Re: Thoughts on the standardization of Org

[Carsten Dominik <dominik@uva.nl>]

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Dear all,

this is an interesting discussion to read, and I think lots of  clever
people have made this an interesting discussion. So I hesitated to even
join the discussion, because I am quite removed from current development
and no longer feel qualified to guide it.  Still, my 5c.

For me, it seems unrealistic to standardize Org in a way that make it
desirable or even feasible to have *full implementations* in other tools.
What makes sense it to have tools that can

- *display* org files in a pleasant and useful way
- *convert* org files into other formats, with some accepted loss of
functionality
- *write* org files that then will function properly in Emacs.

Orgzly is a fantastic example.  It reads and displays Org files,
understands enough syntax to provide very useful functionality, and is
decent enough to not change stuff that is does not understand and use, so
that the files it writes are again fully functional in Emacs.

It seems to me that this covers most of what we can hope for, as a basic
formula.  No definition of Org syntax can fully know what I have done in my
personal environment, and therefore will not be able to reproduce that
functionality elsewhere.  This is intrinsic in Org and Emacs, I think.

The efforts to clean up the markup syntax have been fantastic (thank you,
in particular, Nicolas), and they have made it possible to have meaningful
parsers like the one on github.  And they provide a certain guarantee that
the three items I list above will work, also going forward.

Now, do I want that an arbitrary web browser or email client understands if
a file is org syntax, and that clicking on it should open Emacs.  Yes, I
would like that.  So in that sense, a mime type would be useful, for sure.

Greetings

Carsten

On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 4:50 PM Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Monday,  2 Nov 2020 at 16:23, Russell Adams wrote:
> > #+BEGIN_RANT
> > [...]
> > #+END_RANT
>
> Apologies for my comment then!  :-( I am fully sympathetic to the views
> you have expressed.
>
> Let me rephrase, therefore: it could be interesting to see Emacs as a
> SaaS which processes org mode documents.  But, note, I only say it might
> be interesting.  I am not particularly keen on cloud services for all
> kinds of reasons including ownership, security, etc.
>
> My solution is to have Emacs with me at all times so I have org & gnus &
> erc & emms & ... :-) I have a Planet Computers Gemini and an
> OpenPandora, for this reason, and am awaiting the soon to be available
> Pyra with impatience to have a fully open system (open software in the
> form of Debian & Emacs and open hardware, as much as is possible at the
> moment).
>
> --
> : Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.4-61-ga88806.dirty
>
>

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