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# The Future of Org
Ihor Radchenko
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# Discussion
## Questions and answers
- Q:<\_viz\> Q: Is the track-changes item about the org-element
parser? \[10:34\]
- A:Yes
- <Ihor\> Moreover, track-changes has been developed with my
input specifically aimed to make sure that it can support
org-element use case. See
[https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi](https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi)
/bugreport.cgi?bug=70077
- Q: Could you please keep IRC alive? I prefer it to Matrix. Thx.
- A: I am mostly live on IRC from mobile (via Revolution IRC) and
should be able to see most of the messages. Except when my
mobile phone does not have good internet connection or is
discharged
- I got a suggestion to use chat.sr.ht as a bouncer. I will look
into it to make the connection more reliable. (It is not bad
now, but I do miss messages once in a while).
- Q: Is there any plan for adding support for other modalities of
notes like handwritten, audio, etc.? Would that be interesting to
the community? It will definitely be useful for me.
- A: Might want to look into jkitchin's repos (possibly via
tesseract)
- tesseract + image paste:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGGAr1AWkTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGGAr1AWkTc)
- John Kitchin \[Youtube\] (2021) scimax - #drawing
screenshot, tesseract, pngpaste and ox-clip
- For audio, I do not know much. My bookmarks contain a couple
of possibly related items:
- [https://git.sr.ht/\~lxsameer/orion](https://git.sr.ht/~lxsameer/orion)
- [https://github.com/rksm/org-ai?tab=readme-ov-file#setting-up-speech-input\--output](https://github.com/rksm/org-ai?tab=readme-ov-file#setting-up-speech-input--output)
- You can use attachment and images to paste.
- <Ihor\> In terms of actually adding support for hadwritten
notes/audio, it is not 100% clear what that support would
consitute. Tooling to convert images/sound to text would
probably not be appropriate for Org mode. It would be better
done as a separate package(s). Then, using such tooling could be
supported, but again, it is not clear what such a support would
constitute.
- "Would that be interesting to the community?" Go and ask ;)
Just write about your idea in details to the mailing list and
you will get feedback. What I can tell is that this topic does
not surface frequently as far as I am aware.
- Q: I spent some time writing a library for myself which involved
working with org files. One thing I struggled with was finding a
good source of reference code which demonstrated idiomatic usage. Is
there/could there be a resource with which to recommend particularly
well written codebases for review by others?
- A: Ideally, Org codebase should be such a place. Unfortunately,
not every part of Org is a good reference for others (I hope to
keep pushing for improvements).
- Decent references could be ox.el, many ob-\* backends, and
ox-\* backends. But I cannot suggest something definite
without knowing what exactly you tried to do. There are many
APIs in Org mode.
- What might be useful is
[https://orgmode.org/manual/Hacking.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Hacking.html)
and
[https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/index.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/index.html)
- Maybe also
[https://alphapapa.github.io/org-almanac/#development](https://alphapapa.github.io/org-almanac/#development)
- Q: WRT IETF standardization, have you looked at Karl Voit's OrgDown?
- A: Lot of pushback to this idea on the mailing-list.
- A large part of it was about naming
- Some links:
- [https://list.orgmode.org/2021-11-28T20-44-37@devnull.Karl-Voit.at/](https://list.orgmode.org/2021-11-28T20-44-37@devnull.Karl-Voit.at/)
- My followup:
[https://list.orgmode.org/87tufnbj1w.fsf@localhost/](https://list.orgmode.org/87tufnbj1w.fsf@localhost/)
- Despite pushback, Karl's idea did align with our IETF idea
and with one of the point I make in the presentation about
making life easier for non-Emacs apps.
- See
[https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/2022-10-17T22-36-38@devnull.Karl-Voit.at/](https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/2022-10-17T22-36-38@devnull.Karl-Voit.at/)
- I will quote Bastien here:
- [https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87fsfl7g01.fsf@bzg.fr/](https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87fsfl7g01.fsf@bzg.fr/)
- What occurred to me while rereading this thread is
that definining a
- syntax for a IETF RFC on an Org mimetype probably
needs to be done not
- just by this Emacs Org-mode community, but by
bringing together other
- "consumers" of .org files, from ecosystems outside
of Emacs.
- Such a collective work could lead to define what
subset of the Org
- syntax is useful as the corner-stone for .org files
everywhere - which
- is what you rightfully brought up with "Orgdown".
- If successful, such a process could end up in
defining the minimal and
- official "Org syntax" while allowing
implementations (like the one for
- Emacs org-mode) to supercharge this syntax if deemed
useful.
- Perhaps TEC is right and we will end up having the
minimal syntax
- being the one we currently use for Org-mode: we'll
see.
- Q: About a year ago we discussed switching GNU documentation from texinfo to org. Do you still consider this?
- A: We don't want to complicate org syntax to adjust to the
texinfo markup.
- ...But we want to keep org's syntax generic so that it can be
customized to support the necessary Texinfo constructs
- I detailed my vision in
[https://list.orgmode.org/875xwqj4tl.fsf@localhost/](https://list.orgmode.org/875xwqj4tl.fsf@localhost/)
- apart from Texinfo parity, the idea is to help
addressing various syntax edge cases by providing
aliases to the existing markup elements
## Notes
- Nice to see mobile apps actively being considered when talking about org :D
- Transient integration in org will be a very welcome improvement! Being able to save the
transient state on org-export would be very nice indeed
- fun fact: Transient did take some inspiration from Org's menus
- tarsius: Oh, I did not know this!
- From which menus exactly, those implemented by Nicolas
for the exporter?
- Not any specific menus but the "dim unreachable
commands, when the user typed an incomplete key sequence"
feature.
- love to hear how folks in emacs real approach
project development as social endeavors to a significant degree
- Another mobile app that understands org-markdown is
ZettelNotes
([https://znotes.thedoc.eu.org/](https://znotes.thedoc.eu.org/))
- It is not the only one missed. For a reason. I did not
find source code.
- Ah ok, that is fair.
- <jaafar\>There is a Ruby parser too, in the Guthub renderer
- Right. It is also listed at
[https://orgmode.org/tools.html](https://orgmode.org/tools.html)
(alongside with Pandoc)
- As an org user but someone who is not familiar with
development (and has no context on org's direction before Ihor's stewardship), I'm really excited about the priorities being expressed in this talk :) Thanks
\[10:47\]
- another great (and absolute core to me) app with org-mode
support (respectively org files are at the core of it) for iOS
devices is: beorg
[https://www.beorgapp.com/](https://www.beorgapp.com/)
- the dev is responsive and open for feedback/feature requests, from my experience so far. i'm still "a noob", but org-mode, emacs and beorg allow me to structure my workflows/needs and to get rid of possibly many other apps/software.
- The list of iOS-native apps are still quite small with varying quality. So far, I'm quite happy with beorg. Tried out other too (1-2 i may be missing, maybe considering buying them, even if it's just a small contribution to Emacs/orgmode as community as such). as far as the libre aspect. true, but i have to be pragmatic at some point, and firstly i want to be productive/efficient/effective. As long as it's a sole dev / community-inspired thing, and not a big corporate raider, i'm fine with non-libre software, if the standards are kept and no proprietary overhead stuff is modifying the core of org-mode (in this example for example).
- Really encouraging stuff, thanks :D
- Thank you yantar92\`
- Thank you for this wonderful talk!
- We appreciate all the work being done
- really enjoying this talk as a long time user who hasn't
ever really thought about how org mode gets developed (much less
contributed)
- For audio transcription, I use Speech Note (offline) and copy the
text to orgmode
- It's great to see Carsten, Bastien and Ihor together. I run my life
with orgmode, so we owe you guys a lot :)
- I think a huge part of Org Mode is workflow, and that's
both highly individual and highly social - we learn about what's
possible by hearing about how other people do things
- Thank you for taking over org! I use it every day and I'm happy to see that org's future is in good hands.
- YouTube comments:
- Congratulations! I'm super excited for the things to come, especially about mobile apps not being an afterthought anymore. Also looking forward to the transition to transient menus!
- That was a great talk. Thank you for bringing all that information together and thank you for your work on org-mode. I use it every day and it's good to see it's still in active and constructive development. I particularly like the focus on the standard and parsers to define the format and clean up code bases both in org-mode and beyond.
- As someone who has just started using org mode, it's really reassuring to see that someone with such a well thought through, comprehensive, specific, detailed, and balanced vision of the future of org is taking the helm! May your bugs always be shallow and your users grateful <3
- I've been using org-mode for over a decade now, and can't imagine life without it. So welcome aboard, Ihor, may org-mode continue to prosper with you as Maintainer!
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