Nicolas Goaziou <m...@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes: > Hello, > > Eric Abrahamsen <e...@ericabrahamsen.net> writes: > >> I'm copying Nicolas -- Nicolas, is there a process for inclusion in >> contrib? Would this be eligible? I'll just stick it in Elpa, >> otherwise. > > Any package is eligible. > > However, contrib/ is from pre-"package.el" days. Nowadays, I tend to > think it should be used only as an incubator for libraries meant to be > moved into core. Other libraries should be packaged in ELPA. > > I admit I didn't read the thread carefully. IIUC, it seems to be an > annotation mechanism. If I'm correct, I think it belongs to the first > category.
Yup, "annotation mechanism" is about right. Just to be clear, you think it fits into the category of incubation-prior-to-core? If anyone thinks that this mechanism warrants actual new Org syntax, I'd be happy to work on implementing that. But to be honest, I think it sits pretty comfortably on top of what's already available. The only slight awkwardness comes when you'd like a different face for the annotation links (currently solved with John Kitchin's hi-lock trick), and the fact that the link export routines don't have access to the exportation info/plist channels (ie, when exporting an annotation link to ODT, I'd like to be able to give the annotation an "author" element, but as far as I know I can't get access to that). These aren't major flaws. All that said, I do think this is an important feature that fills a bit of gap in Org. TODOs are fundamental, but they are discrete entities. Those of us who use Org for authoring could use a method of decorating spans of text with pertinent information. As org-comment stands now, the tabular list buffer serves as a pseudo Agenda for text comments: I have been using it, for example, as a way of keeping track of translation problems that I need to resolve. I'll admit I have dreamed of a syntax that looks like: [[body text to annotate][TODO:Look this up on the internet:@work]]. The thought of plugging that in to the existing Agenda machine is exhausting even to contemplate, though. I know we've got inlinetodos. They bug me, though: the absurd number of stars (even if they are invisible), and the fact that you're still not really attaching the TODO to specific text, which is what I want. I know these aren't reasonable objections, but still. Now I wish we'd named it org-annotate. I'm done, Eric
