Re: org-plot questions

["Samuel Wales" <samologist@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 15:43, Eric Schulte <schulte.eric@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree this isn't obvious, if you have a suggestion for improving the
> syntax please let me know.

I haven't looked into this matter, so this comment might not be
relevant, but I do have a suggestion that I had earlier written for
the *general* problem of choosing a syntax for new functionality when
you don't have obvious models to follow.

Some of the desiderata for a syntax include: consistent, easy to
parse, hard to corrupt, simple to quote, simple to escape (especially
with things like regexps that are already complicated), supports being
confident that exporting will not exhibit unexpected behavior, easier
for the user to remember without reference materials, flexible,
extensible, supports macros, nestable, pretty-printable, a published
reference standard, and print-readable (serializing).  If your syntax
has those, then you're doing well.

If you don't have a model to follow (such as org or gnuplot), then
Lisp (el because this is el or cl because it's a standard that is
similar to el and meticulously speced) has usually had a lot of
thought put into its syntax.  You might get a joke or two, but we know
better.  :)

Again, perhaps not relevant, but maybe food for thought for future
questions about syntax.