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

karl-voit.at

71–80 of 221 posts

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

#71
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.

Codeberg supports Org for READMEs! I think some other Git forge does too, but the name escapes me ;)

So does GitHub since forever BTW

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

#72
post #63
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.

Ah. Well that sure shuts down the "you don't have to use Emacs" argument.

You have to read between the lines a bit, but the post supports it. It's talking about how readable it is, how you don't need tools, etc... and when it gets to tool support, it basically just has "you can use your mouse! you don't need to learn keyboard shortcuts!" to paraphrase, or if you prefer verbatim:

>The basic file open/save, finding help, exiting Emacs stuff is accessible with icons or the menu.

Or earlier:

>In contrast to that, the syntax of Emacs Org-mode as the one and only original form...

Because there is no other real option. Mobile org users overwhelmingly (AFAICT) use Emacs in Termux to edit their files.

This post was originally written in 2017 (tools maybe first in 2019? though it hardly matters). It's still true today.

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, but I think it's safe to say Markdown has more interoperability, no? Yes you can always use pandoc, but conversion usually brings quirks of its own. And more generally, the less conversion steps you need, the better. If you just stick to vanilla markup, you don't encounter incompatibilities. The "many kinds of markdown" isn't an issue if you're not using platform-specific extensions in the first place. Which, u…

Yes, more interoperability at the cost of capability.

Also, yes, conversion is quirky. That is why Org works until it does, and then I trade off being stymied by markdown's more plain-ness, in favour of collaborating with others.

And with vanilla markup, the trouble is that many applications /do not/ use just vanilla markup. People /invariably/ want "one key tweak" (like, front-matter or table of contents or footnotes or some such thing), and everyone ends up doing their own thing.

Perhaps the trouble with markdown is it's /too/ plain. So yes, lots of people can do lots of lowest common denominator stuff, but it does not extend to individuals wanting "just one thing" which also adds up to a lot of people.

Edit: a real-life example... I typically run code from org-mode for interactive testing and debugging --- the kind of stuff we write small throwaway scripts for.

In this one project, I made it so that /I/ or anyone else using org-mode could do it from org, for local development, and anyone else could just use the script as-is... including the CI pipeline.

[1] https://gitlab.com/nilenso/cats/-/raw/master/README_TESTS.or... (notice that the gitignore procedure needed for this trick is self-executable from this org file itself, in addition to being self documenting)

[2] https://gitlab.com/nilenso/cats/-/blob/master/bin/curl-tests...

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

#75
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.

> approximately nothing else supports it.

That's simply not true. There are numerous android and iOS apps that support it. There are implementations for Vim and other editors besides Emacs. GitHub supports it, for example.

I have not found a satisfactory (to me) solution for note-taking in Markdown that is open-source, plain-text, and mobile-friendly with local (non-cloud) sync. (Except for maybe Logseq, which appears to be moving in the direction of using a database.)

There are several such solutions for Org-mode.

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

#76
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In an Org document that contains Org examples (e.g. if this article had been written in Org), even Emacs gets confused about rendering it. So you might find that sections in example text are evaluated as being part of top-level sections and collapsing is wonky, etc. I run into this a lot with gptel. I use a main Org file for all my daily notes, and since gptel streams LLM output as Org (which is good), it conflicts w…

Hmm I'm still not seeing the issue. Why aren't the examples just lists under say an examples header? Or the LLM output? Maybe gptel is expecting output to be in a fresh file or at the top level? It should be a trivial fix to intent a level before inserting.

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

#77
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.

There’s this https://orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html

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

#78
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.

I've seen tons of non-cpython use, so I'm not really sure what claim you're trying to make. Aside from supporting "having a spec allows for many implementations that all work".

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

#79
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.

What do you think about my orgmode obsidian plugin? https://github.com/BBazard/obsidian-orgmode-cm6

Incredible work.

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

#80
All well and good, but some Org Mode markup symbols are badly chosen if the purpose is human-to-human communication, and that is a profound demerit for a system that purports to structure and facilitate human-to-human communication. Most notably, asterisks are not good section headers. Pound signs are.

So people are not going to switch from Markdown for most purposes. It feels really wrong. And they will generally prefer one system.

YMMV obviously, some people have an easier time managing polyglot systems. But if the goal is to have One System, it won't be Org Mode. It'll be some version of Markdown. Perhaps Org Mode reskinned to look more like Markdown.

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