On Monday, 2 Nov 2020 at 17:22, Greg Minshall wrote: > i wonder if it's possible (ignoring the possible utiltiy) to divide org > mode into two (maybe three?) things.
Everything is possible! Whether it's desirable or not is a different question. :-) Although at first glance, it would seem straightforward to separate syntax from use (what you call structure versus environment), the two are so intimately tied together that fixing the syntax could make the latter harder to evolve. For instance, in my recent org documents, I have added a #+calc: keyword which I use for embedded calc lines. This allows me to have a clearly labelled line that Calc will recognise and that I can process using a filter before export while also ensuring that other tools, e.g. ones which will ignore lines starting with #, do not fail. If the standard did not allow for arbitrary keywords, would this limit my use? A more subtle issue, and one that I raised earlier, is the underlying infinite customization provided by Emacs. Some of my macros are elisp code. A standard for the structure of org mode documents could exist but using such standard-compliant documents would be shackled by not having elisp available to process the macros. They would really only be usable within Emacs and hence my suggestion that what people really want, without knowing it, is Emacs everywhere. ;-) [1] (as an aside, Emacs as an LSP could be interesting, especially if network based) Footnotes: [1] for my sins, I've recently had to use various tools for writing (text & data) including Word, Excel and Teams chats: how *do* people work efficiently in some of these environments? No abbreviations, no registers, no embedded Calc, no line highlighting (I keep losing the cursor), ... -- : Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.4-61-ga88806.dirty