Samuel Wales <samologist <at> gmail.com> writes: > > 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.
Probably the most important one is that # is often used in ordinary writing without the intent of commenting out the rest of the line. Like saying "We're #1" or talking about #hashtags. It could be escaped for things like that, maybe, but the whole point is to keep the markup as minimal and unobtrusive as possible. Comments are specifically a departure from the norm; they are things *excluded* from the usual functioning of whatever they're in. Let _them_ be what has to get extra markup. #+ is a sufficiently rare combination that it can be spared. > This list is not complete or minimal. Please disregard the > items you don't like. Most of them can't really counter the above issue, I think (you may feel otherwise). > 1) #+ is not as standard as # Standards are per-format anyway. > 2) there are tools for commenting and uncommenting regions > with #, but not with #+ Org is its own tool. If it needs region-commenting features, let them be added, and they can use #+. Besides, the COMMENT keyword in headlines also comments out regions quite effectively (if the region is a subtree). > 4) imported (or pasted) text will often have # commenting > and this will need special processing to make it work > with Org This is perfectly sensible if you're a programmer (I haven't seen # used as a comment character anywhere outside of computer-parsable input). Org has a much larger scope than talking about programming. I would say that "Imported (or pasted) text will often have # without intending to comment and this will need special processing..." That's more or less what I said above. Org is mainly about prose. If you're pasting in programs with comments they probably belong in code-blocks anyway. > 5) fill functions and packages often don't understand #+ Org is its own tool, and is what's best suited for editing org files. > 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 # # in column 0 is a special case precisely for something simpler than #+ since # is rarely seen in column 0 in ordinary text, though it could happen if a # sign or something like #1 happened to be wrapped at a bad place. This present paragraph does serve as a counterexample, to be sure, but I think it is a rare case. ~mark
