Comment by crazygringo
1 day ago
Sure, but I think it's safe to say Markdown has more interoperability, no?
Yes you can always use pandoc, but conversion usually brings quirks of its own. And more generally, the less conversion steps you need, the better.
If you just stick to vanilla markup, you don't encounter incompatibilities. The "many kinds of markdown" isn't an issue if you're not using platform-specific extensions in the first place. Which, usually, you're not, unless you need to do something very specific to that application.
Yes, more interoperability at the cost of capability.
Also, yes, conversion is quirky. That is why Org works until it does, and then I trade off being stymied by markdown's more plain-ness, in favour of collaborating with others.
And with vanilla markup, the trouble is that many applications /do not/ use just vanilla markup. People /invariably/ want "one key tweak" (like, front-matter or table of contents or footnotes or some such thing), and everyone ends up doing their own thing.
Perhaps the trouble with markdown is it's /too/ plain. So yes, lots of people can do lots of lowest common denominator stuff, but it does not extend to individuals wanting "just one thing" which also adds up to a lot of people.
Edit: a real-life example... I typically run code from org-mode for interactive testing and debugging --- the kind of stuff we write small throwaway scripts for.
In this one project, I made it so that /I/ or anyone else using org-mode could do it from org, for local development, and anyone else could just use the script as-is... including the CI pipeline.
[1] https://gitlab.com/nilenso/cats/-/raw/master/README_TESTS.or... (notice that the gitignore procedure needed for this trick is self-executable from this org file itself, in addition to being self documenting)
[2] https://gitlab.com/nilenso/cats/-/blob/master/bin/curl-tests...
> Yes, more interoperability at the cost of capability.
Well, then why aren't you using LaTeX? Isn't that more capable?
> And with vanilla markup, the trouble is that many applications /do not/ use just vanilla markup. People /invariably/ want "one key tweak"
And, that's going to be true as someone adopts it outside of Emacs, right?
Surely, someone will decide that the way Org Mode is doing something is wrong, right? They're going to do something like say, "Hey, why don't we permit Markdown style headings, too?" or something similar.
Or are you suggesting Org Mode military police? Felony markup possession?
There's nothing special about Org Mode that makes it immune to the problems you're describing. They will happen immediately upon wider adoption.
And if you somehow do stop it, well, it's tech. If you don't have a patent on it then someone will fork the idea and you'd have Borg Mode directly competing with you anyways.
Sure... I use LaTeX when orgmode is insufficient. And I can use LaTeX from within orgmode too.
Utility is Contextual.
“When you are hungry, eat; when you are thirsty, drink; when you are tired, sleep.” - Wise UNIX Master Foo
----
http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/shell-tools.html
Master Foo and the Shell Tools
A Unix novice came to Master Foo and said: “I am confused. Is it not the Unix way that every program should concentrate on one thing and do it well?”
Master Foo nodded.
The novice continued: “Isn't it also the Unix way that the wheel should not be reinvented?”
Master Foo nodded again.
“Why, then, are there several tools with similar capabilities in text processing: sed, awk and Perl? With which one can I best practice the Unix way?”
Master Foo asked the novice: “If you have a text file, what tool would you use to produce a copy with a few words in it replaced by strings of your choosing?”
The novice frowned and said: “Perl's regexps would be excessive for so simple a task. I do not know awk, and I have been writing sed scripts in the last few weeks. As I have some experience with sed, at the moment I would prefer it. But if the job only needed to be done once rather than repeatedly, a text editor would suffice.”
Master Foo nodded and replied: “When you are hungry, eat; when you are thirsty, drink; when you are tired, sleep.”
Upon hearing this, the novice was enlightened.
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If I just stick to vanilla markdown, then I don't have features that I would really like in my notes, like tables, footnotes, etc.