Re: Differences between Org-Mode and Hyperbole

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > 1. Document structure and export. The org document structure is already
  >    pretty darn simple, and export "just works". You need some kind of
  >    markup and structure before you can export, and I don't see how Org
  >    could get any simpler, or easier to use.

Maybe you're right.  I don't see anything bad about having such a structured
editing mode.

  > 2. The spreadsheet. Apparently table.el was either too complicated or
  >    too limiting to be easily used. Probably what should have happened
  >    here is that table.el should have been improved. There's no intrinsic
  >    reason why the spreadsheet aspect of Org needs to rely on Org's
  >    markup, or its major mode.

This could be an instance of the problem I mean.  If the spreadsheet
were a separate facility from Org mode, so that you could use either
one without the other, that doesn't mean they could not work together
well also.

				  (Though then you start getting into
  >    something like multiple major modes.)

Indeed, people are working gradually on support for having multiple
major modes in one buffer.

  > 3. Babel. I don't use this, but it's obviously a really, really powerful
  >    feature that users cannot find elsewhere. In a sense it *is* multiple
  >    major modes, done in a very regimented and bounded way. Again, no
  >    real reason why it needs to be part of Org structure or markup. But
  >    it would need to be part of *some* markup -- it wouldn't be possible
  >    without structure. Right now, that structure is Org mode.

What is Babel?

I'm not against having various other things use the markup of Org format
when they need such a format.

  > 4. The agenda. Similar to the spreadsheet and table.el, I think the
  >    agenda came about because diary.el wasn't doing the trick (I don't
  >    know the history, maybe someone else will chime in). So again, it's a
  >    re-working of an existing functionality. The agenda itself is a
  >    special mode, and there's no reason at all why it needs to be tied to
  >    Org mode document structure.

I've never been able to come up with a concept that includes both an agenda
and the other features of Org mode.

  > So one observation is, Org got where it is by taking some existing Emacs
  > libraries, making them easier to use, and allowing them all to coexist
  > in a single document.

But it didn't make those things easier to use.  It replaced them --
but not each one by one.  Rather, it replaced all of them with one
complex combined thing.  That's what I see as a problem.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.