Re: want a file format easily edited and read by emacs that allows (multiple) pictures to be included

[Rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, December 6, 2017 at 3:34:05 PM UTC+5:30, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> On the contrary it seems to be an
> amazing project at a very high skill level.
> So it is a matter of style, rather.

Progress!¡!

> That sounds like an IDE to me…

Dunno where you get this ‘IDE’ notion from.
I would guess that org mode is the fastest growing part of the emacs-ecosystem
And I doubt whether any of its tens of thousands of users would call it an IDE!

What is org?? My take…

1. Both conceptually and historically org is just outline mode with better key-bindings.  IOW its v v text-y

2. Once the neatness and elegance of pure text with folding and structure-
editing caught on all sorts of stuff started getting added — tags, tables, 
TODOs, timestamps, exports, literate programming etc etc — all in pure text.

Brings me to a very central idea of computer science…

3. Universality (aka universal Turing machine etc)
Text is text whether Newton uses it to write Principia, Tolstoy to write
War&Peace; lovers write love-letters and judges write death-warrants — all text.
But unlike the universality of TMs and von Neumann machines the universality of
org is *data-universality*… which makes org a close analogue and even isomorph of…

4. Lisp!
Lisp as a programming language is of minor significance (org is written in ELisp)
Lisp as a universal data format (like XML) is a much bigger idea
So in the same way that an S-exp is a structure that
- can be a simple shopping list
- a more complex data list (think csv file)
- the most complex of all ­— a Lisp program

all hinging on the super-simple idea of uniform recursive nesting,
in a like manner org nests pure text (like lisp atoms) into recursive 
heading structure