One more idea I had was that it might be interesting to be able to
maintain properties for headlines that indicate the headline/body
should be included as a comment in a specific source file. The reason
I say this is that even if I write my code in org-mode, and in effect
comment the code using org-mode constructs like headlines and free
text, someone who just wants the tangled file might want to see
comments, for example, function headers or something like that.
Maybe we should allow either exporting just the headlines of the
org-mode file or exporting the entire org-mode file -- possibly after an
ASCII export -- this would have the effect of prefixing every line in
the org-mode file behind a comment *except* for the tangled source-code
blocks.
Implementation wise I'm not sure how easy/difficult this would be, but I
definitely think it's worth looking into.
Have I understood your suggestion?
Yes, your idea about prefixing every line in the org file behind a
comment except for the tangled code was the initial idea in my head. I
then thought that there may be several different languages of code in an
org-mode file, and even if there is only one language, the tangling of
that file could be generating multiple source files, for example, one
per function. In addition, some of the org-mode material I have in my
file might not relate to a commented source file, per se. For example,
the org-mode file where I maintain my source for a function might have
links to emails discussing the implementation, or internal dialogs
relating to alternative approaches that were abandoned.
So, I thought it might be neat to have some way of specifying which
subtrees would be a part of the comments for a source file, and for
which tangled file. My guess as the easiest way to do that would be
through properties. That is, you'd set a property for (sub)tree like,
for example:
:PROPERTIES:
:SrcComment: Yes
:SrcCommentTangleFile: cube.R
:SrcCommentCharacter: ##
:END:
These (sub)trees would then appear as comments in their respective
tangled source files in whatever order they appear in the org-mode file.
Why am I suggesting this?
People obviously like commented code. Writing a function in org-babel,
I am in effect using org-mode as the commenting system. Giving someone
who does not use Emacs an org-mode file to see how something was
implemented is not going to fly, to say the least :). Giving them the
tangled version of the code along with, say, an HTML export of the
org-mode buffer is a good start. But if they're used to reviewing code
in the typical, "just send me the source file" manner, they would
appreciate comments in the code. This is one way they could be
automatically generated from org-mode/org-babel, which is, in my mind,
the ideal.
As I'm sure you have plenty to do, I would be happy to take a look at
this. I'll give the requisite "I'm just getting started with elisp ..."
warning though. :)
Thanks!
Erik
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