Hi Samuel, Samuel Wales <samolog...@gmail.com> writes:
> basically, i am concerned about syntax creep in the big picture and > its downstream consequences. for example, it's more efficient to > support, and for the user to remember, a single general syntax than a > whole bunch of special syntaxes. In general, I share your point of view here, which is one reason why I proposed the s-expression part of the syntax for citations. I still like that idea, and I think Nicolas is right that it would be good to extend it to other sorts of objects in Org. You're right that consistency in that syntax would be a good thing. Moreover, Org already has syntax that looks a lot like plists in #+ATTR_BACKEND lines and in Babel source block headers, so it seems natural to adopt something like it for other sorts of objects. I think that is the right way to go, both from the perspective of consistency and from the perspective of expressiveness. I guess the rejoinder to all this, though, is that this point of view can be taken too far. I am glad, for example, that Org uses different syntax for delimiting source blocks and delimiting emphasized text. Insisting on syntactic consistency there would give you something like HTML...and I am glad that writing Org is not like writing HTML. (Likewise, I will be glad when we have a syntax specially-designed for writing citations, even if it looks nothing like the syntax other things.) So I think the right question is: what is the correct range of application for a uniform syntax for user-specifiable extensions, for citations or otherwise? I don't know the answer to that, but `properties of existing objects' seems like a good start. This needs more thought, in another thread, but thank you for reminding us to keep it in mind. Best, Richard
