[Announcement] Org-babel initial release

["Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com>]

Dan Davison and I (Eric Schulte) are happy to announce that Org-babel
has now been released as a contributed package in Org-mode with
corresponding documentation on worg [1].

Org-babel provides the following functionality:
- Source-code execution and control of output in org buffers
  - currently supported languages [2]:
    - emacs-lisp
    - shell scripts
    - R
    - ruby
    - python
    - SQL
    - gnuplot
    - dot
    - ditaa
    - asymptote
    - Haskell
    - OCaml
    - css
    - sass
  - results of code execution can be [3]:
    - passed to other source-code blocks
    - inserted into Org buffer as Org-mode table
    - inserted into Org buffer as escaped text
    - inserted into Org buffer as raw Org-mode text
    - dropped to a file and linked to from Org-mode buffer (e.g. ditaa)
    - ignored
- Meta-programming language for org mode: each source-code block is
  treated as a function which can accept arguments in the form of:
  - entire org-mode tables
  - output of other source-code blocks
  - raw text
  - values of cells in Org-mode tables using the Org spreadsheet
    functionality
- Spreadsheet enhancement: source-code blocks can be called from
  spreadsheet functions within tables
- Community maintained library of useful code blocks [4]
- reproducible research [5]
- literate programming with org-mode [6]
  - Org-babel has special support for embedding your emacs
    initialization in literate Org-mode files [7]

To activate Org-babel simply grab the latest version of Org-mode and add
the following to your Emacs init (more complete instructions at [8]).

(require 'org-babel-init)

Thanks -- Eric

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php

[2]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#languages

[3]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#header-arguments

[4]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#library-of-babel

[5]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#reproducable-research

[6]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#literate-programming

[7]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#literate-emacs-initialization

[8]  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/org-babel.php#getting-started