'll stick to CommonMark.

Honestly, "no spec" feels like more of a feature than a bug -- or more specifically, "proof of quality."

If it's gotten this far WITHOUT a spec, there's something inherently good going on that lets it keep going.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#60

Post by dannymi »

d_sem wrote: post #50

And yet an accessible ecosystem of 3rd party non-emacs tooling has not been developed. I would pay big bucks for an obsidian-styled org-mode clone that had a no-frills GUI interface. I find org-modes task tracking, calendar, and agenda views top tier.

For what it's worth, there is this vscode extension https://github.com/realDestroyer/org-vscode/ which is pretty neat and can do org-mode task tracking, calendar and agenda view--and HTML preview.
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