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?

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