Eric, i was thinking of replying to your earlier post on the power of emacs. now i guess i'll ask my question or make my vague point or whatever.
i wonder if it's possible (ignoring the possible utiltiy) to divide org mode into two (maybe three?) things. first is "org mode as a document structuring [hierarchy, tables, lists] and markup [links, ??? -- maybe it's all part of "document structure"] technique. (versus, possible "third": agenda, task manager. [that i'm not all that familiar with.]) versus org mode as a computing environment (== "org mode as life", which is to a large extent true for me, as well). the border between these divisions is, of necessity (i suspect) fairly fluid. but, i wonder if one could draw a useful boundary at "babel execute". i.e., on one side, one is definitely in "computing environment". (and, in my notes on your earlier e-mail: "what about calc, used in table formulae?". which you also mention.) i'm neutral on the issue of standardization (though i agree with Daniele Nicolodi that standardization might not bring what everyone wants). i will note that for many years the C language was not a formal "standard", but people figured out how to write "portable" code that worked with the major compilers and runtime environments. (it's nicer today that, e.g., C is an international standard, but that wasn't the first step towards "interoperability".) my bias is i'd love to see "everybody" able to export *and* tangle an org document, possibly within a limited subset, such as those that don't require babel-execute for that purpose. cheers, Greg