Re: [ELPA] New package: SachaC-news

[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. ]]]

  >   Indeed, Org's own web site uses the 
  > slogan, "Your life in plain text."

The presence of that statement in a web site means someone said so.
To what extent it is true is another question.  It might be entirely
true, or partly true, or an exaggeration.  It could appear true if you
stretch the meaning somewhat.

  > What is "plain text"?  Is the following block "plain text"?

  >    To-do list:

  >    - Walk dog
  >    - Feed cat
  >    - Reply to email

I would call that an example of plain text with intuitive informal
markup.  You've stated it is also an example of Org format.  Ok.

But Org format is not the same thing as plain text with intuitive
informal markup.  They overlap, but they are not the same.

In intuitive informal markup, you can represent a bulleted list in
many ways.  Using a single hypheh for the bullet is not the only way.
It could be just space, "--", "---", "*", "#", ".", and other things.
(What I normally use is askerisk.)

In Org format, I suppose those have different meanings and are
not equivalent.  Does Org treat all of them as bulleted lists?
I don't use Org mode, so I don't know.  Can someone confirm?

ISTR that, when I read the Org documentation, I saw constructs that
were not so intuitive.  Perhaps you are citing the subset that is most
intuitive, and other constructs are less so -- but I am not sure.

The difference between Org format and intuitive informal markup goes
the other way, too.  You can't write intuitive informal markup and
assune the result will be valid Org format and mean the same thing.

There is room in Emacs for Org format to be used.  There is also room
for intuitive informal markup.  There should also be room for another
markup format which would have specified definitions (as Org does) but
a lot more constructs, so that it can represent whatever Texinfo can.

Therefore, other Emacs fearures should not assume that text is written
in Org mode, unless the user asks for that.





-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)