Re: [ELPA] New package: SachaC-news

[Sacha Chua <sacha@sachachua.com>]

Christian <cnngimenez@disroot.org> writes:

Hello, Christian, all!

Christian: Neat idea, thanks for making it! =)

>> What other formats does this repository store postings in?  If it has
>> -- or can generate -- plain text, that should be preferred.
>> There are users who like Org fornat, but it is not Emacs's preferred
>> way of showing information.
> Sacha Chua creates her blog posts using this file written in
> Org-mode. This mode is installed by default on Emacs 29 [1] and
> can export to other formats: LaTeX, HTML, plain text, TeXInfo
> and info (by installing ox-texinfo), etc.

I could take another couple of minutes during the export process and
export them as text and HTML as well. Here are both in my fork of your
Sourcehut: https://git.sr.ht/~sachac/sachac-emacs-news . The Org version
seems easier to parse, though.

> Mmm... I suppose... I can add a customization to show an
> exported buffer instead the Org-mode buffer. For example, if
> sachac-news-show-plain-text is set to t, it  will do the
> overall process, but add an extra step to export the Org file
> into plain text... or even generalize this idea to use any
> export dispatch function... I believe it can be
> implemented... what do you think?

Yeah, it's probably better to do it on-the-fly, so people can get
different versions of whatever they like. Making the backend selectable
sounds like a possibly useful thing, in case maybe someone wants to use
one of the Emacs News categories as a starting point for, say, their
Markdown-based blog post...

> Recently, I have just added a customization variable to set the
> URL to Sacha's Emacs News repository (see [3]). By default, its
> value is [4] which is a clone of the original. This repository
> will be automatically updated once a day, if there is a new
> blog post. However, you can change it to any other repository
> URL with an index.org file if you like.

Sure, we could use your repo (or my fork of your repo) if you like. Or
if you add me as a collaborator on your repo, I can add it to the list
of repos to push to... <laugh>

> I have an account on savannah.gnu.org. If it is needed, I can
> request a new repository there. But it will require some time
> to be approved.

I wasn't sure if Emacs News is eligible for Savannah hosting, since I
link to lots of YouTube videos and the occasional commercial workshop
being advertised by people. (Goodness knows emacs-devel has seen lots of
discussions about MELPA, even...) Happy to set up another repo there if
people feel it's all right. Decentralized source control for the win!

> Sacha Chua maintains her emacs-news blog posts [6], and creates them
> by using the index.org file in that archive (or so it seems as far as
> I can understand the code in it, I have not asked her yet!).

Yup, that's pretty much it.

>> Org format is NOT the Emacs standard or preferred format, and not
>> everyone uses it.  Therefore, if we add a command to display some
>> useful information, it should not use Org format.
>> The best format to use is plain text.
> Maybe, the name "Org" is not correct? I mean Org-mode [7] (I call it
> "Org" casually, sorry for that)... I thought it is considered as a
> plain text format. I love it and use it for... well... almost
> everything. If I am wrong in any way, please tell me.

I use Org because that makes it easy to export to different formats with
hyperlinks. I like the conciseness of working with the titles for the
most part while easily being able to access the URLs as needed. I also
like having custom package links that open up package descriptions on my
computer and export to regular HTML or ASCII links when I'm publishing.
It's easy to rearrange bulleted lists, too. If people open the Org
files, they can mostly follow the hyperlinks without loading any custom
configuration. I'm going to keep Org as my source data format instead
of using something like Hyperbole and/or Markdown.

If we want the source data available in different formats, I can add
that to my publishing process and keep that in the repo. It takes me a
few minutes to export the whole file, so it's not a big deal.

I'm guessing when people want to see the data, they'll usually want to
see hyperlinked titles instead of titles + URLs (as in the ASCII export)
while still being able to access the URLs if needed. I think taking
advantage of Org's existing functionality makes sense here. Of course,
the package can display things in different formats for people who
prefer those.

For people's convenience, I post HTML/Org/TXT to the emacs-tangents
mailing list, so the information is available there in multiple formats.

Fetching the index.org without git could work if you grab the whole file
using the raw URL, like
https://git.sr.ht/~sachac/sachac-emacs-news/blob/master/index.org ? It's
3.8MB (sorry server operators). I keep everything in one file to make it
easier to check for duplicates.

Would it help if I wrote the last post as a separate file, as in
https://git.sr.ht/~sachac/sachac-emacs-news/tree/master/item/most-recent.org
(or .txt or .html)?

Sacha