Re: [RFC] Org Minor Mode?

[Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com>]

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> writes:

Hi Richard,

> Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> What do you think - is there any chance that Org-mode switches from
>>>> static hardcoded regexp strings (all over the place) to dynamic
>>>> regexps calculated at runtime (using libraries like drx.el or rx.el)?
>>>
>>> I hope not. The syntax should stabilize, not drift away.
>>
>> Agreed.  Maybe there are some hardcoded regexps that we can factor
>> out, but dynamically building those fundamental regexp is a deadend.
>
> I agree with what Nicolas and Bastien have said, but I wanted to say
> that I think there is an interesting idea in Thorsten's post that
> shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
>
> Org provides a set of UI concepts (tree-like structure, visibility
> cycling, tree filtering, task state tracking, building an agenda from
> multiple sources, ...)  that map nicely onto a lot of other situations,
> and would be really handy to have access to even when the syntax of the
> underlying file is incompatible with Org's syntax.
>
> There are two ways to think about Org syntax, which I think should be
> distinguished here.  One is as the grammar of a .org file: basically, a
> set of rules that allow a sequence of characters to be parsed into an
> AST.  The other way to think about Org syntax is the way Lisp
> programmers sometimes talk about syntax: as the AST itself, the
> collection of Lisp data types and their interrelationships that define a
> valid Org document.
>
> If Org were to evolve to the point where the UI concepts were
> implemented purely as transformations on an AST -- on Org syntax in the
> second sense -- then the way would be clear for making those concepts
> available in editing modes where the grammar of the underlying file is
> incompatible with Org syntax in the first sense.  A programming mode
> could, say, parse comments into an Org AST, then expose that AST to the
> functions implementing Org's UI concepts.  Et voila: you get visibility
> cycling, task state tracking, agendas...in your source code comments.
>
> One sort of use case where I think this idea could really shine is in
> dealing with email.  Obviously, the grammar of the underlying mail files
> (say, in a Maildir) will never be compatible with Org syntax in the
> first sense.  But Org handles so many of the concepts that apply to
> email (threading messages into hierarchies, visibility cycling, tagging,
> sorting by date or priority, thinking of messages as tasks to be dealt
> with, dealing with attachments) in such a nice way that I find myself
> sorely missing Org whenever I read mail in a client that doesn't
> implement them as nicely -- which is all of them.  If it were possible
> to build a parser for message files that transformed them into an Org
> AST, the mail client of my dreams would be in reach.
>
> I have no idea if evolving Org in this direction is feasible or even
> really desireable.  It may be that the two notions of Org syntax are
> tightly coupled in principle, so that the idea of producing an Org AST
> from an alternative underlying file format will never make sense.  But I
> think that would be surprising.  
>
> This evolution would clearly require more work than just abstracting out
> the regular expressions that implement much of Org's syntax in the first
> sense, and I think Bastien and Nicolas are right that we don't want
> either notion of Org syntax to become less stable.  Still, I think
> there's a lot of interesting possibilities we could explore if Org's
> implementations of the two notions of syntax were to become less tightly
> coupled.

thanks for your long and interesting comment!

But thats very ambitious, I'm actually looking for something much more
prosaic - being able to structure and use a buffer/file in a programming
mode like an Org-mode buffer/file besides the fact the headlines and
text needs to be outcommented. 

Thats partly possible with orgstruct or outshine, but I think there is
potential for more if Org functions could deal with outcommented
syntax-elements. And at the lowest level its all about regexps that
don't match because there is comment-syntax behind the "^" and before
the "$" (and maybe a different star is used instead of "*"), e.g.

(outshine-style) Elisp
,--------------------
| "^;; \\* Headline$"
`--------------------

oldschool Elisp
,-----------------
| "^;;; Headline$"
`-----------------

or 

CSS
,-----------------------
| "^/* \\* Headline */$"
`-----------------------

instead of the default Org-mode

,-----------------
| "^\\* Headline$"
`-----------------

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten