Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Org-mode parser in Rust

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 85 posts

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#12

Post by Stratoscope »

dan-robertson wrote: post #7
bluejekyll wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who only reads about the love of Org, could you breakdown what features you see as improvements over markdown, specially CommonMark? I often see Org and OrgMode conflated, where OrgMode seems to provide much more of an experience with the way Emacs has integrated it into the editor. Could markdown be as integrated and provide similar experience?

I think not having to balance headline length with underline length is a good plus. Also not having to memorise the hierarchy of underline characters is a good plus. The format seems better suited to extension too with ways to have annotations or blocks

You can do headings in Markdown like org mode, just use # instead of *:

  # Level 1
  ## Level 2
  ### Level 3
  #### Level 4
  etc.
I rarely see the fiddly format in the wild, probably for the reasons you mentioned, and because it only allows H1 and H2:

  Level 1
  =======
  
  Level 2
  -------
Of course there are lots of things org mode does better than Markdown, I'm just addressing the specific point you mentioned.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#13

Post by juki »

bluejekyll wrote: post #5
peatmoss wrote: post #4

I love org-mode as a format and as a literate / notebook programming environment. And I love emacs. But, I think it’s great that more people are looking at org-mode outside emacs. I’d love to see alternative tool chains that push the capabilities and open more people to its magic.

As someone who only reads about the love of Org, could you breakdown what features you see as improvements over markdown, specially CommonMark? I often see Org and OrgMode conflated, where OrgMode seems to provide much more of an experience with the way Emacs has integrated it into the editor. Could markdown be as integrated and provide similar experience?

The big difference between Markdown and the Org-markup is that the latter has syntax for various kinds of metadata, while Markdown is purely content. That metadata is used for things like task management, literate programming, spreadsheets, customizing export behavior, etc.

One could, in theory, create an extended Markdown flavor that allows similar metadata, but that wouldn't be compatible with any existing tools anyway, so there's not much point.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#14

Post by TeMPOraL »

bluejekyll wrote: post #5
peatmoss wrote: post #4

I love org-mode as a format and as a literate / notebook programming environment. And I love emacs. But, I think it’s great that more people are looking at org-mode outside emacs. I’d love to see alternative tool chains that push the capabilities and open more people to its magic.

As someone who only reads about the love of Org, could you breakdown what features you see as improvements over markdown, specially CommonMark? I often see Org and OrgMode conflated, where OrgMode seems to provide much more of an experience with the way Emacs has integrated it into the editor. Could markdown be as integrated and provide similar experience?

The four differences between .org and CommonMark I could spot right now is that the latter lacks metadata[0], macros[1], syntax for specifying language for inline code blocks[2], and for tables[3].

It's hard to separate .org the markup language from org-mode the application, because quite a lot of its syntax is driven by application features. TODO markers, time stamps, schedule/deadline markers, property drawers, log books, tags - all of these are part of Org Mode functionality, but have little use if you're just trying to write a document for export.

--

[0] - There's ton of stuff you could optionally add with #+SOMETHING: lines - local configuration of how to work with the file, metadata, exporter settings for any format individually and all of them together, and more. A lot of those can also be specified per-headline.

[1] - https://orgmode.org/manual/Macro-replacement.html; crazy, but when it's needed, it works wonders.

[2] - You can make Markdown-style code spans in Org Mode ~like this~, but there's actually a syntax for proper inline source code blocks that's much less known: src_lang{code}, or src_lang[header-args]{code}. For example, src_lisp{(+ 2 2)} or src_lisp[:results output]{(format t "Foobar")}. The reason for the header-args variant is that Org Mode inline code blocks can be executed interactively or on export, just like regular code blocks. See: https://orgmode.org/manual/Structure-of-code-blocks.html for details on both.

[3] - In CommonMark you could technically abuse HTML for that, but Org Mode provides the most readable format for tables... that's also the most convenient to write if you're using Org Mode, and an absolute PITA if you're not. See: https://orgmode.org/manual/Tables.html.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#15

Post by 0815test »

iBelieve wrote: post #9

This is great to see. I started my own org-mode library for Rust at the end of last year ( https://github.com/iBelieve/orgmode-rs ), with the goal of building a desktop or web app for org-mode, but haven't had much time to work on it.

You may want to take a look at this issue https://github.com/ngortheone/org-rs/issues/1 and perhaps join in - it seems that there are in fact a number of projects at a similar stage of development (or lack thereof, perhaps) so it makes sense to try and coalesce efforts.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#16

Post by TeMPOraL »

mruts wrote: post #10
phaer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great to have more options, but people might be interested in the org-mode support of pandoc: https://pandoc.org/org.html This enables .e.g. transformation of org-mode files with latex templates, to html slides or even into .odt files and customization via filters over pandocs AST. These filters can be not only written in haskell but in pretty much any language.

I use pandoc + org-mode and it’s perfect. I love being able to convert my notes to LaTeX while correctly handling the inline images and math.

What's the reason to use Pandoc to convert .org files to LaTeX instead of the built-in Org Mode LaTeX exporter? Serious question - I do plenty of .org -> LaTeX like this, and never tried the Pandoc route before.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#17

Post by amenod »

Genuinly curious:

> Why reinventing the wheel when we can just copy it! This project takes the only surefire way to get it right - use the original elisp parser implementation as a blueprint!

Emacs Lisp code is under GPLv3 license, is it OK to rewrite it in another language (using original code as blueprint) and publish it under MIT?

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#18

Post by indentit »

juki wrote: post #13
bluejekyll wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who only reads about the love of Org, could you breakdown what features you see as improvements over markdown, specially CommonMark? I often see Org and OrgMode conflated, where OrgMode seems to provide much more of an experience with the way Emacs has integrated it into the editor. Could markdown be as integrated and provide similar experience?

The big difference between Markdown and the Org-markup is that the latter has syntax for various kinds of metadata, while Markdown is purely content. That metadata is used for things like task management, literate programming, spreadsheets, customizing export behavior, etc. One could, in theory, create an extended Markdown flavor that allows similar metadata, but that wouldn't be compatible with any existing tools an…

Pretty sure Markdown with metadata (sometimes referred to as "front matter") already exists and is called MultiMarkdown, no?

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#19

Post by indentit »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #14
bluejekyll wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who only reads about the love of Org, could you breakdown what features you see as improvements over markdown, specially CommonMark? I often see Org and OrgMode conflated, where OrgMode seems to provide much more of an experience with the way Emacs has integrated it into the editor. Could markdown be as integrated and provide similar experience?

The four differences between .org and CommonMark I could spot right now is that the latter lacks metadata[0], macros[1], syntax for specifying language for inline code blocks[2], and for tables[3]. It's hard to separate .org the markup language from org-mode the application, because quite a lot of its syntax is driven by application features. TODO markers, time stamps, schedule/deadline markers, property drawers, log…

I guess these days it is better to compare GitHub Formatted Markdown, a common extension to CommonMark, as opposed to plain CommonMark. It supports code blocks with language hints, tables etc. Also, I am pretty sure Markdown with metadata (sometimes referred to as "front matter") already exists and is called MultiMarkdown, though presumably not as powerful/useful as what you describe here.

Re: Org-mode parser in Rust

#20

Post by dotancohen »

amenod wrote: post #17

Genuinly curious: > Why reinventing the wheel when we can just copy it! This project takes the only surefire way to get it right - use the original elisp parser implementation as a blueprint! Emacs Lisp code is under GPLv3 license, is it OK to rewrite it in another language (using original code as blueprint) and publish it under MIT?

Of course. That is a derivative work.
Post reply on HN