Dear all, here is my take on this issue.
First of all, sorry that the #+begin_property caused confusion, I'm the one responsible as I suggested this suggestion to Eric. I can see three issues: 1) Consistent syntax for #+xxx and #+begin_xxx? Nicolas point is valid -- #+begin_xxx syntax is about content and formatting, not about Org's internal. #+xxx is mostly about Org's internals (#+author, #+date, #+property, etc) and sometimes about content, as a convenient way of inserting one-line content block (#+html, #+LaTeX, etc) #+begin_property does not fit well into this picture. 2) "Cumulative properties"? Org's manual describes #+property like this: `#+PROPERTY: Property_Name Value' This line sets a default inheritance value for entries in the current buffer, most useful for specifying the allowed values of a property. Note that #+property: var foo=1 does *not* fit into the syntax described above. It is more something like `#+PROPERTY: var Variable_Name=Value' Hence the problem of accumulating the "values" of "var", which is not really a property name, but some syntactic clue to bind Variable_Name to its value. Here is a suggestion: use a syntaxe like #+var: foo 1 The difference between #+property and #+var would be that #+var is for setting general purpoes (elisp) variables, while #+property is for Org internals. Sorry if such a proposal has already been made and discussed. My feeling is that `org-accumulated-properties-alist' is complex and can be avoided -- but I need to think more about this. 3) Wrapping/folding long #+xxx lines? This is an independant request -- see Robert McIntyre's recent question on the list. The problem is that fill-paragraph on long #+xxx lines breaks the line into comment lines, which is wrong. Filling like this: #+TBLFM: @3$1=@1$1+@2$1::@3$2=@1$2+@2$2::...::... : @3$2=@1$2+@2$2::... : @3$2=@1$2+@2$2::... would feel more natural, at least to me. But maybe generalizing the #+begin_xxx syntax for *all* #+xxx keywords. This would make the current org-internals-oriented/content-oriented difference between #+xxx and #+begin_xxx obsolete, but this would spare us the cost of new syntax. Curious about input about this as well. Cheers, -- Bastien