Re: Interaction of org-mode and Muse (was: Adapting org-mode to my needs)

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Hi Michael,

On Apr 26, 2006, at 22:16, Michael Olson wrote:
>
> On that note, in a couple of weeks (once finals and the next Muse
> release are done), I'm going to take a look at org-mode and try to
> figure out different ways that Muse and org-mode can interact, since
> this is something that people on the Muse mailing list have requested
> in the past.  Especially since Muse will probably be entering Emacs
> once Emacs22 is released.

Besides the obvious interaction, using the Muse engine to produce
other export formats, can you think of more ways to interact?

> One of the plans for the next release of Muse + 1 (3.04) is to support
> publishing documents that use other markup syntaxes, such as Markdown
> and reSt.  Perhaps org-mode syntax could be supported as well.

I have actually been thinking about an org-to-muse converter as a 
possibility for easy expansion to many more export formats.  So I have 
a number of ideas about what would be needed and where the difficulties 
lie.  A short appetizer:

- Headline detection should be trivial, however
- Org-mode uses (at least: can use) many more levels than the 4
   available in Muse now.  The Org-mode exporters just switch to
   itemized lists at some headline level.
- Org-mode allows plain lists (itemize, bullet, numbered) of
   arbitrary depth and uses indentation to see the end of items.
   Muse, if I remember correctly, has one level of lists and is
   therefore very relaxed about indentation in lists
- Apart from plain lists, indentation is not syntactically significant
   in Org-mode, it is more visual sugar to make outline easily readable.
   Muse uses indentation for syntax, to quote text, for example.
- Links are similar, but not identical.
- Org-mode table lines also start with "|".  Table headlines are
   implicit, before the first horizontal line in the table.  No
   footer lines.
- etc.....

It can be done, but it is not trivial.

- Carsten