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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)

#81

Post by thetemp_ »

Groxx wrote: post #72
tasuki wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Orgzly and Orgro can edit Org files on Android. (Orgro, also on iOS, along with other options.)

Both apps support Org-mode's scheduling, robust linking, and search features to some extent, features which don't exist at all in Markdown.

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

#82

Post by Spivak »

thetemp_ wrote: post #75
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.

> 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 appear…

I've used those apps and the problem is that they only support a tiny subset of the format, and they can't support any of the features that require the rest of emacs to be present which is a lot of of the value.

If you're okay with the stripped down version that's basically markdown but different and that's fine but I feel like most people fall in love with org mode because it's so powerful once you get it going and all that power comes from emacs. So I get the argument that it's no worse than markdown but you lose so much of the magic.

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

#83

Post by skeledrew »

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 see. Just gave it a try and backslash works as escape. Though also I'm probably unlikely to experience such issues myself as my Emacs theme shows formatting characters even after applying the formatting.

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

#84

Post by beej71 »

I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings.

I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent.

My current flow is:

Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML

Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> split HTML

Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> PDF

That last one is slow, and I'm hoping to replace it with Typst, probably:

Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> docbook -> xlstproc -> typst -> PDF

I've tried other things like Sphinx and it's tough to find something that checks all the boxes I need.

In general, though, I'm pretty impressed with Typst. I wrote a test program that takes the XML output from cmark-gfm and converts it to Typst with xsltproc. It produces PDFs in orders of magnitude less time than Pandoc/LaTeX. I use that now for all my casual PDF documents. https://github.com/beejjorgensen/xml2typ

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

#85

Post by adityaathalye »

arboles wrote: post #12

Does Org have a mechanism for escaping its own syntax? Last time I searched, to type *this* (keeping the asterisks) you had to insert a zero-width space (U+200B). In markdown you just escape them with \*this\*.

Yeah escaping can be annoying.

I've used the following, in addition to the "escape character" method (which is officially documented as the other commenter noted):

For in-line escaping, I use tilde-blocks ~ ~ ... as in ~~ . This type-sets in monospace (code format) in exports, which usually* is what one wants anyway, viz. to demarcate the symbol as being symbolised.

For non-code text blocks, "Literal Example" https://orgmode.org/manual/Literal-Examples.html This also gets typeset in monospace, in exports.

For special symbols, LaTeX-like syntax https://orgmode.org/manual/Special-Symbols.html

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

#86

Post by thetemp_ »

hahajk wrote: post #11

For me the thing keeping me on markdown is Obsidian on mobile - no other note taking app comes close. If they made an actual Emacs for mobile (actual emacs complete with elisp support, not the existing org mode apps) that was a pleasure to use, I would likely switch to that. As it is, the * vs # for headings makes switching between the two uncomfortable.

> an actual Emacs for mobile (actual emacs complete with elisp support, not the existing org mode apps)

There is an official fully graphical Emacs for Android (not just the terminal version in Termux).

> that was a pleasure to use

Oh... Well, it will probably get better in time, as new features are added. For now, it actually works great with an Android tablet of 8" or more and a bluetooth keyboard. The small screen of a phone doesn't lend itself well to Emacs's interface.

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

#87

Post by Spivak »

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.

If you mean org mode as it exists within the software emacs then yeah it's no contest. No markdown editor even comes close.

But if you mean just the file format as it's used by say like Github to render README files then yeah markdown is perfectly adequate and org mode doesn't really bring a whole lot to the party.

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

#88

Post by skeledrew »

drob518 wrote: post #41
skeledrew wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown can be trivially embedded in org-mode, so no need to even miss out on that which "won sufficient share": * Org with md block #+begin_src markdown ..... #+end_src Markdown may be a winner, but preferring it when org-mode exists is like tying both arms behind my back and trying to do serious things with my feet.

I’m not sure I see the benefit in that.

Org is essentially the parent of _all_ other plaintext formats, and is able to treat them specifically at the native level. So for example there's a single command to run a code block, but the code runner is correctly resolved. And multiple blocks in different languages can communicate with each other. Entire projects can be placed in a single org files and still operate as though they're separate files. Literate programming is a breeze. Organization of anything is trivial.

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

#89

Post by erichocean »

beej71 wrote: post #84

I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp…

Repo is nice, thanks. Small nit: it would be nice to have included the final PDF output of your tool on `test.md` in the repo.

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

#90

Post by Groxx »

thetemp_ wrote: post #81
Groxx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Orgzly and Orgro can edit Org files on Android. (Orgro, also on iOS, along with other options.) Both apps support Org-mode's scheduling, robust linking, and search features to some extent, features which don't exist at all in Markdown.

I did try Orgzly a bit (it's decent though a bit unique, definitely worth a try for anyone curious), but I ended up dropping it after finding out that what I had made in it wasn't compatible with some other thing (I think Emacs, but it has been a while). Possibly something covered in https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/9q9mn6/any_documen... though that's more about the reverse direction.

But that kind of inconsistency has been my overwhelming experience with anything except Emacs. CommonMark stuff has been practically flawless every time by comparison (though "markdown" in general is absolutely not, that's an unspecified mess)

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