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Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

orgmode.org

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Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#11

Post by nextos »

ordu wrote: post #9

So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else. I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the e…

There are incomplete parsers that cover most of the Org basics. For example, GitHub has one, crafted in Ruby. They use it to render e.g. readme.org files in repositories. It works quite well. I find the Org format very pleasant to work with.

I think the trick with Emacs and Org is to stick to the basics and then only add features or change your configuration very slowly, as needed. I have been using Emacs non-stop for >20 years and my .emacs is just 20 LOC. It's been shrinking, not growing. My goal is to bring it down towards 0 LOC. I have committed a few things upstream to modernize defaults.

Personally, I think the reputation of Org, Emacs, or Nix being hard and complex is undeserved. It's rather a documentation problem. There's no simple documentation to onboard newcomers and show them the basics in a principled way. So it looks like a mess, but it isn't.

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#12

Post by magical_spell »

nextos wrote: post #11
ordu wrote: post #9

So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else. I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the e…

There are incomplete parsers that cover most of the Org basics. For example, GitHub has one, crafted in Ruby. They use it to render e.g. readme.org files in repositories. It works quite well. I find the Org format very pleasant to work with. I think the trick with Emacs and Org is to stick to the basics and then only add features or change your configuration very slowly, as needed. I have been using Emacs non-stop fo…

Yes, there are some parsers around in languages other than elisp. This one seemed to work well when I tried it some time ago: https://github.com/rasendubi/uniorg

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#13

Post by egl2020 »

ordu wrote: post #9

So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else. I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the e…

Why can't a parser be written? Is there a halting problem or a grammar conflict? Or is "can't" short-hand for "too much trouble"?

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#15

Post by nine_k »

xannabxlle wrote: post #7

Well despite the website being ambiguous about Worg until finding the about page, I support the project. I just hope it isn't as obtuse in its actualy tutorials.

We are Worg. Resistance is futile. You will be put into a tree structure, given completion statuses, timestamps, properties, and hyperlinks. Your formatting distinctiveness will be incorporated into our own.

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#17

Post by sp33der89 »

I hope org-mode gets more popular outside of Emacs. I know all the words already about how org-mode is great because of Emacs, but the way you can do plaintext outlining, with great support for TODO's, in org-mode is fantastic. It retains a lot of readability, and that isn't Emacs specific: there are things that make org-mode great as-is!

A small todo application for mobile that uses org-mode as the database doesn't need to parse fancy org-babel stuff, except maybe that org-mode itself can be hard to parse.

Personally I'm hopeful that org-mode gets some more love outside of Emacs, so here's a list of interesting org-mode projects that aren't pandoc or Emacs related:

- https://github.com/RWejlgaard/org - https://nvim-orgmode.github.io/ - https://github.com/haxscramper/haxorg - github.com/cnglen/windancer - https://braintool.org/

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#18

Post by tgbugs »

ordu wrote: post #9

So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else. I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the e…

This is incorrect. You can write a parser for org. See for example https://github.com/tgbugs/laundry. Work toward standardization has been stalled because I (among others) have not had time to circle back to work on it. In part this is because the lack of a standard has not blocked most use cases since emacs is open source and can run almost anywhere.

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#19

Post by adw »

egl2020 wrote: post #13
ordu wrote: post #9

So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else. I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the e…

Why can't a parser be written? Is there a halting problem or a grammar conflict? Or is "can't" short-hand for "too much trouble"?

For many software businesses, licensing is an issue. The spec is GFDL with GPL code samples, a non-cleanroom translation of the elisp parser would (likely) be GPL (or at least arguably enough so to keep lawyers busy), so going and doing some other roughly equivalent markup language instead avoids the copyleft requirements.

So, yes, “too much trouble”, much of it nontechnical.

Re: Hello Worg, the Org-Mode Community

#20

Post by az09mugen »

sp33der89 wrote: post #17

I hope org-mode gets more popular outside of Emacs. I know all the words already about how org-mode is great because of Emacs, but the way you can do plaintext outlining, with great support for TODO's, in org-mode is fantastic. It retains a lot of readability, and that isn't Emacs specific: there are things that make org-mode great as-is! A small todo application for mobile that uses org-mode as the database doesn't…

There is orgzly on Android :

- https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived

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