Re: [ANN] New lists definition

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Hi Nicolas,

this sounds interesting!  Take you time in cleaning it up and testing  
it - we
will not include this before release 7, to big a change for this  
moment in time.

Thanks!

- Carsten

On Jul 2, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'd like to announce an attempt to change the internals of lists in
> org-mode. Now a list is still started by `org-item-re' but is now
> ended by `org-list-end-re', which defaults to one or two blank lines,
> depending on the value of `org-empty-line-terminates-plain-lists'.
> Obviously, headings still terminate lists, too.
>
> Please note that `org-item-re' is not valid inside org-blocks or latex
> blocks. So you can perfectly have a #+begin_example block with 4
> consecutive blank lines inside: it will not break your current list.
>
>
> * So what are the benefits of it ?
>
>  Well, now indentation is handled by org-mode and not by the user. It
>  means you can C-j and get the right indentation anytime, or
>  indent-region without worries – how many times did I indent buffer
>  and saw everything past a certain point was wrong because of a list?
>  `org-indent-mode' should also work great with it.
>
>  As a consequence, you can have two lists with different bullets –  
> i.e.
>  "-" and "1." — only separated by blank lines, that will not interfere
>  with each other.
>
>  I also improved handling of lists starting with "*", by deleting
>  org-item-beginning-re. Such lists should export correctly in latex
>  now. On the same topic, I also fixed an inconsistency of
>  `org-indent-item-tree' that would permit an item to get outdented  
> past
>  the top-level item of the list – very problematic in *-lists, as "*"
>  could hit column 0 and become an heading.
>
>  I also squashed a few bugs. Thus, `org-list-to-html' won't enclose
>  any item within "<dd>" and "</dd>" even for non-descriptive lists
>  anymore.
>
>
> * Is that all ?
>
>  Hopefully yes. I tried to keep the same behavior as before in all
>  others aspects of lists. `org-move-item-up',
>  `org-beginning-of-item-list', etc. should do what you would expect
>  from them. Thus, I hope it will not break anything.
>
>  Most of the changes are internal. I rewrote some basic functions and
>  patched most of the others. I removed useless functions only when I
>  was sure they weren't used anywhere else in org or contrib
>  directories. I also reorganized org-list.el, because functions of
>  the same family – i.e. navigation within a list – were scattered all
>  over the file, and it was difficult to have a good overview of it.
>  But I keep an "unorganized" version of the changes, just in case.
>
>
> * What if I don't like 2 blank lines as a list separator ?
>
>  Well, that's the good thing of it. It is not hard-coded. It's just a
>  matter of replacing "\n[ \t]*\n\\([ \t]*\n\\)+" line in
>  `org-list-end-re' with, for example, "\n[ \t]*  [ \t]*\n" (" " can
>  be obtained with C-x 8 RET a0 RET).
>
>  The limitation of it is that exporters must see them (to interpret
>  them) and must remove them before exporting if they are visible. But
>  those functionalities shouldn't be hard to code into org-exp.el if
>  there really is a need for them.
>
>
> * What is not working yet ?
>
>  Every exporter using the tools provided by org-list.el – namely
>  `org-list-parse-list', `org-list-to-generic', `org-list-to-latex'
>  among others — should recognize list-enders. Alas, org-html.el
>  provides its own list interpreter, so there is no benefit from the
>  new definition, though it still exports as before. I have ideas
>  about it and started to implement something, but it is more a hack
>  than anything else. I just wish org-html.el would use
>  `org-list-to-html'.
>
>  There are certainly many things that I broke in the process. That's
>  why, if this idea is appealing, I'd appreciate some testers. I have
>  run many basic tests – which all seem satisfying – in the past few
>  days, but there's nothing like real-life confrontation. I'm open to
>  any suggestion or criticism. If you think I spent too much time on
>  insignificant details, do not hesitate to say it too.
>
>
> * So, where can I test it ?
>
>  You can find it at:
>
>  git@github.com:ngz/org-mode.git   branch: end-lists
>
>
>
> Thanks for any feedback.
>
> -- Nicolas
>
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- Carsten