3 ms·

Org-Mode is a great concept but looking at the syntax you can see its age. I think it would be cool to have a format comparable to Markdown but with support fo

Org-Mode is a great concept but looking at the syntax you can see its age. I think it would be cool to have a format comparable to Markdown but with support for a JSON-like object notation that supports the linking of any metadata to any part of the text. That would make it simpler and let users add their own properties which would then be just ignored by other parsers. The problem with such things is of course that we already have what feels like a hundred different Markdown variants, each one slightly different and incompatible with the others in some way. That is in fact the reason I started using .org in the first place as a Vim user (that and the LaTeX code support).

taeric 5y ago
I cringe at the thought of json. Org can look cumbersome, but only in documents that I posit would be cumbersome in any format. Though, I suspect that down that road ultimately leads to some form of xml with cdata style escapes for thorns.
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  you cringe at the thought of json but not xml?
  - taeric 5y ago
    Honestly, yeah. But mainly because I don't see xml getting picked. Xml is at least a markup language. Json is not. Encoding a document with it is terrible. Just look at Jupyter some time.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      I never suggested encoding a document in JSON. I would use a similar syntax for annotations of text elements. Both Markdown and Org support similar things(e.g. tagging a heading) but with inconsistent, inflexible syntax. I don't think anything beats JSON in that area, definitely not XML. Specifically I'd prefer something along the lines of JSON5 for the sake of sanity, which is just better for human-readable and editable content.
      - taeric 5y ago
        I don't see what json gets you that a standard delimited tag didn't get. Such that org's footnote tags already work well here. Or just... Hyperlinks in general. What would you use json to encode that https://foo/baz https://foo/baz shouldn't already handle? And, if you ack that links are already links, the standard of either [display](link) or [[display][link]] seems as nice as json could possibly get.
        alpaca128 5y ago
        In Org-Mode you have a separate syntax for footnotes, for properties(`#+FOO`), for heading properties(`:FOO:`), for results of code executions, for time tracking, and so on. You could express all those metadata in one consistent notation, as an example JSON which would also be more compact and not as clunky. Hyperlinks and text styling can still be done with the usual methods, though I don't quite like how in md/org I constantly forget where the label and the url goes in the hyperlink syntax. Also some of the text styling could use slight modifications to reduce the need for escaping. I'm not saying Org-Mode lacks major features or anything, I'm just the kinda guy who likes to tinker and experiment with new ideas.
        taeric 5y ago
        Fair. I'm the kind to tinker with the old ideas. :D I'm not really seeing any benefit that json or the like would bring to the table here. I could almost see a benefit to not having different ways to make properties, but only a little. Since it is basically just a mark that is intended to indicate different types of marked up text. As an example, if moved to json, how would you distinguish the likes of an example block? Just a json header with no closing tag? Or a json header with another json close? I guess, put more directly. Orgmode is a bit of an adhoc markup language. The designating tags to start and end a block are typically $+BEGIN_FOO and #+END_FOO. With free text between them, and a lot of magic from emacs to syntax highlight based on FOO. Unless you are just going to change to {"BEGIN":"FOO"} and {"END:"FOO"}, with free text between, you are forcing human edited text into a json field, and that is what makes me cringe. And if that is your end goal, {"BEGIN":"FOO"} is actually a chore to type and read. Yes, it composes somewhat nicely such that #+NAME: Example #+BEGIN_SRC lisp (+ 3 2) #+END_SRC could be: {"NAME":"EXAMPLE", "BEGIN": "src", "lang": "lisp"} (+ 3 2) {"END":"src"} But, quite frankly, that looks worse to me. What is json bringing to the table?

taeric 5y ago

I cringe at the thought of json. Org can look cumbersome, but only in documents that I posit would be cumbersome in any format. Though, I suspect that down that road ultimately leads to some form of xml with cdata style escapes for thorns.

skrtskrt 5y ago
you cringe at the thought of json but not xml?
- taeric 5y ago
  Honestly, yeah. But mainly because I don't see xml getting picked. Xml is at least a markup language. Json is not. Encoding a document with it is terrible. Just look at Jupyter some time.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    I never suggested encoding a document in JSON. I would use a similar syntax for annotations of text elements. Both Markdown and Org support similar things(e.g. tagging a heading) but with inconsistent, inflexible syntax. I don't think anything beats JSON in that area, definitely not XML. Specifically I'd prefer something along the lines of JSON5 for the sake of sanity, which is just better for human-readable and editable content.
    - taeric 5y ago
      I don't see what json gets you that a standard delimited tag didn't get. Such that org's footnote tags already work well here. Or just... Hyperlinks in general. What would you use json to encode that https://foo/baz https://foo/baz shouldn't already handle? And, if you ack that links are already links, the standard of either [display](link) or [[display][link]] seems as nice as json could possibly get.
      - alpaca128 5y ago
        In Org-Mode you have a separate syntax for footnotes, for properties(`#+FOO`), for heading properties(`:FOO:`), for results of code executions, for time tracking, and so on. You could express all those metadata in one consistent notation, as an example JSON which would also be more compact and not as clunky. Hyperlinks and text styling can still be done with the usual methods, though I don't quite like how in md/org I constantly forget where the label and the url goes in the hyperlink syntax. Also some of the text styling could use slight modifications to reduce the need for escaping. I'm not saying Org-Mode lacks major features or anything, I'm just the kinda guy who likes to tinker and experiment with new ideas.
        taeric 5y ago
        Fair. I'm the kind to tinker with the old ideas. :D I'm not really seeing any benefit that json or the like would bring to the table here. I could almost see a benefit to not having different ways to make properties, but only a little. Since it is basically just a mark that is intended to indicate different types of marked up text. As an example, if moved to json, how would you distinguish the likes of an example block? Just a json header with no closing tag? Or a json header with another json close? I guess, put more directly. Orgmode is a bit of an adhoc markup language. The designating tags to start and end a block are typically $+BEGIN_FOO and #+END_FOO. With free text between them, and a lot of magic from emacs to syntax highlight based on FOO. Unless you are just going to change to {"BEGIN":"FOO"} and {"END:"FOO"}, with free text between, you are forcing human edited text into a json field, and that is what makes me cringe. And if that is your end goal, {"BEGIN":"FOO"} is actually a chore to type and read. Yes, it composes somewhat nicely such that #+NAME: Example #+BEGIN_SRC lisp (+ 3 2) #+END_SRC could be: {"NAME":"EXAMPLE", "BEGIN": "src", "lang": "lisp"} (+ 3 2) {"END":"src"} But, quite frankly, that looks worse to me. What is json bringing to the table?