Re: Differences between Org-Mode and Hyperbole

[Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>]

On Wednesday, 29 Jun 2016 at 10:34, Richard Stallman wrote:
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>
> Because the various subfeatures of Org mode were designed inside Org mode,
> they turn Org mode into a separate editor within Emacs.
>
>   > Indeed.  Pragmatic approach.  It may be lacking in design, although much
>   > has been rewritten over the years, more recently by Nicolas, but it
>   > works and works very well.
>
> It must be good to use, to have so many users.  But that's a different
> issue.  These submodes should be designed so that they individually
> fit into Emacs.

I think there is some basic misunderstanding here.

One way to look at org mode is as an enhanced text-mode.  The
enhancements are that org will look for special markup in the text to
provide extra capabilities.  If there is no markup, it is essentially
text mode and does not get in the way.  The advantage is that if you
start using some of the markup, akin to outline-mode, you can start
making use of the rather extensive features.  But you don't have to.

For the features above and beyond text mode, you can start slowly,
e.g. just using it as an outliner that works much better than outline
mode.  You can then start adding project management aspects, if you
wish, through simple keywords on outline headings.  Or you can start
using lists (numbered, unnumbered, boxed).

If you want to export for pretty printing, you can export even simple
text that has no markup.

If you want literate programming, not only is this just plain text
markup, you have access to the programming languages' own modes and
fontification.

>   > But it is the structure that provides the basis for those facilities?
>
> Since I don't know Org mode, I don't know what you mean by this
> statement.  "The basis" has various possible meanings and I can't tell
> what you mean.

Simply that if markup is there, org can use it.  If there is no markup,
the text is just text.  Nothing more.  Org mode is then just text mode.

> The reason I don't know Org mode is that I'd have to start by learning
> basic Org mode, which I am not interested in, before I see what its
> specific features are.  At that point, I gave up.

Well, basic org mode is just text mode so learning it is a no-op.  My
default mode now for text files is org mode because it does not get in
the way at all even if you do not wish to use any of the features.

However, as soon as you want to try some of the features out, they are
extras that do not stop you from working normally.  Adding "TODO" to a
headline automatically gives you task management.  Obviously, this being
emacs, there are many customisations and key bindings you can use (or
change) but you can simply type text and all features become available.

> Indeed, if you learned two of them, you'd see a similarity, and that
> similarity might be called "Orgmode".  Nothing wrong with that.
> It would avoid the problem that Org mode has now.

But org mode is not really about modes; it is about markup in a text
file.  That's what makes it powerful.  If need be, you can edit your org
files in text mode, or even fundamental mode.  Obviously, to make use of
the features the markup supports, you have to invoke the various org
functions.

In terms of software design, the key problems (many or most of which
have been addressed) were related to regexps and fontification for large
documents.  The structure that org expects (but does not require) to
support some of the more fancy issues has been cleaned up to improve
scalability.

Finally, in many ways, org exemplifies what is special about emacs:
being able to work with simple text files but work the way I want
through customisation and extension via elisp.  

-- 
Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D)