"Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

"Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Karl Voit]

Hi Org-mode community,

At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.

I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
"Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
level of Orgdown syntax elements.

- The EmacsConf21 talk: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside
- Orgdown site: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown (please contribute!)
- My motivation article: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/
  - This is the longer version of my 12 minute EmacsConf21 video.
- My personal copy of the video: https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu


Just as a sneak preview (not as a replacement for my motivation article):

Orgdown is and will be defined in a set of levels, starting with very
basic Orgdown1 (or OD1 or O↓1 or ⧬1 - depending on your coolness
factor of choice :-) )

- OD1 → https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org
- OD2 → will be defined in future
- OD3 → will be defined in future
- ...
- OD∞ = Org-mode (by definition)

Any OD-level needs to be compatible with Org-mode as implemented in
Elisp for GNU/Emacs Org-mode according to https://orgmode.org. Any ODx
is a sub-set of the syntax elements of ODy (with y>x).

With introducing a new term specific for the syntax, we do get the
benefit of getting a better way to handle Org-mode support in
3rd-party tools such as listed on
https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org
(please extend!).

Having a well-defined sub-set of Org-mode, I also do think that formal
definitions of the Org-mode syntax will be easier to develop, starting
with the very simple OD1 level.

It would be awesome if we start referring to syntax support in
3rd-party tools with the corresponding OD levels.

I want to emphasize that the goal of Orgdown is NOT and will never be
something that is an alternative to our golden standard Org-mode. We
will try hard not to get into the Markdown situation where you need to
know the exact flavor of the markup in order to produce text.

So far, the response was great at the conference and I do hope that
this idea will get a life of its own, developing the standard further,
bringing this magnificent lightweight markup to the digital world.
This also eases some pain for users of GNU/Emacs when it comes to
exchanging text-based data.

Thanks for your support here!


-- 
Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Considering the total incompatibility between markdown and org-mode it does not seem to me that ’orgdown’ is a useful name. It will only confuse people and generate useless comments and counter-comments wherever org-mode syntax is mentioned.

Org-mode and its syntax bring users functions that are vastly superior to whatever markdown does, and we should not forget that markdown’s originator (at least the one who is still alive today) pretty much systematically despises free software and the free software movement on his blog…

Jean-Christophe Helary

> On Nov 29, 2021, at 4:46, Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> wrote:
> 
> Hi Org-mode community,
> 
> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
> 
> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
> 
> - The EmacsConf21 talk: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside
> - Orgdown site: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown (please contribute!)
> - My motivation article: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/
>  - This is the longer version of my 12 minute EmacsConf21 video.
> - My personal copy of the video: https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu
> 
> 
> Just as a sneak preview (not as a replacement for my motivation article):
> 
> Orgdown is and will be defined in a set of levels, starting with very
> basic Orgdown1 (or OD1 or O↓1 or ⧬1 - depending on your coolness
> factor of choice :-) )
> 
> - OD1 → https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org
> - OD2 → will be defined in future
> - OD3 → will be defined in future
> - ...
> - OD∞ = Org-mode (by definition)
> 
> Any OD-level needs to be compatible with Org-mode as implemented in
> Elisp for GNU/Emacs Org-mode according to https://orgmode.org. Any ODx
> is a sub-set of the syntax elements of ODy (with y>x).
> 
> With introducing a new term specific for the syntax, we do get the
> benefit of getting a better way to handle Org-mode support in
> 3rd-party tools such as listed on
> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org
> (please extend!).
> 
> Having a well-defined sub-set of Org-mode, I also do think that formal
> definitions of the Org-mode syntax will be easier to develop, starting
> with the very simple OD1 level.
> 
> It would be awesome if we start referring to syntax support in
> 3rd-party tools with the corresponding OD levels.
> 
> I want to emphasize that the goal of Orgdown is NOT and will never be
> something that is an alternative to our golden standard Org-mode. We
> will try hard not to get into the Markdown situation where you need to
> know the exact flavor of the markup in order to produce text.
> 
> So far, the response was great at the conference and I do hope that
> this idea will get a life of its own, developing the standard further,
> bringing this magnificent lightweight markup to the digital world.
> This also eases some pain for users of GNU/Emacs when it comes to
> exchanging text-based data.
> 
> Thanks for your support here!
> 
> 
> -- 
> Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
> Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 4:34 PM Jean-Christophe Helary
<lists@traduction-libre.org> wrote:
>
> Considering the total incompatibility between markdown and org-mode it does not seem to me that ’orgdown’ is a useful name. It will only confuse people and generate useless comments and counter-comments wherever org-mode syntax is mentioned.

That was my thought as well.

Also, for symmetry, perhaps the name should include a hyphen; like "org-bar".

Bruce

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Tom Gillespie]

I had jokingly suggested "orgup" to have a more positive feeling (up
instead of down) than markdown. I'm not sure orgdown will be any more
confusing than some other name. It could imply a version of the org
syntax that uses markdown surface syntax, but it seems that that would
probably be called org flavored markdown by the existing conventions
in the markdown community. Best,
Tom

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hi,

I believe (IMHO) that it does not make much sense to separately name the
Org Mode syntax (as a markup language). That would only generate
confusion among users. Furthermore, 'Org Mode', as a whole, is already a
sufficiently recognized and popular name, even outside the GNU Emacs
community. A single name is best remembered. More than one name means
atomization. For example: there is TeX (the typographic engine) and TeX
(the programming language for that engine). And there has never been any
conflict.

On the other hand, drawing a dividing line between Org (a lightweight
markup language) and Org (a GNU Emacs major mode) as if both things
could exist separately is an illusory exercise. I mean, that the
Org's global experience is the fusion of both things. 

I migrated from Markdown to Org Mode a long time ago not because I was
looking for a new and best lightweight markup language but because Org
provides me with a complete and quite sophisticated and productive work
environment. An environment that includes, yes, its own syntax, but all
within Emacs, which is where makes sense. I do not know if it is an
emergent quality, but I see Org, in many ways (and with all its
synapses) as an interface for Emacs.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Tim Cross]

Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:

> Hi Org-mode community,
>
> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>
> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
>
> - The EmacsConf21 talk: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside
> - Orgdown site: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown (please contribute!)
> - My motivation article: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/
>   - This is the longer version of my 12 minute EmacsConf21 video.
> - My personal copy of the video: https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu
>
>
> Just as a sneak preview (not as a replacement for my motivation article):
>
> Orgdown is and will be defined in a set of levels, starting with very
> basic Orgdown1 (or OD1 or O↓1 or ⧬1 - depending on your coolness
> factor of choice :-) )
>
> - OD1 → https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org
> - OD2 → will be defined in future
> - OD3 → will be defined in future
> - ...
> - OD∞ = Org-mode (by definition)
>
> Any OD-level needs to be compatible with Org-mode as implemented in
> Elisp for GNU/Emacs Org-mode according to https://orgmode.org. Any ODx
> is a sub-set of the syntax elements of ODy (with y>x).
>
> With introducing a new term specific for the syntax, we do get the
> benefit of getting a better way to handle Org-mode support in
> 3rd-party tools such as listed on
> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org
> (please extend!).
>
> Having a well-defined sub-set of Org-mode, I also do think that formal
> definitions of the Org-mode syntax will be easier to develop, starting
> with the very simple OD1 level.
>
> It would be awesome if we start referring to syntax support in
> 3rd-party tools with the corresponding OD levels.
>
> I want to emphasize that the goal of Orgdown is NOT and will never be
> something that is an alternative to our golden standard Org-mode. We
> will try hard not to get into the Markdown situation where you need to
> know the exact flavor of the markup in order to produce text.
>
> So far, the response was great at the conference and I do hope that
> this idea will get a life of its own, developing the standard further,
> bringing this magnificent lightweight markup to the digital world.
> This also eases some pain for users of GNU/Emacs when it comes to
> exchanging text-based data.
>

Hi Karl,

while I can appreciate the point you are making, I'm doubtful your
suggestion will gain the traction necessary to work. To me, it feels a
little like the frequent posts from RMS in the emacs-devel list where he
gets upset when people refer to Linux instead of GNU Linux. To some
extent, the distinction will be too subtle for many and often, it isn't
clear whether an issue is a syntax definition (orgdown) or an
implementation bug or just simply user misunderstanding.

Perhaps we just need a name for the markup syntax which doesn't actually
reference 'org' at all - it simply is the markup syntax which org
happens to use. A completely separate name might avoid confusion and
would make it very clear that the markup syntax is not org mode. Problem
is, naming is terribly difficult and I have no suggestions on what would
be a good name.

I have not yet viewed your video, but will certainly be doing so. Again,
agree with the sentiment of what your trying to do, just not convinced
it is compatible with basic human nature. 

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Tom Gillespie]

> I believe (IMHO) that it does not make much sense to separately name the
> Org Mode syntax (as a markup language). That would only generate
> confusion among users.

This is unfortunately not the case. Conflating Org mode which is an Emacs
major mode with Org syntax is a major communication barrier that leads to
confusion for anyone trying to implement a tool based on Org syntax. For
example I couldn't just call my implementation of an org-mode-like package
for Racket "Org mode" because it is not an Emacs major mode. The absence
of a name for Org syntax hampers search and discovery. I'm happy to keep
using the multi-word term Org syntax, but I have found a practical need to
distinguish the surface syntax from the Emacs major mode to reduce
confusing for technical users. Best,
Tom

PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Joost Kremers]

On Sun, Nov 28 2021, Tom Gillespie wrote:
> PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?

Why not just use the term "Org markup"?  It's descriptive and should be
understandable to people familiar with the concept of markup languages.

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Nov 29, 2021, at 7:57, Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?

Org Agnostic Syntax Modules → OrgASM

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[George Mauer]

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Agree with Joost. If I remember correctly, the "down" part of markdown was
meant as a play on words to indicate that, unlike a proper markup language,
markdown has a direction and a value system but no defined standard. Since
org is definitely not that why must the waters? Just go for clarity.

On Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 17:30 Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> wrote:

>
> On Sun, Nov 28 2021, Tom Gillespie wrote:
> > PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?
>
> Why not just use the term "Org markup"?  It's descriptive and should be
> understandable to people familiar with the concept of markup languages.
>
> --
> Joost Kremers
> Life has its moments
>
>

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Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Jim Porter]

On 11/28/2021 11:46 AM, Karl Voit wrote:
> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
> 
> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
> level of Orgdown syntax elements.

I agree that it's useful to distinguish the files/syntax from the 
*mode*, which contains many functions for doing things with those files.

For what it's worth (perhaps not much), I've always referred to the 
syntax/file format as simply "Org"; for example, "I put my notes into an 
Org file." This is by analogy with most of the other Emacs major modes 
for editing files. I write Python in `python-mode', I write C++ in 
`c++-mode', I write text files in `text-mode', and so on.

Maybe "Org" isn't distinct enough though. People unfamiliar with 
Org-Mode might confuse "Org" with "org charts" or some other use of the 
word. Still, if we look to other tools that can read the same files as 
Org-Mode, they tend to be called things like "Organice", not 
"Orgmodeanice". :)

- Jim

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Michael Ashton]

> On Nov 28, 2021, at 6:22 PM, Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 11/28/2021 11:46 AM, Karl Voit wrote:
>> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
>> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
>> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
>> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
>> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
> 
> I agree that it's useful to distinguish the files/syntax from the *mode*, which contains many functions for doing things with those files.
> 
> For what it's worth (perhaps not much), I've always referred to the syntax/file format as simply "Org"; for example, "I put my notes into an Org file." This is by analogy with most of the other Emacs major modes for editing files. I write Python in `python-mode', I write C++ in `c++-mode', I write text files in `text-mode', and so on.
> 
> Maybe "Org" isn't distinct enough though. People unfamiliar with Org-Mode might confuse "Org" with "org charts" or some other use of the word. Still, if we look to other tools that can read the same files as Org-Mode, they tend to be called things like "Organice", not "Orgmodeanice". :)

Perhaps orgtext or org-text?

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Devin Prater]

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Or OrgMark. Simple, please no levels to show the amount of adherence to the
spec. OrgMark would symbolize the "markings" or syntax of Org-mode, and not
be close enough to Mark(down) to where people would think, like I did, that
this was Org-mode power given to a subset of Markdown to help, say,
Obsidian users come to Org-mode. No, I don't think we need that either.

Otherwise, I'm perfectly find with calling it Org. Just like Python, HTML,
all that. We don't say, in relaxed speech where the speaker assumes prior
known knowledge, or knowledge that can be easily filled in, "I'm writing a
book in Markdown markup language." We just say "I'm writing a book in
Markdown." And if the listener doesn't know what we mean, we can explain.
Devin Prater
r.d.t.prater@gmail.com




On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 5:24 PM Jean-Christophe Helary <
lists@traduction-libre.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Nov 29, 2021, at 7:57, Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?
>
> Org Agnostic Syntax Modules → OrgASM
>
> --
> Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
> https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
> https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/
>
>
>

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Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Joost Kremers writes:

> Why not just use the term "Org markup"?  It's descriptive and should be
> understandable to people familiar with the concept of markup languages.

This. 'Org markup language' and 'Org Syntax' are obvious and natural
terms that can easily be inferred from the Org manual. Honestly I don't
see much point in coming up with new names for a concept which is
already transparent and self-explanatory. It is something I find
unnecessary and baroque.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2021-11-28, at 23:25, Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> [...] For example: there is TeX (the typographic engine) and TeX
> (the programming language for that engine). And there has never been any
> conflict.

Quite the contrary.  The amount of confusion between TeX (engine)/TeX
(language)/TeX (distro)/TeX-aware text editor/LaTeX (whatever) among
novice/casual users has always been terrible.

Just my 2 cents,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> writes:

> Joost Kremers writes:
>
>> Why not just use the term "Org markup"?  It's descriptive and should be
>> understandable to people familiar with the concept of markup languages.
>
> This. 'Org markup language' and 'Org Syntax' are obvious and natural
> terms that can easily be inferred from the Org manual. Honestly I don't
> see much point in coming up with new names for a concept which is
> already transparent and self-explanatory. It is something I find
> unnecessary and baroque.

Org markup and Org syntax sound good, I think. I’m unsure which is
better to convey that this includes features — that org-mode is much
more than just a way to encode some information, but a way to interact
with documents and an implementation of the syntax should keep that in
mind.

One thing that is important to keep: Org Syntax or Org Markup is
implementation-defined. You cannot claim *full compatibility*, if you
are not fully compatible with org-mode. This includes a lot of Emacs
features, like linking to arbitrary files/buffers/things, extending
links, and so on.

The minimal syntax (missing a lot of features) would be outline markup
or outline syntax (from outline-mode, the ancestor of org-mode).

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Marcin Borkowski writes:

> Quite the contrary.  The amount of confusion between TeX (engine)/TeX
> (language)/TeX (distro)/TeX-aware text editor/LaTeX (whatever) among
> novice/casual users has always been terrible.

It's natural when those novice/casual users approach something that is
new to them, but nothing invincible when they want to learn. The "TeX"
ecosystem is not trivial, but I think that all, or almost all of us,
understand each other when things like 'TeX/LaTeX code', 'TeX engine',
'LaTeX format', etc. are said. If the TeX language were somewhat
self-contained and widely used outside of TeX, I would see OK that the
language had its own name. But, since the TeX language is something that
almost only TeX understands (roughly said), I think the economy wins
here (IMHO). I don't see how we could improve everything by having half
a dozen more exotic names.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2021-11-29, at 13:18, Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski writes:
>
>> Quite the contrary.  The amount of confusion between TeX (engine)/TeX
>> (language)/TeX (distro)/TeX-aware text editor/LaTeX (whatever) among
>> novice/casual users has always been terrible.
>
> It's natural when those novice/casual users approach something that is
> new to them, but nothing invincible when they want to learn. The "TeX"
> ecosystem is not trivial, but I think that all, or almost all of us,
> understand each other when things like 'TeX/LaTeX code', 'TeX engine',
> 'LaTeX format', etc. are said. If the TeX language were somewhat
> self-contained and widely used outside of TeX, I would see OK that the
> language had its own name. But, since the TeX language is something that
> almost only TeX understands (roughly said), I think the economy wins
> here (IMHO). I don't see how we could improve everything by having half
> a dozen more exotic names.

Agreed, I just wanted to say that the situation with TeX is more
complicated.  Especially that 92%* TeX users are novice/casual users.

* Number made up, but loosely based on anecdotal evidence;-).

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Max Nikulin]

On 29/11/2021 09:33, Michael Ashton wrote:
> 
>> On 11/28/2021 11:46 AM, Karl Voit wrote:
>>> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
>>> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
>>> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>>> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
>>> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
> 
> Perhaps orgtext or org-text?

I like such variant even though "orgdown" sounds better. Another one:

"text/org" ("slash" may be omitted in speech) as file format for Org 
Mode (as application).

If you can not survive without a pun and funny formatting, then

- "orgless" to emphasize that it lacks power of Org Mode.
- "org<1" to denote compatibility levels.

JSON format is not really human-friendly (in comparison e.g. to YAML), 
but the following representation of compatibility data for web-related 
technologies is great:
https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data

Recently I have noticed a number of issues with Org renderer at GitHub. 
I have not checked bugtracker of the ruby project (feel free to forward 
this list to the developers). I am unsure concerning appropriate 
compatibility level but it is annoying that verbatim text inside link 
description is not recognized.

- =[[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621763][Bug 1621763: 
[flatpak] native messaging support missing]]=
   square brackets inside link description breaks parsing of whole link
   (outer brackets, target, and description are shown).
- Verbatim text as whole description is not recognized,
   markers are shown
   =[[https://orgmode.org][=org-capture=]]=, the same for =~code~=.
   ~[[help:org-refile][=C-u C-c C-w= ~org-refile~]]~.
   =\u200B= zero-width space inside brackets does not help.
- "info:" links are not converted to HTML ones.
- Footnotes and ~[fn:text]~ links are not supported.
- ~src_elisp{(server-start)}~ appears literally.
- =#+caption:= before =#+begin_example= block is not supported
   and absent in HTML output.
- =#+attr_html: :alt= for images is not supported.
- ~="* %(org-get-x-clipboard 'CLIPBOARD)"=~ ("=" and everything inside
   without outer "~") is not recognized as verbatim.

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Christophe Schockaert]

On 2021-11-29 03:33, Michael Ashton wrote:
>> On Nov 28, 2021, at 6:22 PM, Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On 11/28/2021 11:46 AM, Karl Voit wrote:
>>> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain 
>>> why
>>> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
>>> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>>> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the 
>>> term
>>> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
>>> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
>> 
>> I agree that it's useful to distinguish the files/syntax from the 
>> *mode*, which contains many functions for doing things with those 
>> files.
>> 
>> For what it's worth (perhaps not much), I've always referred to the 
>> syntax/file format as simply "Org"; for example, "I put my notes into 
>> an Org file." This is by analogy with most of the other Emacs major 
>> modes for editing files. I write Python in `python-mode', I write C++ 
>> in `c++-mode', I write text files in `text-mode', and so on.
>> 
>> Maybe "Org" isn't distinct enough though. People unfamiliar with 
>> Org-Mode might confuse "Org" with "org charts" or some other use of 
>> the word. Still, if we look to other tools that can read the same 
>> files as Org-Mode, they tend to be called things like "Organice", not 
>> "Orgmodeanice". :)
> 
> Perhaps orgtext or org-text?
Hi Karl and Org fellows,


I do understand that it has always been a tricky topic, since Org Mode 
and its format are intrinsically linked.

I think what you are bringing is useful, I can feel how a syntax for a 
"standard" Org format subset would be useful (maybe we could keep open a 
way to customize it by exporting Lisp params values as part of a 
document annex, but that's beyond the current status, just to say I 
understand why you bring that :).

I have to say, however, that I am not very enthusiast with the name that 
you came by for this.
At first, because I feel Org format and Markdown are different beasts ; 
eventhough I do use Markdown, I prefer Org alot, so it sounds strange to 
have a reference to Markdown in Org format name.
But, really more because I feel like Org stands on its own, and it does 
not need to help itself as a comparison to Markdown to get its own 
renown, or to explain what it is.

In previous mails, "Org Syntax" and "Org Markup" sounded good to me.
However, I do like "org-text" or "Org Text" a lot, or why not even 
"OrgText", but I favor the first two, which refer to the way we write 
"org-mode" the Emacs Mode and "Org Mode" in documents.

After all, this is exactly what it is about, "Writing text in Org", and 
what it is essentially "text characters arranged according to Org 
format".


Have a good day,

Christophe


-- 
--------------->  https://www.citadels.earth
Once it's perfectly aimed, the flying arrow goes straight to its target.
Thus, don't worry when things go right.
There will be enough time to worry about if they go wrong.
Then, it's time to fire a new arrow towards another direction.
Don't sink.  Adapt yourself !  The archer has to shoot accurately and
quickly.
[Words of Erenthar, the bowman ranger] <---------------<<<<

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Karl Voit]

Hi Tim,

* Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Karl,
>
> while I can appreciate the point you are making, I'm doubtful your
> suggestion will gain the traction necessary to work. 

You might be right. Only time will tell. ;-)

> To me, it feels a little like the frequent posts from RMS in the
> emacs-devel list where he gets upset when people refer to Linux
> instead of GNU Linux. 

I disagree here. 

Linux vs. GNU/Linux are two different names for the same thing.
Org-mode is an Elisp implementation and Orgdown is just a syntax
definition. So they are completely different things.

> To some extent, the distinction will be too subtle for many and
> often, it isn't clear whether an issue is a syntax definition
> (orgdown) or an implementation bug or just simply user
> misunderstanding.

It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
funny if you think about it.

Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).

> Perhaps we just need a name for the markup syntax which doesn't actually
> reference 'org' at all - it simply is the markup syntax which org
> happens to use. A completely separate name might avoid confusion and
> would make it very clear that the markup syntax is not org mode. Problem
> is, naming is terribly difficult and I have no suggestions on what would
> be a good name.

Oh, there is a very large danger here of getting something that is
not compatible with Org-mode any more. I don't think that this would
be a good thing. At least the different flavors killed the fun of
Markdown for me.

> I have not yet viewed your video, but will certainly be doing so. Again,
> agree with the sentiment of what your trying to do, just not convinced
> it is compatible with basic human nature. 

Maybe we need to differ between the Org-mode community with
potential bias and the main target group of people who did use
Markdown in the past and never have heard of Org-mode before?

-- 
get mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML into Org-mode:
       > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <
Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Matt Price]

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I don't have very thoughtful comments but I'll just say that I really do
also like the idea of a formal syntax; that a staged standard seems to make
sense to me, though I'm ignorant about how syntaxes are normally defined
and managed;  and am generally not super enthusiastic about the particular
name that's been chosen.

It seems like there are lots of people thinking in similar ways about
related issues -- that is, whenever it's possible, treating org files as
syntax trees rather than linear text trees.. The org-ml project comes to
mind; so does the recent work on tree-sitter in emacs; and Ihor's recent
thread on changing fontification.  I guess it would be nice if the
smarter-than-me people involved in all these projects are tracking each
other somewhat to make sure efforts converge as much as possible.

For me it would be really great to have better support for an org syntax in
VSCode & in Node; I'm sure other people have their own priority areas.  A
syntax definition would surely help?


On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 8:22 AM Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> * Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Karl,
> >
> > while I can appreciate the point you are making, I'm doubtful your
> > suggestion will gain the traction necessary to work.
>
> You might be right. Only time will tell. ;-)
>
> > To me, it feels a little like the frequent posts from RMS in the
> > emacs-devel list where he gets upset when people refer to Linux
> > instead of GNU Linux.
>
> I disagree here.
>
> Linux vs. GNU/Linux are two different names for the same thing.
> Org-mode is an Elisp implementation and Orgdown is just a syntax
> definition. So they are completely different things.
>
> > To some extent, the distinction will be too subtle for many and
> > often, it isn't clear whether an issue is a syntax definition
> > (orgdown) or an implementation bug or just simply user
> > misunderstanding.
>
> It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
> the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
> implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
> funny if you think about it.
>
> Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
> we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
> support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).
>
> > Perhaps we just need a name for the markup syntax which doesn't actually
> > reference 'org' at all - it simply is the markup syntax which org
> > happens to use. A completely separate name might avoid confusion and
> > would make it very clear that the markup syntax is not org mode. Problem
> > is, naming is terribly difficult and I have no suggestions on what would
> > be a good name.
>
> Oh, there is a very large danger here of getting something that is
> not compatible with Org-mode any more. I don't think that this would
> be a good thing. At least the different flavors killed the fun of
> Markdown for me.
>
> > I have not yet viewed your video, but will certainly be doing so. Again,
> > agree with the sentiment of what your trying to do, just not convinced
> > it is compatible with basic human nature.
>
> Maybe we need to differ between the Org-mode community with
> potential bias and the main target group of people who did use
> Markdown in the past and never have heard of Org-mode before?
>
> --
> get mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML into Org-mode:
>        > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <
> Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
> Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/
>
>
>

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Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[M. ‘quintus’ Gülker]

Am Montag, dem 29. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
> It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
> the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
> implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
> funny if you think about it.
>
> Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
> we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
> support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).

I think the project has value; better tooling outside of Emacs is
something org can only profit from in my opinion. One point that has not
been raised yet are scenarios of collaborative work; I would enjoy it
quite a bit if I could work on documents together with people who do not
like Emacs as an editor for whatever reason. Currently, org as a file
format is pretty much excluded if collaboration is intended with someone
who does not use Emacs. The natural choice in these cases is Markdown.

I agree that the name is kind of odd as it seems as if it is necessary
to invoke some association to Markdown. Other markup languages also do
not need that -- Textile, Asciidoc, etc. Perhaps it is best to simply
ignore the naming issue and focus on the actual work instead. It is far
more important to get the compatibility levels defined. After that you
can still reconsider the naming.

> Oh, there is a very large danger here of getting something that is
> not compatible with Org-mode any more. I don't think that this would
> be a good thing. At least the different flavors killed the fun of
> Markdown for me.

The astonishing thing is that most people manage to get along despite of
the incompatibilities of the different Markdown flavours. Otherwise
Markdown would not be such a success. Why is this? What can be learned
from this for creating org tools outside of Emacs? Actually surveying
this might be of interest.

Maybe most documents are very simple files. README files for FLOSS
projects, forum posts, blog posts. For such content the features where
the Markdown implementations differ are usually not required. It
suffices to use unstyled text, headings, code blocks, quotes, emphasis.
That is it basically. org shines on documents where more is required --
documentation, books, since recently scientific articles. Markdown’s
common subset is not expressive enough for these documents, whereas for
simple documents there is not much benefit in trading in Markdown for
org. Thus, maybe it is more fruitful to try to market org(down) as a
markup for complex documents, with the added benefit that it does
incidentally also cover simple documents nicely on par with Markdown.

  -quintus

-- 
Dipl.-Jur. M. Gülker | https://mg.guelker.eu | PGP: Siehe Webseite
Passau, Deutschland  | kontakt@guelker.eu    | O<

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2021-11-29, at 19:27, M. ‘quintus’ Gülker <mg@guelker.eu> wrote:

> Am Montag, dem 29. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
>> It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
>> the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
>> implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
>> funny if you think about it.
>>
>> Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
>> we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
>> support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).
>
> I think the project has value; better tooling outside of Emacs is
> something org can only profit from in my opinion. One point that has not
> been raised yet are scenarios of collaborative work; I would enjoy it
> quite a bit if I could work on documents together with people who do not
> like Emacs as an editor for whatever reason. Currently, org as a file
> format is pretty much excluded if collaboration is intended with someone
> who does not use Emacs. The natural choice in these cases is Markdown.

This!

>> Oh, there is a very large danger here of getting something that is
>> not compatible with Org-mode any more. I don't think that this would
>> be a good thing. At least the different flavors killed the fun of
>> Markdown for me.
>
> The astonishing thing is that most people manage to get along despite of
> the incompatibilities of the different Markdown flavours. Otherwise
> Markdown would not be such a success. Why is this? What can be learned
> from this for creating org tools outside of Emacs? Actually surveying
> this might be of interest.
>
> Maybe most documents are very simple files. README files for FLOSS
> projects, forum posts, blog posts. For such content the features where
> the Markdown implementations differ are usually not required. It
> suffices to use unstyled text, headings, code blocks, quotes, emphasis.
> That is it basically. org shines on documents where more is required --
> documentation, books, since recently scientific articles. Markdown’s
> common subset is not expressive enough for these documents, whereas for
> simple documents there is not much benefit in trading in Markdown for
> org. Thus, maybe it is more fruitful to try to market org(down) as a
> markup for complex documents, with the added benefit that it does
> incidentally also cover simple documents nicely on par with Markdown.

I agree.  When I type Markdown (and I often do, in a few places),
I mainly use `backticks` (single and triple ones) for code etc.,
_italics_,
- sometimes
- bulleted
- lists,

> quotations (not very often),

and a

# Heading

on rare occasions.  That's pretty much it.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[Karl Voit]

Hi,

* M  ‘quintus’ Gülker <mg@guelker.eu> wrote:
>
> Am Montag, dem 29. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
>> It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
>> the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
>> implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
>> funny if you think about it.
>>
>> Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
>> we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
>> support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).
>
> I think the project has value; better tooling outside of Emacs is
> something org can only profit from in my opinion. One point that has not
> been raised yet are scenarios of collaborative work; I would enjoy it
> quite a bit if I could work on documents together with people who do not
> like Emacs as an editor for whatever reason. Currently, org as a file
> format is pretty much excluded if collaboration is intended with someone
> who does not use Emacs. The natural choice in these cases is Markdown.

I agree.

One of the next things I do have on my list is to try out crdt as
I've learned at EmacsConf21 that it is mature enough to be used in
practice. 

If that holds true, we can start dreaming of having a Etherpad-like
session from our GNU/Emacs while peers are connected to the same
session via some web-based tool/service.

> I agree that the name is kind of odd as it seems as if it is necessary
> to invoke some association to Markdown. Other markup languages also do
> not need that -- Textile, Asciidoc, etc. Perhaps it is best to simply
> ignore the naming issue and focus on the actual work instead. It is far
> more important to get the compatibility levels defined. After that you
> can still reconsider the naming.

The dominant feedback of
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/r4cq3o/orgdown_the_new_name_for_the_syntax_of_orgmode/
was negative comments on the name and nothing else. Even here,
although due to a much more civilized style, the name choice was the
dominant topic and not the idea. I have to take this as a strong
signal here and I'm very close in giving up on Orgdown as a project.

I did underestimate the power of the name choice as I clearly was
impatient because I was looking forward to interesting discussions
on the idea itself like in this sub-thread.

There were two possible generic approaches for me: start from zero
with an open process, involving peers in all choices such as naming,
Orgdown1 syntax elements, ...

While this approach offers maximum community involvement, my fear
was to get into too many long discussions about details before I
could express my vision to anybody in a concise way.

Second approach: define everything myself up to Orgdown7 (as an
example) and publish with a big bang. The downsides here are
obvious.

I chose an in-between approach: defining only a minimal set (name,
common structure/idea/documentation, Orgdown1, providing a
collaborative home on GitLab) and hope for a project community that
will take over (or at least support) from there, discussing syntax
elements for Orgdown2 and taking the project to its next logical
steps.

In hindsight, this decision was wrong.

Quite frankly, I don't have the energy to throw away everything and
start from zero with a different name.

People do not seem to realize what it took to get there - which is
partly understandingly because I had to learn by doing what it takes
to get the idea into a coherent and consistent form. 

Simply switching to a different name is not just search&replace. It
would reset the project almost to its very start again, losing the
go-live effect of previous weekend (whose effect might be
questionable considering the name discussion), its project URL that
is now out there, the motivation video which aims to explain the
motivation to users of Emacs, the EmacsConf21 talk publicity, and it
would require much effort to reach the status where Orgdown is now.

>> Oh, there is a very large danger here of getting something that is
>> not compatible with Org-mode any more. I don't think that this would
>> be a good thing. At least the different flavors killed the fun of
>> Markdown for me.
>
> The astonishing thing is that most people manage to get along despite of
> the incompatibilities of the different Markdown flavours. Otherwise
> Markdown would not be such a success. Why is this? What can be learned
> from this for creating org tools outside of Emacs? Actually surveying
> this might be of interest.

I agree and I have thought about it myself already.

My guess is that most people do not suffer much from different
Markdown flavors because they rarely mix them in their workflows. I
guess most people are using Markdown only in their text editor OR
only in GitHub/GitLab org files OR only within any other
Markdown-tool.

I might be in an unusual situation where I do have to work with
GitHub/GitLab flavored Markdown README files AND with DIY company
solutions that work with pp (the preprocessor) to generate documents
from a specific Markdown flavor AND with reddit Markdown flavour AND
so forth. 

If this holds true, than this might be a weak argument for an
alternative markup instead of Markdown after all.

Bastien told me that he would be interested to see hard numbers on
my assumption that Org-mode syntax is easier to learn and type in
comparison to other LWM. And he is right: some research work in
order to get numbers would be awesome to shed some light on the
forest of assumptions. Maybe somebody in a position to realize such
a case study gets motivated now? ;-)

Does "assuming too much on other people's world because on my own
small world" have a scientific name? I might be in danger of having
this disease? *g*

> Maybe most documents are very simple files. README files for FLOSS
> projects, forum posts, blog posts. For such content the features where
> the Markdown implementations differ are usually not required. 

This sounds also a plausible explanation and is also boosted by
another posting as an answer to yours.

> It suffices to use unstyled text, headings, code blocks, quotes,
> emphasis.  That is it basically. org shines on documents where
> more is required -- documentation, books, since recently
> scientific articles. Markdown’s common subset is not expressive
> enough for these documents, whereas for simple documents there is
> not much benefit in trading in Markdown for org. Thus, maybe it is
> more fruitful to try to market org(down) as a markup for complex
> documents, with the added benefit that it does incidentally also
> cover simple documents nicely on par with Markdown.

Hm. I have to think about this.

If this path is followed, then it might be hard to find target
groups willing to switch away from WYSIWYG tools which is the only
alternative I can think of here. 

I don't think that users of LaTeX/ConTeXt are part of the target
group. They would actually lose a bit of having control, I think.
And Overleaf might be too hard to beat I guess although I personally
don't like to use cloud-based services but meanwhile that's the
opinion of a tiny minority.

However, nice input and thankfully not just about the "horrible
name" for a change. Thank you for that. ;-)

Karl

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:
> * M  ‘quintus’ Gülker <mg@guelker.eu> wrote:
>> Am Montag, dem 29. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
>>> It seems to be the case that the name "Orgdown" is the reason why
>>> the Org-mode community does not support the idea of an
>>> implementation-agnostic definition of the syntax. Which is ... kinda
>>> funny if you think about it.

This does not represent my answer correctly.

I explicitly said that org is implementation-defined, so *full*
compatibility cannot easily be achieved outside Emacs. That does not
prevent partial compatibility.

>>> Well if the project is not working out, at least I made my point and
>>> we continue to have all those misunderstandings and lack of Orgdown
>>> support in 3rd party tools (because Org-mode is way too big).
>>
>> I think the project has value; better tooling outside of Emacs is
>> something org can only profit from in my opinion. One point that has not
>> been raised yet are scenarios of collaborative work; I would enjoy it
>> quite a bit if I could work on documents together with people who do not
>> like Emacs as an editor for whatever reason. Currently, org as a file
>> format is pretty much excluded if collaboration is intended with someone
>> who does not use Emacs. The natural choice in these cases is Markdown.
>
> I agree.
>
> One of the next things I do have on my list is to try out crdt as
> I've learned at EmacsConf21 that it is mature enough to be used in
> practice. 
>
> If that holds true, we can start dreaming of having a Etherpad-like
> session from our GNU/Emacs while peers are connected to the same
> session via some web-based tool/service.

That would be pretty nice. You might also want to look at orgzly[1],
org-js[2], or markup-rocks[3].

[1]: http://www.orgzly.com/help
[2]: https://github.com/mooz/org-js
[3]: https://markup.rocks/

All of these call org-mode syntax simply "org".

> There were two possible generic approaches for me: start from zero
> with an open process, involving peers in all choices such as naming,
> Orgdown1 syntax elements, ...

You can also just take up the already given arguments, form a decision,
and then move forward.

> Simply switching to a different name is not just search&replace. It
> would reset the project almost to its very start again, losing the
> go-live effect of previous weekend (whose effect might be
> questionable considering the name discussion), its project URL that
> is now out there, the motivation video which aims to explain the
> motivation to users of Emacs, the EmacsConf21 talk publicity, and it
> would require much effort to reach the status where Orgdown is now.

Why is that?

From the technical side a simple entry in NEWS „Orgdown now uses the
name Org Syntax as alias“ and a second domain should suffice.

It’s the emotional side that no one but you could solve.

> My guess is that most people do not suffer much from different
> Markdown flavors because they rarely mix them in their workflows. I
> guess most people are using Markdown only in their text editor OR
> only in GitHub/GitLab org files OR only within any other
> Markdown-tool.

Or they just don’t use 90% of markdown features. Titles, quoted, bold,
emphasis, links, inline-source, source-blocks. Which is a big difference
compared to Org mode.

Even with that, source-blocks tend to break between implementations.

>> Maybe most documents are very simple files. README files for FLOSS
>> projects, forum posts, blog posts. For such content the features where
>> the Markdown implementations differ are usually not required. 
>
> This sounds also a plausible explanation and is also boosted by
> another posting as an answer to yours.

And markdown has inline HTML: Anything missing (like tables) is just
exported from org-mode as HTML.

> I don't think that users of LaTeX/ConTeXt are part of the target
> group. They would actually lose a bit of having control, I think.
> And Overleaf might be too hard to beat I guess although I personally
> don't like to use cloud-based services but meanwhile that's the
> opinion of a tiny minority.

Switching from LaTeX to Org-Mode was a very empowering step for me,
because it simpified most documents a lot, enabled quick restructuring,
allowed for easy tracking of TODO-states and using executed inline-code
via babel — and I gained HTML export for free.

It’s not the tool for a single paper to one journal that only has to fit
one format and is never edited after final submission, but for any
larger writing, org-mode is quite a boost in productivity.

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[Eduardo Ochs]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 17:46, Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:
>
> I chose an in-between approach: defining only a minimal set (name,
> common structure/idea/documentation, Orgdown1, providing a
> collaborative home on GitLab) and hope for a project community that
> will take over (or at least support) from there, discussing syntax
> elements for Orgdown2 and taking the project to its next logical
> steps.
>
> In hindsight, this decision was wrong.
>
> Quite frankly, I don't have the energy to throw away everything and
> start from zero with a different name.
>
> People do not seem to realize what it took to get there - which is
> partly understandingly because I had to learn by doing what it takes
> to get the idea into a coherent and consistent form.
>
> Simply switching to a different name is not just search&replace. It
> would reset the project almost to its very start again, losing the
> go-live effect of previous weekend (whose effect might be
> questionable considering the name discussion), its project URL that
> is now out there, the motivation video which aims to explain the
> motivation to users of Emacs, the EmacsConf21 talk publicity, and it
> would require much effort to reach the status where Orgdown is now.


Hi Karl,

I was at the EmacsConf2021, but I was totally exhausted due to other
chores and spoke to very few people there...

I think that your work is VERY important. I am one of the people who
have tried to learn Org lots of times and got stuck the same number of
times, and any initiative that splits the features - either syntactic
or semantics - into layers of different complexity and importance
will help me very much.

My suggestion about the name is: it's your project, changing its name
is not a trivial task, and the people who complained about the name
did not offer help. If I were you would simply put "find a better name
for the project and change its name to it" in my TODO list as a
low-priority task.

  Cheers =),
    Eduardo Ochs
    http://angg.twu.net/#eev
    https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/test/

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Samuel Wales]

if you will forgive one more bikeshed answer, what about this?

- reduced org
- reduced org, version 1

and maybe

- .rorg extension [if and only if needed to guarantee reduction]

as for why you got bikeshed answers, maybe the subject header of this
thread might have been part of it?

idk.

===

as for [other thread], i don't think you are doing this because
reduced org is an interesting idea but:

> "Does "assuming too much on other people's world because on my own small world" have a scientific name?"

"epistemic tresspassing" has been used for something a bit similar.
also i would use the term "drive-by paper" for e.g. making claims
about a disease that the authors do not understand at all but think
they do, wanting to try their ideology, measurement tool, or intuition
regardless so they can get a paper out of it, but that does not apply
here.  more generally are things like fiefdom/chauvanism, ideological
bias, and professional bias, which are different.  maybe there should
be a "small world bias" or an "if you have a hammer everything looks
like a nail bias"?  and a "common belief bias" and "cultural belief
bias"?  and a "my favorite language bias"?  you might also consider
the availability heuristic, saliency bias, epistemic injustice, and
omission bias, but those are different too.

i think it is a good idea to be interested in the possibility of
reduced org as a generic markup language.

On 11/28/21, Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:
> Hi Org-mode community,
>
> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>
> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
>
> - The EmacsConf21 talk: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside
> - Orgdown site: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown (please contribute!)
> - My motivation article: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/
>   - This is the longer version of my 12 minute EmacsConf21 video.
> - My personal copy of the video:
> https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu
>
>
> Just as a sneak preview (not as a replacement for my motivation article):
>
> Orgdown is and will be defined in a set of levels, starting with very
> basic Orgdown1 (or OD1 or O↓1 or ⧬1 - depending on your coolness
> factor of choice :-) )
>
> - OD1 →
> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org
> - OD2 → will be defined in future
> - OD3 → will be defined in future
> - ...
> - OD∞ = Org-mode (by definition)
>
> Any OD-level needs to be compatible with Org-mode as implemented in
> Elisp for GNU/Emacs Org-mode according to https://orgmode.org. Any ODx
> is a sub-set of the syntax elements of ODy (with y>x).
>
> With introducing a new term specific for the syntax, we do get the
> benefit of getting a better way to handle Org-mode support in
> 3rd-party tools such as listed on
> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org
> (please extend!).
>
> Having a well-defined sub-set of Org-mode, I also do think that formal
> definitions of the Org-mode syntax will be easier to develop, starting
> with the very simple OD1 level.
>
> It would be awesome if we start referring to syntax support in
> 3rd-party tools with the corresponding OD levels.
>
> I want to emphasize that the goal of Orgdown is NOT and will never be
> something that is an alternative to our golden standard Org-mode. We
> will try hard not to get into the Markdown situation where you need to
> know the exact flavor of the markup in order to produce text.
>
> So far, the response was great at the conference and I do hope that
> this idea will get a life of its own, developing the standard further,
> bringing this magnificent lightweight markup to the digital world.
> This also eases some pain for users of GNU/Emacs when it comes to
> exchanging text-based data.
>
> Thanks for your support here!
>
>
> --
> Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
> Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/
>
>
>


-- 
The Kafka Pandemic

Please learn what misopathy is.
https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-some-diseases-are-wronged.html

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Samuel Wales]

um, or just "assuming too much bias"?  :]

again i don't think you are really doing these things by just
proposing a bunch of ideas about markup languages.  not everybody
knows all languages and you'll get substantive corrective feedback.

On 11/30/21, Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> wrote:
> if you will forgive one more bikeshed answer, what about this?
>
> - reduced org
> - reduced org, version 1
>
> and maybe
>
> - .rorg extension [if and only if needed to guarantee reduction]
>
> as for why you got bikeshed answers, maybe the subject header of this
> thread might have been part of it?
>
> idk.
>
> ===
>
> as for [other thread], i don't think you are doing this because
> reduced org is an interesting idea but:
>
>> "Does "assuming too much on other people's world because on my own small
>> world" have a scientific name?"
>
> "epistemic tresspassing" has been used for something a bit similar.
> also i would use the term "drive-by paper" for e.g. making claims
> about a disease that the authors do not understand at all but think
> they do, wanting to try their ideology, measurement tool, or intuition
> regardless so they can get a paper out of it, but that does not apply
> here.  more generally are things like fiefdom/chauvanism, ideological
> bias, and professional bias, which are different.  maybe there should
> be a "small world bias" or an "if you have a hammer everything looks
> like a nail bias"?  and a "common belief bias" and "cultural belief
> bias"?  and a "my favorite language bias"?  you might also consider
> the availability heuristic, saliency bias, epistemic injustice, and
> omission bias, but those are different too.
>
> i think it is a good idea to be interested in the possibility of
> reduced org as a generic markup language.
>
> On 11/28/21, Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:
>> Hi Org-mode community,
>>
>> At this year's EmascsConf, I had a 12 minute video where I explain why
>> we do need a different name for the syntax of Org-mode in contrast to
>> the Elisp implementation of GNU/Emacs Org-mode.
>>
>> I would like you to read my rationale and motivate you to use the term
>> "Orgdown" for the syntax and "Orgdown1" for the first (very basic)
>> level of Orgdown syntax elements.
>>
>> - The EmacsConf21 talk: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside
>> - Orgdown site: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown (please
>> contribute!)
>> - My motivation article: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/
>>   - This is the longer version of my 12 minute EmacsConf21 video.
>> - My personal copy of the video:
>> https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu
>>
>>
>> Just as a sneak preview (not as a replacement for my motivation article):
>>
>> Orgdown is and will be defined in a set of levels, starting with very
>> basic Orgdown1 (or OD1 or O↓1 or ⧬1 - depending on your coolness
>> factor of choice :-) )
>>
>> - OD1 →
>> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org
>> - OD2 → will be defined in future
>> - OD3 → will be defined in future
>> - ...
>> - OD∞ = Org-mode (by definition)
>>
>> Any OD-level needs to be compatible with Org-mode as implemented in
>> Elisp for GNU/Emacs Org-mode according to https://orgmode.org. Any ODx
>> is a sub-set of the syntax elements of ODy (with y>x).
>>
>> With introducing a new term specific for the syntax, we do get the
>> benefit of getting a better way to handle Org-mode support in
>> 3rd-party tools such as listed on
>> https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org
>> (please extend!).
>>
>> Having a well-defined sub-set of Org-mode, I also do think that formal
>> definitions of the Org-mode syntax will be easier to develop, starting
>> with the very simple OD1 level.
>>
>> It would be awesome if we start referring to syntax support in
>> 3rd-party tools with the corresponding OD levels.
>>
>> I want to emphasize that the goal of Orgdown is NOT and will never be
>> something that is an alternative to our golden standard Org-mode. We
>> will try hard not to get into the Markdown situation where you need to
>> know the exact flavor of the markup in order to produce text.
>>
>> So far, the response was great at the conference and I do hope that
>> this idea will get a life of its own, developing the standard further,
>> bringing this magnificent lightweight markup to the digital world.
>> This also eases some pain for users of GNU/Emacs when it comes to
>> exchanging text-based data.
>>
>> Thanks for your support here!
>>
>>
>> --
>> Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
>> Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> The Kafka Pandemic
>
> Please learn what misopathy is.
> https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-some-diseases-are-wronged.html
>


-- 
The Kafka Pandemic

Please learn what misopathy is.
https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-some-diseases-are-wronged.html

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[Tom Gillespie]

Karl,
   The exact naming of a thing is nearly always the most contentious
step in trying to promulgate it. In my own field we can easily get all
parties to agree on a definition, but they refuse to budge on a name.
As others have said, I wouldn't worry about kibitizing over the name.

I would however worry about the larger negative reaction. From my
perspective I think the issue is that there are many efforts working
toward a formalized specification for Org syntax and Org mode
functionality, and some of those stakeholders who have invested
significant effort may feel blindsided by a public declaration
announcing Orgdown because they were not consulted and not
made aware that you were working on it.

I appreciate the amount of work that you have put in, I have devoted
hundreds of hours to working on an alternate implementation of org
in Racket that uses a formal ebfn in hopes that others will be able
to use it as a guide and as a way to talk formally about how Org
parsers and implementations should behave.

It would thus be easy for me to say that your approach has put the
cart before the horse, because there are countless nuances in the
specification for Org syntax which must be addressed before any
levels of org compliance can be specified, otherwise the behavior
between levels will be inconsistent.

If I were to say this, it would not be fair to you at all. The ideas
and motivation for Orgdown are vital and important. You have put
in enormous thought and effort, all because you care about Org
and want to see it succeed.

The issue is that any shared specification for Org syntax is
fundamentally about how to coordinate as a community.
The way that Orgdown was presented to the community feels
(to me) like it is being imposed top down or coming from an
individual source, not from an open and visible community
process (the subject of your original email reads as a declaration
in english, and thus can be quite off putting, though I know that
was not the intention).

I personally haven't bothered with promulgation because I think
that we are not technically ready as a community to approach
outreach to other developers in a way that we can succeed.

The good news is that all of this can co-exist if we want it to,
but we need to be clear about our objectives as a community.

To me these objectives are as follows (and I would love
to hear from others about additional or alternate objectives).

1. To never fracture Org syntax so as to avoid the nightmare
of markdown flavors. (This means being able to say clearly
as a community that a parser is out of compliance and that
it is up to the user to fix their files. The ruby org parser used
by Github is a major issue here.)
2. To provide a clear specification for what graceful degradation
looks like when parsing Org syntax if a parser does not support
some portion of that syntax (e.g. should property drawer lines
be excluded or rendered as plain text?).
3. Provide a solid basis on which further formal specification
can be built. (My interests in particular are around providing
consistent semantics for org-babel blocks across languages
so that babel implementations can clearly communicate what
runtime features they support.)

The approach for Orgdown can absolutely meet all three of
these objectives, however in its current form Orgdown1 is not
sufficiently well specified to avoid fracturing the syntax.
This is because Org syntax is extremely complex (even the
elisp implementation of Org mode is internally inconsistent)
and there are edge cases where behavior will diverge if parsing
of even the simplest elements is not fully specified.

There are many ways to remedy this, however they require
a more formal approach. A number of us are working to build
technical foundations for such a formal approach, but I do not
think that any of those projects are ready to be used to
specify discrete levels of Org syntax parsing compliance.

If I may, I would suggest that an Orgdown0 is something that
could be well specified, but it would avoid parsing of markup
altogether and only deal with the major element types. Parsing
paragraphs and all the org objects is not something that can
be done piecemeal. There are too many interactions between
different parts of the syntax, and in some cases the existing
specification desperately needs to be revisited due to the
complexity that it induces or because it is underspecified.
Of course this would make Orgdown0 fairly useless as a
replacement for markdown, but at least it would be a start.

Best,
Tom

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[Tim Cross]

Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> writes:

> Karl,
>    The exact naming of a thing is nearly always the most contentious
> step in trying to promulgate it. In my own field we can easily get all
> parties to agree on a definition, but they refuse to budge on a name.
> As others have said, I wouldn't worry about kibitizing over the name.
>
> I would however worry about the larger negative reaction. From my
> perspective I think the issue is that there are many efforts working
> toward a formalized specification for Org syntax and Org mode
> functionality, and some of those stakeholders who have invested
> significant effort may feel blindsided by a public declaration
> announcing Orgdown because they were not consulted and not
> made aware that you were working on it.
>
> I appreciate the amount of work that you have put in, I have devoted
> hundreds of hours to working on an alternate implementation of org
> in Racket that uses a formal ebfn in hopes that others will be able
> to use it as a guide and as a way to talk formally about how Org
> parsers and implementations should behave.
>
> It would thus be easy for me to say that your approach has put the
> cart before the horse, because there are countless nuances in the
> specification for Org syntax which must be addressed before any
> levels of org compliance can be specified, otherwise the behavior
> between levels will be inconsistent.
>
> If I were to say this, it would not be fair to you at all. The ideas
> and motivation for Orgdown are vital and important. You have put
> in enormous thought and effort, all because you care about Org
> and want to see it succeed.
>
> The issue is that any shared specification for Org syntax is
> fundamentally about how to coordinate as a community.
> The way that Orgdown was presented to the community feels
> (to me) like it is being imposed top down or coming from an
> individual source, not from an open and visible community
> process (the subject of your original email reads as a declaration
> in english, and thus can be quite off putting, though I know that
> was not the intention).
>
> I personally haven't bothered with promulgation because I think
> that we are not technically ready as a community to approach
> outreach to other developers in a way that we can succeed.
>
> The good news is that all of this can co-exist if we want it to,
> but we need to be clear about our objectives as a community.
>
> To me these objectives are as follows (and I would love
> to hear from others about additional or alternate objectives).
>
> 1. To never fracture Org syntax so as to avoid the nightmare
> of markdown flavors. (This means being able to say clearly
> as a community that a parser is out of compliance and that
> it is up to the user to fix their files. The ruby org parser used
> by Github is a major issue here.)
> 2. To provide a clear specification for what graceful degradation
> looks like when parsing Org syntax if a parser does not support
> some portion of that syntax (e.g. should property drawer lines
> be excluded or rendered as plain text?).
> 3. Provide a solid basis on which further formal specification
> can be built. (My interests in particular are around providing
> consistent semantics for org-babel blocks across languages
> so that babel implementations can clearly communicate what
> runtime features they support.)
>
> The approach for Orgdown can absolutely meet all three of
> these objectives, however in its current form Orgdown1 is not
> sufficiently well specified to avoid fracturing the syntax.
> This is because Org syntax is extremely complex (even the
> elisp implementation of Org mode is internally inconsistent)
> and there are edge cases where behavior will diverge if parsing
> of even the simplest elements is not fully specified.
>
> There are many ways to remedy this, however they require
> a more formal approach. A number of us are working to build
> technical foundations for such a formal approach, but I do not
> think that any of those projects are ready to be used to
> specify discrete levels of Org syntax parsing compliance.
>
> If I may, I would suggest that an Orgdown0 is something that
> could be well specified, but it would avoid parsing of markup
> altogether and only deal with the major element types. Parsing
> paragraphs and all the org objects is not something that can
> be done piecemeal. There are too many interactions between
> different parts of the syntax, and in some cases the existing
> specification desperately needs to be revisited due to the
> complexity that it induces or because it is underspecified.
> Of course this would make Orgdown0 fairly useless as a
> replacement for markdown, but at least it would be a start.
>

Hi Tom,

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. I also feel it is
unfortunate that Karl received so much negative focus on the name and
not on the underlying idea - but I'm not surprised. As you say, naming
is extremely hard and getting consensus is even harder. In hind-sight it
would probably have been better to separate the two things - finding a
name and defining a way to specify compliance. however, I also agree
that I'm not sure we are yet ready to specify compliance because we need
more formalism regarding what we are dealing with.

One of the most important and I think potentially positive threads
recently has been that of Ibor's regarding using the element parser to
drive fontification and formatting. Inconsistencies between what an org
file looks like and how it is parsed, exported etc seem to be the source
for considerable confusion and bugs. Having the 'engine' be based around
an element parser which all other components leverages from would at
least provide increased consistency. Things will be easier to manage,
fix and extend if they are consistent. I also think this is the key to
being able to improve system performance and could provide a useful
'validator' which could be used by 3rd party tools to verify their
implementations. It would also make extending org-mode easier. I also
think less reliance on regular expressions scattered across different
layers will make maintenance much easier. While regular expressions can
be very powerful, they are hard to get right, maintain and avoid
performance problems. I also find regexp in elisp one of the more
difficult regexp formats/engines to work with. 

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Tom Gillespie writes:

> Karl,
>    The exact naming of a thing is nearly always the most contentious
> step in trying to promulgate it. In my own field we can easily get all
> parties to agree on a definition, but they refuse to budge on a name.
> As others have said, I wouldn't worry about kibitizing over the name.
>
> I would however worry about the larger negative reaction. From my
> perspective I think the issue is that there are many efforts working
> toward a formalized specification for Org syntax and Org mode
> functionality, and some of those stakeholders who have invested
> significant effort may feel blindsided by a public declaration
> announcing Orgdown because they were not consulted and not
> made aware that you were working on it.
>
> I appreciate the amount of work that you have put in, I have devoted
> hundreds of hours to working on an alternate implementation of org
> in Racket that uses a formal ebfn in hopes that others will be able
> to use it as a guide and as a way to talk formally about how Org
> parsers and implementations should behave.
>
> It would thus be easy for me to say that your approach has put the
> cart before the horse, because there are countless nuances in the
> specification for Org syntax which must be addressed before any
> levels of org compliance can be specified, otherwise the behavior
> between levels will be inconsistent.
>
> If I were to say this, it would not be fair to you at all. The ideas
> and motivation for Orgdown are vital and important. You have put
> in enormous thought and effort, all because you care about Org
> and want to see it succeed.
>
> The issue is that any shared specification for Org syntax is
> fundamentally about how to coordinate as a community.
> The way that Orgdown was presented to the community feels
> (to me) like it is being imposed top down or coming from an
> individual source, not from an open and visible community
> process (the subject of your original email reads as a declaration
> in english, and thus can be quite off putting, though I know that
> was not the intention).
>
> I personally haven't bothered with promulgation because I think
> that we are not technically ready as a community to approach
> outreach to other developers in a way that we can succeed.
>
> The good news is that all of this can co-exist if we want it to,
> but we need to be clear about our objectives as a community.
>
> To me these objectives are as follows (and I would love
> to hear from others about additional or alternate objectives).
>
> 1. To never fracture Org syntax so as to avoid the nightmare
> of markdown flavors. (This means being able to say clearly
> as a community that a parser is out of compliance and that
> it is up to the user to fix their files. The ruby org parser used
> by Github is a major issue here.)
> 2. To provide a clear specification for what graceful degradation
> looks like when parsing Org syntax if a parser does not support
> some portion of that syntax (e.g. should property drawer lines
> be excluded or rendered as plain text?).
> 3. Provide a solid basis on which further formal specification
> can be built. (My interests in particular are around providing
> consistent semantics for org-babel blocks across languages
> so that babel implementations can clearly communicate what
> runtime features they support.)
>
> The approach for Orgdown can absolutely meet all three of
> these objectives, however in its current form Orgdown1 is not
> sufficiently well specified to avoid fracturing the syntax.
> This is because Org syntax is extremely complex (even the
> elisp implementation of Org mode is internally inconsistent)
> and there are edge cases where behavior will diverge if parsing
> of even the simplest elements is not fully specified.
>
> There are many ways to remedy this, however they require
> a more formal approach. A number of us are working to build
> technical foundations for such a formal approach, but I do not
> think that any of those projects are ready to be used to
> specify discrete levels of Org syntax parsing compliance.
>
> If I may, I would suggest that an Orgdown0 is something that
> could be well specified, but it would avoid parsing of markup
> altogether and only deal with the major element types. Parsing
> paragraphs and all the org objects is not something that can
> be done piecemeal. There are too many interactions between
> different parts of the syntax, and in some cases the existing
> specification desperately needs to be revisited due to the
> complexity that it induces or because it is underspecified.
> Of course this would make Orgdown0 fairly useless as a
> replacement for markdown, but at least it would be a start.

Everything you comment here seems very sensible to me.

Anyway I have to say that, in my case, the name 'orgdown' is not the
issue, but the underlying idea under the naming, whatever the name is.
IMHO, reduce Org to a markup language or, to put it somewhat
metaphorically, distill Org into a workable markup language outside Org
itself and GNU Emacs, is a task that seems impossible to me. Or at least
(for not being so radical), quite difficult. And, on the other hand,
what would be the point of doing that? I think Org and Markdown are the
antipodes, they are like water and oil, although they share certain
purposes. Just to make my current opinion clear.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis (was: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode)

[M. ‘quintus’ Gülker]

Am Dienstag, dem 30. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
> One of the next things I do have on my list is to try out crdt as
> I've learned at EmacsConf21 that it is mature enough to be used in
> practice. 
>
> If that holds true, we can start dreaming of having a Etherpad-like
> session from our GNU/Emacs while peers are connected to the same
> session via some web-based tool/service.

I never heard of crdt, but distributed editing sounds useful. There is
Git, of course, but unless you are a programmer, using Git is pretty
much arcane. I was not yet successful to explain Git to MS Word users,
who are actually happy with the change tracking tooling Word has built
in. Though that might be more of a topic for the emacs-humanities
mailing list rather than this list.

> The dominant feedback of
> https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/r4cq3o/orgdown_the_new_name_for_the_syntax_of_orgmode/
> was negative comments on the name and nothing else. Even here,
> although due to a much more civilized style, the name choice was the
> dominant topic and not the idea. I have to take this as a strong
> signal here and I'm very close in giving up on Orgdown as a project.

The civility of this list is one of the reasons why I like to read it. I
find it incredible how people behave on these so-called social media.
That alone indicates that something is wrong with them.

You should not give up on the project. As I have learned from reading
this thread, there appear to be people who already work on formalising
org’s grammar. You ought to talk to them and see if it is possible to
unite efforts. Tom Gillespie in a message further down this thread has
mentioned that formalising org is a huge effort. I agree with that, but
your novel concept of “compatibility levels” is something I could see as
an intermediate step. It could help to accelerate the formalising
efforts and non-Emacs tools could start targetting them quickly. But I
might be wrong on seeing this as an advantage; I have never written
formal specifications.

It is certainly your success to have generated this discussion thread; I
was not aware of any similar formalisation efforts. I hope that if
nothing else, it contributes to this efforts.

> People do not seem to realize what it took to get there - which is
> partly understandingly because I had to learn by doing what it takes
> to get the idea into a coherent and consistent form.

I do not think anybody wanted to feel you bad. Most are trying to
provide constructive criticism to you in order to improve your
suggestions. There are very few people who are fundamentally opposed to
your effort, because they firmly believe there can be no org outside of
Emacs. My suggestion is to ignore them and continue on your path,
because your idea has no impact on them and they can by definition not
help you to improve it.

Naming is one of the hard things in Computer Science. Just leave the
naming issue aside and work with the people here to formalise the
compatibility levels.

> Bastien told me that he would be interested to see hard numbers on
> my assumption that Org-mode syntax is easier to learn and type in
> comparison to other LWM. And he is right: some research work in
> order to get numbers would be awesome to shed some light on the
> forest of assumptions. Maybe somebody in a position to realize such
> a case study gets motivated now? ;-)

Entirely subjectively, typing:

    #+begin_src python
    #+end_src

manually without help of the editor feels more difficult than typing:

    ~~~~ python
    ~~~~

Any non-Emacs org(down) editor should ensure to ease typing that.

For the purposes of refining your proposal conducting the “case study”
simply by inquiry on this mailing list might suffice. Many people around
here know Markdown and I guess there is no value in applying rigorous
scientific standards here.

> Does "assuming too much on other people's world because on my own
> small world" have a scientific name? I might be in danger of having
> this disease? *g*

I have fallen to this earlier. My computer is full of things to solve
problems many people simply do not even have. I need citation software
that interacts with my Biblatex files, for instance. Since my e.g. my
work collegues do not even use Biblatex, they do not have such a need.
Typing citations out by hand is rather popular in my area; if it is not
done manually, people appear to use Citavi. I certainly know not a
single person in my area who uses Biblatex. Another example is that I
have a rather longish ~/.xinitrc file for automatic starting of several
applications, like the PulseAudio sound server. Somehow, this is a
problem others appearently do not have; it exists because I inflict to
myself the pain of using Linux with i3 and Emacs, which I perceive as
productive rather than painful, not to mention the privacy advantages.
There was a time when I tried to convince people from my setup as
the correct one for everyone, but today I know it is not.

As an aside, the fact that many people write out citations manually has
given rise to many of the quirks of German judicial citation styling,
which are quite hard to describe in rule form. As one of the most
astonishing examples, some people prefer to mark the loss or gain of
name particles by bracketing the name particle when citing that person.
This is impossible to cover in any form of automatic citation style.
Luckily, I am not aware of any journal enforcing this rule.

> Hm. I have to think about this.
>
> If this path is followed, then it might be hard to find target
> groups willing to switch away from WYSIWYG tools which is the only
> alternative I can think of here.
>
> I don't think that users of LaTeX/ConTeXt are part of the target
> group. They would actually lose a bit of having control, I think.

I take this note as an opportunity to talk about how I could see Orgdown
to be used. I certainly cannot speak for other fields of science than
the one I am involved in (alas, some even dispute that the Law
discipline can be a science, but we do have actual journals), but you
can take it as a piece of input in itself. Maybe others want to add to
it. So, in the field of German Law 99% of the people use MS Word to
write their articles, that is, WYSIWYG software. A significant amount of
the people I talked to have some fair criticisms of MS Word, like:

- it can get incredibly slow on large documents, especially if change
  tracking is enabled
- it is sending data to Microsoft all the time, and Microsoft is trying
  to nudge people into the 365 services
- compatibility problems when people use different versions of MS Word

These are people who would gladly use a snappy, fast, and stable
authoring tool for scientific articles, but do not see learning Emacs as
an investment that would pay off. They rightfully think: journals demand
DOCX files anyway, so why bother? Specifically, the very idea of dealing
with source code is alien to them. It is something “what programmers
do”. If I could point these people to a tool that fixes these points and
uses org markup, it would enable me to collaborate with them without
using MS Word, instead using org markup. The org syntax itself is not
problematic I suppose. For simply writing documents, it is easily
learned. Far easier than LaTeX.

Whether the tool is Free Software or not is not something that would
matter in this context, though Free Software would of course be even
better. Currently, the only option for this I am aware of is using
Markdown with pandoc’s citation system. Now, a MS Word user will never
use a commandline tool, so this option rules out itself. This is the
space into which I would like to see orgdown-based tools enter. With
some compatibility levels clearly defined, I imagine that developing
such tools becomes significantly easier and avoids the problem of
different incompatible flavours right from the start.

I miss, for the purpose of recommendation, an easily learned GUI tool
for editing a scientific markup which is also well supported by Emacs.
Org since recently officially supports citations, so it makes the ideal
candidate. So this is where I come from, rather than trying to convince
people to write their repository READMEs in Org(down) rather than
Markdown.

Someone in this thread noticed that Org is useful even to experienced
LaTeX users and I would shamelessly add myself in here. Specifically
since citations have become available, I have entered a new world. Due
to the quirks of German judicial citing, I previously needed to write
custom Biblatex styles. Writing CSL files is much easier, and for the
text-centric field of German Law science I do not need much of LaTeX’s
flexibility. Having it available within org is an added bonus. Still, I
agree that you should not consider LaTeX users as a target group; they
will come themselves when needed. But there is a significant amount of
people who write complex documents not in LaTeX (in my case, because
journals in my field of research demand DOCX), even though these people
are most likely not to be found within the natural sciences. You should
advertise your project on the emacs-humanities mailing list as well, it
might yield some more input specific to this group of people.

> And Overleaf might be too hard to beat I guess although I personally
> don't like to use cloud-based services but meanwhile that's the
> opinion of a tiny minority.

> However, nice input and thankfully not just about the "horrible
> name" for a change. Thank you for that. ;-)

I enjoy this discussion and am curious about how it continues.

  -quintus

-- 
Dipl.-Jur. M. Gülker | https://mg.guelker.eu | PGP: Siehe Webseite
Passau, Deutschland  | kontakt@guelker.eu    | O<

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[Karl Voit]

Hi,

I've summarized my current state of mind about the whole Orgdown
fiasco into a blog article:
https://karl-voit.at/2021/12/02/Orgdown-feedback/

Don't worry, I tried to analyze my own faults as well so that others
might be able to learn from this unfortunate situation.

-- 
get mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML into Org-mode:
       > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <
Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[Tim Cross]

Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I've summarized my current state of mind about the whole Orgdown
> fiasco into a blog article:
> https://karl-voit.at/2021/12/02/Orgdown-feedback/
>
> Don't worry, I tried to analyze my own faults as well so that others
> might be able to learn from this unfortunate situation.


Hi Karl,

thanks for writing up your experiences. I'm not surprised about the
reaction you got from reddit. I gave up on reddit some time back due to
the toxic nature of too many threads. I don't know why it is so often
toxic, but it really isn't worth the hassle.

Starting up a project is difficult. I have an open source JS library
which has turned out to be far more popular than I expected (averages
over 150k downloads each week). I'm not sure I was ready for the
commitment maintaining such a project involves - especially the long
term nature of it. At times, I ahve had problems with rather 'entitled'
users who demand ridiculous things from a free bit of software and who
can become extremely rude and somewhat nasty when I don't do what they
want. I've learnt to just ignore them.

The best advice I can give is to suggest you just put the whole thing on
the back burner for a month or so and then come back to it. During that
time, other comments are bound to come through and I find the later
comments are often far more considered and less emotional than initial
responses. Stepping back gives the subconscious part of your brain time
to process everything and will likely provide additional clarity once it
has had time to percolate. 

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[George Mauer]

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Thank you for writing all this down Karl. Thank you for your efforts and I
truly am sorry for everything you've been put through emotionally. I know
very well how a few particularly nasty comments can sap your energy as the
brain cycles on them over and over.

I hope you come out of this the stronger and so does the project

On Wed, Dec 1, 2021, 17:44 Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've summarized my current state of mind about the whole Orgdown
> fiasco into a blog article:
> https://karl-voit.at/2021/12/02/Orgdown-feedback/
>
> Don't worry, I tried to analyze my own faults as well so that others
> might be able to learn from this unfortunate situation.
>
> --
> get mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML into Org-mode:
>        > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <
> Personal Information Management > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/pim/
> Emacs-related > http://Karl-Voit.at/tags/emacs/
>
>
>

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Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[Eric S Fraga]

On Wednesday,  1 Dec 2021 at 22:17, M. ‘quintus’ Gülker wrote:
> There is Git, of course, but unless you are a programmer, using Git is
> pretty much arcane. I was not yet successful to explain Git to MS Word
> users, who are actually happy with the change tracking tooling Word
> has built in. Though that might be more of a topic for the
> emacs-humanities mailing list rather than this list.

It's more widespread than that; in engineering, almost all (but not
all!) of my colleagues do the same and it's difficult to get them to
listen about the advantages of proper version control.

> Am Dienstag, dem 30. November 2021 schrieb Karl Voit:
>> People do not seem to realize what it took to get there - which is
>> partly understandingly because I had to learn by doing what it takes
>> to get the idea into a coherent and consistent form.

Karl, I tweeted soon after your presentation at EmacsConf 2021 that
although my use of org relies on much more than just the simple markup
(I use babel and citations extensively), the idea of a standard for the
markup was welcome.  Do not give up.  Okay, the name might be
contentious... ;-)

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, with org release_9.5.1-231-g6766c4 in Emacs 29.0.50
: Latest paper written in org: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05096

Re: Orgdown: negative feedback & attempt of a root-cause analysis

[Greg Minshall]

Karl,

thanks for all of this, and for writing and posting your blog entry
(words of caution for many).

my thoughts on your project are something like this:

- i think non-emacs tools to deal with org mode files is a Good Thing.

- for me, the main motivation is to allow *me* to share an org mode
  file with someone -- say via a git repo -- and have them be able to do
  something reasonable, if restricted, with it -- extract the code,
  query subtrees or tables, etc. -- without recourse to emacs.

- i think collaborative editing with non-emacs users should be not be a
  goal of *this* endeavor.

- for me, your main invention, and the place (non pro-versus-con)
  discussion should focus, is on your levels: what's at level 1, at what
  level is org-mode itself, etc.  there are some tricky things here
  (e.g., for tables, what to do with hlines, with column width
  specifications, at the various "conformance levels"?)

- and, sigh, i prefer some other name; like "org mode syntax (level 0)".
  maybe it will acronymize into omsl0 (gasp!).  who knows.  i do think
  "orgdown" was a clever choice, but i'm not a fan.

cheers, Greg

Re: "Orgdown", the new name for the syntax of Org-mode

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Nov 29, 2021, at 8:24, Jean-Christophe Helary <lists@traduction-libre.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 29, 2021, at 7:57, Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> PS Another brainstormed name: Orgsyn?
> 
> Org Agnostic Syntax Modules → OrgASM

I understand that the issue is quite moot now (and I'm sorry for my silly proposal), but I just found out about "CommonMark" and I thought that if org syntax *had* to borrow from a markdown-esque name, then CommonOrg would perfectly fit the endeavor.

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/