Re: [O] Broken org-mode "Column width and alignment" in latest version

[Kaushal Modi]

Hello Ruy,

First of all, thanks for confirming that this worked for you.

Secondly, no question is a newbie question :) This mailing list is one of the friendliest mailing lists I've participated in. So don't worry about upsetting someone, or getting offended. So I am continuing this thread on the mailing list.

Feel free to ask any kind of Org question you might have, and there are many folks here to help you out. 

Further comments are inline below. 

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017, 5:56 PM Ruy Exel <address@hidden> wrote:

> #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
> ,#+STARTUP: align shrink
> #+END_EXAMPLE

Got it!  Thanks very much.

You're welcome. 

I am in fact a brand new user of org-mode and 7.9.3f is just the version which was dormant in my computer before I updated to the GIT version.  Sometimes I use it for comparison.

If you are a brand new user, it's my personal opinion that that stick to the stable release. You get that by cloning the maint branch instead, or getting org or org-plus-contrib via Org Elpa.

The master branch isn't unstable, it's perfectly fine as a daily driver, but some features could be in flux, which could get confusing if you just started using Org.

However I noticed that the online manual at (http://orgmode.org/manual/Column-width-and-alignment.html) is more compatible with that old version than the GIT version.

The online version is synced with the stable releases of Org, which I mentioned above. It's not in sync with the version you think (7.9.3f), but with the latest stable release 9.1.4 (as of today). 

It just happens that the column shrink feature was recently (few months) added to the Org master branch. So you don't see its reference in the online manual. That feature will go out in the next major release of the stable version.. 9.2. 

Of course I do not expect to have a fully working manual for a changing system such as the GIT version,

You're in for a treat here :). This is Emacs, and in my experience the best way to access the Info manuals.  The Info manuals that get built along with Org are always in sync with the respective versions. 

So,

Org master > Manuals: Info (synced with Org master)

Org maint > Manuals: Info, online (synced with Org maint)

If you haven't used Info manuals, do C-h i h to learn how to use those from within Emacs. They are vastly better searchable than the online version. And you always access the correct version of the Org Info manual from within Emacs. 

but in case the above manual is superseded by some other one, I'd like to know where it is.

As above, if using master branch Org, you get the correct version of the manual from within Emacs. 

PS:  I figure this newbie message is not relevant to the folks at address@hidden, so I'am not CCing it there anymore.

As I said in the beginning of the email, don't worry. We are all here to learn and share. 

--

Kaushal Modi