> Here is what the experience can look like:
>
> - Upgrading Emacs or Org (hurray!!)
> - Trying to hit <s as usual one month after the upgrade
> - Thinking your stupid
[...]
I have to admit that Bastien's list describes my experience almost perfectly. It look me a long time to figure out something that in the end seemed very simple. At the time I wasn't familiar with the NEWS file and it didn't come up in any of my online searches. It also didn't help that site still documented the old behavior (and apparently still does https://orgmode.org/manual/Easy-templates.html).
After reading Nicolas' points, I see the argument for moving people away from org-tempo, actually I'm very excited to start using yasnippet. I've been putting off incorporating it into my workflow for a while but this thread has finally convinced me to start.
However, I do think the transition could be made a lot smoother for new users. The biggest step would be updating the easy-templates page to let users know they now need to use org-tempo and should consider alternatives such as yasnippet for more functionality.
Regards,
Kevin
Hello,
Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:
> Here is what the experience can look like:
>
> - Upgrading Emacs or Org (hurray!!)
> - Trying to hit <s as usual one month after the upgrade
> - Thinking your stupid
[...]
I have an issue with this argument: it can be opposed to virtually any
backward-incompatible change we make. There are actually 10 such changes
in Org 9.2. Would it makes sense to remove them because some users,
unfortunately, will encounter a workflow break upon updating Org?
I totally agree this is an issue, yet, we have to move forward. We can
make UX consistent across releases, but we cannot guarantee 100%
compatibility at each step. As a data point, I don't know any software
that preserves the exact same UX after each release -- Firefox, Gnome,
I'm looking at you! There are unavoidable gotchas. This just means Org
is still vivid.
> In fact, I'm inclined to ask the real question: if org-tempo is on by
> default, who will have good reasons to turn it off and why?
This is one problem: only a few will have a reason (good or bad, who
cares?) to turn it off, e.g., because expansion gets in the way with
other templating systems. Possibly even fewer will actually turn it off.
As a consequence, the vast majority of users will keep using "<s" -- and
put maintenance burden on us -- instead of trying, and improving
something else. Inertia...
I already stated the following, sorry for re-iterating. Marking a region
and wrapping it in some environment is a basic operation Org is expected
to provide. We already did with `org-emphasize'. Implementing
programmable templates, even though we are re-using what Emacs ships
with, is another story.
Org Tempo is a nice tool. I'm not questioning this. It is also almost
100% compatible with previous feature. Yet, it competes with external
Emacs libraries, as capable as itself. Since it is not a feature
mandatory in Org, why forcing it onto the users? I'm inclined to think
we shouldn't.
Regards,
--
Nicolas Goaziou 0x80A93738