Re: Differences between Org-Mode and Hyperbole

[Nikolai Weibull <nikolai.weibull@gmail.com>]

> On Jul 7, 2016, at 00:30, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>>> Why would you want to convert a todo list into HTML or PDF?
>>> I just don't see the utility.
> 
>> To share it with others in paper form.
> 
> I have never wanted to do that with my todo lists.
> I just don't see the utility of doing it.

In my work, I’be been asked to report on progress and to have something to show and further discussion, I’ve used printouts of org buffers. In all honesty, this could have been done with equal effect as a text file. I wasn’t arguing for or against anything, just stating an “accidental” use case. 

> If you find it useful, by all means do it.
> I am not arguing that you shouldn't be able to do this,
> or that Emacs shouldn't facilitate it.
> If you are trying to argue with me about that, you're missing the point.

I am not.

> Rather, I am an example of many users (I'm sure we are many) who don't
> want to print out our todo lists, and the point is this: with us,
> building a mode for editing todo lists on top of something for
> printing out formatted files is unnatural.

Unnatural is hardly the right choice of word. 

> I think the todo editing features should be presented as someting
> simple and self-contained.

I agree. Org mode is far too many things at once and it’s very difficult to get a grip on what everything it includes is useful for. As an example, there are (as far as I am aware, there may be more) eight ways of categorizing “items” (“to dos”) in Org mode. File, heading, category, todo state, tags, and priority, and also sub-items and check lists. This gives the user great freedom in how they organize their tasks, at a rather large cost of making it hard for even a seasoned user to figure out a good workflow. And that’s just categorization. Then there’s all the different ways of filtering your items and the agenda and all its various concepts to actually manage the chaos (which doesn’t work very well, at least for me). I would very much appreciate something simpler, but at least I can get org mode to do most of what I currently know that I want it to do.