Re: org the program vs. org the format

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Thomas Koch <thomas@koch.ro> writes:

> there's a discussion on emacs-devel[1] about replacing texinfo as the 
> documentation format and org is mentioned. RMS correctly mentions that org-
> mode is not a format but a program.

With respect to export:
     
     - Org is a syntax.  The reference interpreter is org-element, but
       e.g. org-ruby exists and lazyblorg (or something like that)
       provides a Python interpreter.
     - Org-mode is an "editor" supporting the Org syntax.  It further
       has agenda, todo, etc. support.
     - Ox is a transcoder translating Org syntax to whatever output.

See:
          (info "(org) Org syntax")
and          
          http://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html

Nicolas will probably give a clearer definition.

> This was also my problem when I thought about using org-mode at work in my 
> team. Since I'm the only emacs user we decided to use asciidoc which is a 
> format that can be edited and processed with different programs.

Emacs already runs on all imaginable platforms...  Export with Emacs.
People are free to use Notepad for editing Org.  My coauthor uses
texworks for editing Org.

Perhaps the issue is rather that it should be easy to use ox in batch.
A nice terminal program for exporting documents, shipped with Emacs
(/usr/bin/ox, say) would be cool, to make ox {make batch sh}-friendly.
Orgmk is a program that tries to do this, but it would be cool to have
it with Emacs.  These days Emacs can be a shebang on at least Linux.

> So org-mode is a bit like PHP which also doesn't (didn't) have a specification 
> but the implementation is the specification.

This claim is wrong.

> Would it be possible to change the format of org-mode to be a superset of e.g. 
> asciidoc or markdown but keep the features?

No!  BTW: Org already exports to md.

—Rasmus

-- 
Dung makes an excellent fertilizer