-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Allow empty headlines without trailing space
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2025 08:35:26 +0100
From: Andros Fenollosa <[email protected]>
To: Ihor Radchenko <[email protected]>
Sorry, I was waiting for a response from the community. My mistake.
The official Org Syntax specification (orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html)
defines headlines with a clear structure: STARS KEYWORD PRIORITY COMMENT
TITLE TAGS. The definition of STARS is unambiguous:
A string consisting of one or more asterisks... suffixed by a space
character. The number of asterisks is used to define the level of the
heading. Space character after asterisks is mandatory.
Furthermore, TITLE is marked as (optional) in the same specification.
This implies that a headline without a title should be syntactically
valid, but the current implementation forces you to write * (with an
invisible space at the end) to achieve this.
My change is surgical; it corrects the regex. Furthermore, it doesn't
eliminate the current functionality but rather opens up the possibility
of empty titles. It doesn't break compatibility.
At Org Social we are working on including an artificial space in the
titles, making it more complex to maintain due to user configurations
that have hooks to clean up spaces at the end of lines.
Therefore, I kindly request that my proposed change be included.
On 12/1/25 21:30, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
Andros Fenollosa <[email protected]> writes:
Are there any developments or discussions on this matter? If there are
any comments, I haven't received them.
I expect you to provide justification why this change is necessary.
I need (1) strong justification showing that advantages of the
change will outweigh the potential breakage
So far, I see no clear benefit of accepting the proposed change in Org
syntax. Yes, it will make things a bit more convenient, but at the cost
of potentially breaking old documents.
