Hi Nicolas, Nicolas Goaziou wrote: > Bastien <b...@gnu.org> writes: >> François Pinard <pin...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes: >>> If macros are there to stay in Org, it might be worth documenting a more >>> complete specification about how to define and use them. >> >> I'd welcome some improvement of the manual wrt macros -- any taker? > > Before documenting anything, we should first define them clearly.
I think you're right here, seen the latest threads on this. > That is, we can define them through documentation, but we shouldn't write > documentation by looking at their current implementation. > > Should macros be allowed anywhere (which means that the user can shoot > himself in the foot) or should their expansion happen in a protected > environment (thus limiting their power)? If I had to choose, I would opt for the first case... > In the first case, can macros generate inline Babel code, that will be > executed before export? ... where macros would be pre-processed "à la M4" (or C preprocessing): replacing some keyword with some other expression. > In the second case, what types of elements are allowed in the protected > environment? > > Also, do we want to allow multiples macros definitions to stack up? I.e. > > #+MACRO: a-macro First line of the macro. > #+MACRO: a-macro Second line of the macro. > > If so, do we allow blank lines in them, meaning they can break document > structure even more? > > Can the macros be nested? > > Since macros arguments are comma-separated, how do one insert commas > within an argument? > > Are newline characters allowed in arguments? If not, what else is > forbidden there? > > There are probably other questions, but it should be a good start for > a correct implementation. An extra question is: the "replacing expression" of a macro, must it be pure text, or can it be anything (such as code that will be interpreted, in a further pass, by some back-end)? Best regards, Seb -- Sebastien Vauban
