perhaps we can start thinking about improving registration between formats?
if you export org [you posted to org mailng list] to a foreign format, you want your collaborator to be able to edit, save, send back without raising a sweat. now you have to integrate the changes. you want to do this without annoyance. suppose you export comments in the foreign format that contain the equivalent of persistent markers. you might or might not be willing to put org id or custom id on every heading, but there might be workarounds that are not so intrusive. maybe your source can contain comments with markers. dunno. if your exported document is a subtree within a huge org file that you edit all the time, registration allows your software to identify that subtree, so you're not trying to change anything outside that subtree. that alone is a win. but maybe we can do more. the markers can register sections or even paragraphs if you're doing intensive collaboration. the tricky part might be getting standard tools to understand that the mapping of markers takes precedence over everything else. details of this handwavey and possibly impossible brainstorm are left as an exercise for the reader.
