The following, which is general and I wrote a long time ago,
might also be relevant to the recent thread on comments
breaking lists.
===
There might be really good reasons for the #+ comment
convention in Org, but I am not sure what they are. So
please bear with me.
This list is not complete or minimal. Please disregard the
items you don't like.
===
Here are some of the reasons I prefer # to #+ as a
consistent commenting scheme for Org.
1) #+ is not as standard as #
2) there are tools for commenting and uncommenting regions
with #, but not with #+
3) many users have their own tools that do not
understand #+
4) imported (or pasted) text will often have # commenting
and this will need special processing to make it work
with Org
5) fill functions and packages often don't understand #+
6) plain # works in column 0 in Org, leading to user
expectation that it will behave consistently in other
columns as it does in most other languages that use #
7) parsing commented comments is more complicated and
error-prone when both are used
8) internal and external parsers might or might not expect
a more standard commenting scheme.
9) indented #+ is not colored as a comment or a control
line
10) it is natural to want to do a block comment on a
section of a list without breaking list structure.
there are built-in tools for this.
11) it is natural to want to do an indented comment on a
single list item at the same level of indentation as
the bullet
12) there are tools for auto-fill and indentation within
comments that take into account # but not #+
13) some parsers probably expect a single character
14) internal and external parsers might want a
special-case-free commenting scheme
15) #+ indicates an Org control line, so using it for
comments overloads the syntax
Hope it's of some use.
Thanks.
Samuel
--
The Kafka Pandemic: http://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com
