And I believe we are live. Okay. Hi again, Ihor. How are you
doing? Ready to answer questions, right? Yes. Ready to
answer questions and all this. I mean, ready for
everything. It's not just a question, it's the maintenance
that is now lying in front of you. So... Oh, that's not the end
of the day. I mean, it's a rare thing indeed, because you
might not be able to see it on BBB. I'm checking in, but we've
got Ihor, obviously, but we also have Bastien and also
Carsten in the room. So, we have three maintainers of Org
Mode right there in the room to answer all your questions.
So, it's a rare occasion that I invite all of you to seize the
day on this. Ihor, do you have anything maybe to say before we
start moving into the questions? Well, I hope that I said
everything I wanted. Hello, Bastien. during the
presentation. Well, actually, I can say a lot more, like
infinitely, because when I first recorded it, it was like
one hour. So yeah. I mean, you did a, I'll just let you know,
you did a fine job condensing everything in just 40 minutes.
So congratulations on this. Yeah, it's, yeah, usually one
minute per slide is the best way. Otherwise, it's something
that's wrong with this presentation. Right, so just moving
into the question, and by the way we've got 20 minutes, we
might be able to chat a little more if Bastien wants to say
something as well and Carsten, you know, feel free to
intervene at any point during the questions if you've got
anything to contribute or our voice will just show the
breeze later on. So the first question is relating to
something you said about 10 minutes 34 that might speak more
to you than to me.
Is the track changes item about the org
element parser Yes, the track changes is a new library that
helps to receive changes in buffers incrementally. So like
you can, it has API where you can request what changes
happened in buffer since last request, chunk by chunk. And
in org mode, in org element parser, we do pretty much the same
thing, but using timers. So this track changes library
should improve things, first, because it's a bit faster,
because we don't need to conjure every single change, and
track changes can agglomerate changes into chunks much
more efficiently. And second, it's a built-in library, so
it's a good idea to use built-in library when there is such an
option, instead of running out our own implementation.
Definitely. Moving on to the second question, although I'm
not sure it refers that much to what you can do.
Could you please keep IRC alive? And I prefer it to Matrix. I mean,
you did talk about IRC, right? But did we talk about phasing
it out? So I try to be live on IRC, but I use mobile client for
IRC to keep connected. So I usually connected, I usually see
messages, except certain times when I don't have mobile
internet. Right. Okay. That's why many people will tell
you, you need a bouncer and all this, but the IRC crowd is very
loud. I just don't know a good bouncer. I don't have a good
setup for a bouncer. Okay.
Personally, I use WeChat usually to stay connected to
email. It's obviously a client for IRC, but it also allows
you to, you know, you can keep it as a bouncer, but it's not in
Emacs. It is. I don't have a computer that is running 24
hours, so. I mean, that's the thing. I do have a server to run
it off. All right, moving on to the third question. That is
what is running 24 hours. Right. Okay. All right. Moving on
to the third question.
Is there any plan for adding support
for other modalities of note-like, handwritten, audio,
and et cetera? Would that be interesting to the community?
It will definitely be useful for me. I didn't. Okay. So this
is not the idea I hear frequently. So there's no plan for such
thing. Modalities of notes like handwritten audio. I think
John Kitchin did some handwritten note.
John Kitchin. Yeah. And for audio, I think as well. I. So
basically you can use attachments, you can use images to
paste you. I think John Kitchin even use it to automatically
recognize notes.
I think the previous speaker was talking about a whisper to
recognize voice. Right.
Otherwise there is no special workflow and I'm not even sure
what we can do to support this workflow specifically.
Yeah, it definitely feels like Org Mode is a good format for
textual stuff, and a lot of things are textual. I mean,
that's the whole philosophy behind Emacs. But when it comes
to voice, it feels like it's... I think the person asking the
question probably needs to specify what they mean by voice.
Is it just raw note-taking, as Blaine mentioned in a
previous talk, or is it something else? Feel free to add up to
the question and we'll return to it later on.
I think this is kind of related to drag and drop. I think you
would like to be able to have an audio file and drop it in and
have it translated to text. I think that would be an
interesting API to do this, right? So that you can integrate
it into something like drag and drop. I think I'm going to
talk with supporters in since overnight. So we have, I
believe what constant is alluring to is the fact that not
just pictures but imagine if you were bringing in an audio
file maybe you could, I mean I'm not sure it would work with
whisper but. transcribing it in a way and inserting it as
text. Although I'm not sure how we would be able to do this,
but it's an interesting idea though. It can work if you write
some kind of automatic speech recognition. It's not really
a job for work. If you have some library that can transform
audio to text or transform image to text in Elixir, then we
can happily use that library. Definitely, but I can tell you
that Whisper is not something that works very quickly. We do
use Whisper AI to transcribe some of the talks that we
broadcast during EmacsConf, and I can tell you it takes a
fair while. If you have a video that lasts one minute, it's
definitely going to take more than one minute to try to
transcribe the video. We had to wait for a few years until it
passed. Probably, but it's good to have the ID now so
that we are ready eventually to do this. There is the new
asynchronous IP. It's called org-pending. It's work in
progress. And that basically allows to defer inserting
text into our buffers until later. And while it's being
worked on, it will basically highlight the place where it
will be inserted. And you can click on it, see the progress,
and stuff like that. So this is for Babylon, but I imagine for
things like voice recognition, it can also work.
All right, what I suggest we do, we're going to fill the two
questions that we have now, and then it'd be nice if we could
hear a word from Bastien and from Carsten as well, because
it's rare to have all of you three in a room, and it would be
nice maybe to chat a little bit about this. So quickly, with
the last two questions, with regards to IETF
standardization, have you looked at Karl Voit's Orgdown?
So, of course, there was a discussion on the mailing list,
and there was a lot of pushback to this idea, especially to
simplify the syntax. So, in short, the conclusion from
there is we want the full syntax, we don't want to have things
like different versus Org mode. But for the syntax, we may
specify different like coverage. So for example, it's a
minimal, it has a minimal support so people can, there's
some parsers or apps can support just whatever curl calls
fork down like level zero or level one or whatever. But the
key point is, when it goes to IETF, we want to have the full
syntax. We don't want to split it into pieces.
Makes a lot of sense. All right. And the last question we have
for now. About a year ago, we discussed switching new
documentation from texinfo to org. Do you still consider
this? definitely contributed to some of the ideas about
syntax. For example, the inline special blocks, I think
about them with this in mind, so that, so basically, one
clarity, we don't want to complicate our syntax, we don't
want to have special built-in support for variable, or I
don't know, function name, or all this kind of specific
markup. But instead, the idea is to have some generic custom
syntax. And then when it goes to software manuals, we want
some like optional library that will provide certain
syntax extensions, like inline special block for
variables, inline special block for acronym and stuff like
that. Then people who want to use Org mode for manuals should
be able to use that new markup to achieve what they want.
That's a distant idea. But the key point is we want to keep org
mode as generic syntax. We don't want to specialize it for
software specifically. But generic in the sense that it can
be used for software as well.
All right, well thank you so much for your answer here and
that was very enlightening but I'd first like to give the mic
to Bastien who might need to leave shortly and I just want to
make sure that you get to chat a little bit Bastien because
it's a big thing we've had you as a maintainer for however
long now? Well, officially, it was 14 years. But obviously,
EHO has been doing much of the groundwork as a de facto
maintainer for several years now, I believe for three or
four years. And before Before IHO, there was Nicolas Goaziou,
who's doing a lot of work. Also Kyle Meyer, who is still
active, backporting Emacs changes. So
it's a relief that we can do things properly, that I didn't
give up before someone could really step up. I'm glad we're
doing this. And I'm glad there was so much help during the
time when I was not available enough. Well, thank you,
Bastien. I think on behalf of the community, I think I'd like
to extend a big thank you for all the work you've done
throughout those 14 years. And if we pull the rope just a
little more, before those 14 years, we had someone else
maintaining Org Mode, well, not actually just maintaining
Org Mode, but also inventing it. Carsten, how are you doing?
I am. I'm doing fine. A really great opportunity to be here.
First, I would like to start by indeed thanking Bastien
because, I mean, he was not only maintainer after I stopped,
but already during the time I was there, he was one of the key
contributors who helped the project along for quite a bit.
So it's an incredible investment of time and energy that
Basquiat has shown, which is really fantastic. And now I see
Ihor taking over with, as far as I can see, deep knowledge and
all the right ideas about philosophy. So I'm really
impressed. For me, this is really totally amazing because I
started hacking this more than 20 years ago. And to just see
that there's a community that has sustained itself with the
help of new maintainers for such a long time makes me
extremely grateful. So thank you very much to all of you.
Okay, well, amazing. I mean, I'm a little flustered, I must
admit, because I'm seeing three players of the community in
a way that have kept me busy with very fun stuff to do with Org
Mode, and it's really amazing to see three giants of the
community being able to maintain Org Mode for so long and
contribute so much to it. So, again, thanks to all of you
three. I must also admit that it's really amazing for me
that all of you three stress the importance of the community
a whole lot, and I know that Bastien, you've talked about
maintaining software last year at Emacs Confs, and even
today, during the one-minute little chat that you did in
Ihor's chat, you stressed the importance of maintenance and to
be future-oriented about it. I'm kind of wondering, why do
you think community is so important to Org Mode in general?
Like, obviously we've talked about maintainers and we've
talked about volunteers, but don't you think there's
something more about community in general, about Org Mode
and the fact that we are all taking notes
and doing so much with it? Yeah, are you asking me?
I remember Carsten made his point during the Google talk about
the core idea of Org Mode, about mixing note taking and to-do
manager. It was really powerful. And also in the same
presentation that 98%
of the features were organically developed as ideas
by the community. And Ihor just said the same today
in the presentation, like most of the features,
not only the ideas, but also the code came from
the communities. So that's why the community is so rich.
And another thing is
also that I do remember. Now everyone is having kind of an open
source fatigue and questions about how is it okay to be
maintainer? How do you keep open source project
sustainable? And I'm saying open source on purpose with
this audience to see beyond just the small GNU project and
the small free software community. So at large, there is
some sense of fatigue. I remember that the Org community
right from the beginning had a reputation of being an
amazing community and I think it
continues to be one and I'm amazed that sometimes when I'm,
you know, sometimes I'm, I have this fatigue of moderating
emails from the mailing list, for example, and filtering
out spam. And then I go on the list and I read some emails and I
feel like, okay, this is still there. And it's really
a boost of energy. I wish that this repetition outside Org Mode,
outside Emacs, of being a nice welcoming,
community of knowledgeable people talking of things
and learning from each other that we can
keep up with this pace. Yeah, maybe if I
can just add to this, I think you're making an extremely
important point, Pascal. I think that was really, from the
beginning, something that was really special. And I think
the reason why we all community still works is that first me,
but in particular also the two of you and more people have
been able to keep up the friendly spirit in this community.
Because we had very few fights on the mailing list. There
were a few at some point, we had a few contributors with a
little bit of fights. And I remember that I, for example, had
to invest a lot of time to keep that one under control, but I
think it was totally worth it because as a group, as a whole, I
think it was really fantastic. Our friendly people
always were, and I think that has spurred all the
contributions that we had. Because
if you are in a toxic environment, you will
not be willing to stay and to invest all their time. And if you
are in an appreciative environment where people support
each other, it's a completely different game. So I really
think that Org Mode is a great example for open source
projects that many other communities can learn from.
If I may just interject for a second, because we need to go
into the next chat for the live stream. But as usual, I invite
you, if you're interested with the discussion, we are
staying on BBB, asking questions to Bastien, to Ihor and
to Carsten. So feel free to join on BBB and chat with them
live. The stream will be moving on to the next chat, but we
will be recording the Q&A and posting it afterwards on
emacsconf. So, I'll use the opportunity to thank you again,
all three, for taking part in this EmacsConf, and enjoy the
discussion, and we'll see you later! Thank you, bye bye! So,
yeah, what I was starting to say actually is I feel that the
Org Mode community and to the big extent the Emacs community
is a bit like research in the early days when there was a bunch
of enthusiasts who just exchanged mails together and tried
to find out something new. And there was like no feeling of
competition or too much competition at that time. Unlike
now when we like we all rise for funding and stuff. So it's,
it's really, it's really nice to, to, to have communities
that has the spirit and they hope it can keep the spirit in
future as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I thought I'm very optimistic after. So I mean,
actually had not been reading the mailing list for quite a
while, but I started to read it again a little while ago and I
could just see you also working on it and see how everything
was going. That made me extremely happy to see that and made
me very proud that this is still ongoing.
I was interested about your point about the tables with
multi-lines. My unsolicited advice is don't do it, because
I think it's going to be a mess. Which I think is reflected
also by you saying that nobody has a good idea on how to do
this. I have certainly thought about it. It is requested so
often. It's requested so often that it feels like it would be
nice to come out with something. The question is, it is what?
Yeah, that's a big question. Because I don't always ask
eDocs, for example, and they do have multi line cells in
tables, but that syntax is so ugly. Yes. Yeah, no, exactly. I
think this is a problem and the question is, how far do you
want to develop or want to be a completely full authoring
system in the sense that you have all these options there
because I think to me, the Org Mode tables have a specific
application. They have this fast way of building
something. And if I would have to go and build a hugely
complicated table with different numbers of columns and
columns going away and appearing further down the table, so
I would probably go somewhere else. So for me, this seems to
be overkill. So I don't want to curb anybody's enthusiasm.
But I think it's really important to keep to keep the kind of
functionality that it has. It's a very easy use and quick
ability to do something interesting that I think is more
important. There could be reasons to not do something. So
again, the thing is, we don't have a good idea. But what I know
100% is that we are not going to give up the existing syntax.
Yeah, for sure. So even if you come up with something good,
the existing syntax will remain working. And if people who
need to use simple tables, they should remain possible in
exactly the same way. But I know many people struggle and try
in LaTeX and other workarounds just to create more complex
tables. So there's clearly a demand. I think this is related
to the other question that you asked earlier. I think it's
related to the question about the different parsers. And
then, of course, the way the tables are implemented now is by
basically just looking at what's around you
and doing the right things with
this regular expression-based part of
the parser. And you probably would have to fully use the
other parts and to do all the changes in the formal structure
in order to do something like this. So I have to be honest that
I don't understand this well enough to really have a
meaningful idea about it. Not only that, we'll also need to
rewrite the spreadsheet functionality because it is
completely using regular expressions. Exactly. Not only
idea is missing that the roadmap will be very complicated if
you get there. Yeah. I mean, I do remember. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, sorry. I do remember Richard Stallman saying that
Org Mode was doing too much. So my answer was just, coming from
the inventor of Emacs, I took it as a compliment for Org Mode.
But of course, that was just humor. And I agree that the
simple things should keep being simple. And I like the
custom syntax idea of Juan because it goes in the direction
of flexibility while keeping things simple.
And looking forward to what people will come up with. I like
the idea that you want to formalize the syntax. I think that
is really very good. I'd like to also submit it. I think that
would be excellent. I'm also... I think it was proposed by
Timothy, yeah. Initially. Okay. Yeah, that's really
helpful. Pascal, are you still talking, I think? No, yeah, I
just wanted to say also for the younger Emacs users, there is
a lot of new things in Emacs the last five years. It has been so
exciting. And I believe it's exciting for Org Mode too, the
things you mentioned about track changes. uh native
compilation and all that stuff that that's really good like
some some performance problems that we had for org mode for
the agenda and stuff like that were suddenly solved by uh the
the crazy amazing work by Eli and emacs maintainers so
it's really exciting for org as well.
I don't know how you feel, Ihor, about this,
but I know you are reading the Emacs
development mailing list and keeping this is a job in
itself, but it's really exciting for everyone, I guess. Not
only that, I hope we can upstream org-ql, which will speed up
agenda specifically even more.
Okay. I need to fly away, but it was really nice connecting
and I hope everyone has a great conference. Bye-bye. It was
so good to see you. Thank you again for everything that you
have done. Thanks to you both. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
All right. Is it only the two of us now? I don't really know who
else. Can you see if there's anybody else in this room? I
don't know. There are like two, four, six people and Sacha is
one of them, so probably five people. Oh, Sacha is here.
Okay. I haven't heard her say anything, but I see her in the
chat. Okay. It's the same room, basically. Hi, Sacha. Oh,
okay. They're also at her pad, so we may want to finish other
questions, maybe, if there are some. This is just a circle.
This is just a historical question, but Carsten, I think you
used microemacs back in the day.
Did that have any influence
on Org? That is a really interesting question. I used
microemacs as my first version of emacs, and then I stepped
over to Emacs. I actually did two things at the same time. I
also was working with so Awk basically, that language. I ran
against walls with both Micro-Emacs and with Awk, where I had
the feeling I don't have enough freedom to do everything
that I wanted, so I switched to Perl on one side and to Emacs on
the other side. That's what it was. Micro-Emacs absolutely
had the function to pull me into Emacs, But it's not that I
have specific microemacs features that would have
triggered me to do something for Org Mode. I think that would be
the answer to your question. All right, thanks.
Are you a user of microemacs, George? I posted the source to
CompSource's Amiga in 86, and I was somewhat responsible
for it being in the wild. Oh, I'm so sorry that I didn't,
wasn't really aware that I made the connection to your name.
No, no, no, no. We all moved on and the world is a better place.
Yeah. No, I actually did use it for something like, I think
six years as my only admin at the time before I made the
switch. No, I put it out to the list. David Lawrence ran with
it and you know, that was about, that was the end of it. And I
actually implemented something like fly spell for
microemacs. I remember doing that at some point. Yeah, no, I
don't want us to get stuck on that. I don't want us to get stuck
on that, so. Yeah, yeah. Good. Thank you. Thank you for
Org Mode. Yeah, you're most welcome.
For microemacs, actually, I also tried it once. It feels
like at home after Emacs, of course, the major downside was at
this point is that there is no UTF support. I think that was
like, unfortunately, that that's not going to work. I
think I'm also going to disconnect now. But it was really
fantastic to listen to your talk. I wish you all the best. I'm
sure that is a good answer. Thank you for joining, and nice to
meet you. Yeah, bye. Bye.
Okay, so there are still people in the room, so if you want to
ask questions, feel free to do it. I
think there's one unanswered question in the etherpad
also. Let me see.
It's probably awkward to answer. Okay, I can answer and then
probably answering the answer for this one. So there's a
question about, from a person, 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.
particularly well-written code bases for review by
others? That's a good question. We have some wiki pages.
I'll put it in the answer later. You can also check Org Mode's
code, but usually in org-element there are good usages, and
in Org export.
Otherwise, maybe something from Alphapapa, but I need to
check that and probably reply later.
Otherwise, that's all. So I'm going to end this.
Bye bye.