Hi list, It looks like the stars parser has a problem with 2 consecutive stars, hence with bold in 2nd level headers.
The following sums up all the relevant tests I performed. Only 3rd and 4th lines seem to be related, in a strange fashion, even, but I couldn't find anything else that would indicate lines not being independant. * Test *it* ! * *Test thouroughly* ! ** try deleting these : ** *** ** * ** *** ** ** Is *this* bold ? Note that anytime it is, editing the line gets the failure back. *** From here, it all *seems* to *works* *fine*. *** Only ** *here* it *doesn't !* *** *More* ** so *even*. I can try with text, it doesn't *change* ** *anything*. *** Darn. ** Even if I add many words it *fails* ! **** Hope ! ** Even if I add many words it only *fails* *once* ! **** But ** *sadly* it ** can *fail* *many times* ! *** If I try with *** *more* stars, it's **** totally *fine* It ** actually *** *helps*, *even* You *do* ** need * *a few*. But ** ** *two* is *enough* While constructing this, I was using (recent git version, and) (setq org-emphasis-regexp-components '(" \t('\"{" "- \t.,:!?;'\")}\\" " \t\r\n,\"'" "." 2)) but reverting to default with (setq org-emphasis-regexp-components '(" \t('\"{" "- \t.,:!?;'\")}\\" " \t\r\n,\"'" "." 1)) showed no improvement regarding the weird behavior. (I do imagine things could go a lot worse with hugher values, though ^_^) (problem raised on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12736868/cant-use-bold-face-on-2nd-level-outline-in-emacs-org-mode)