Re: [Hyperbole-users] Hyperbole vs. Org-mode outlining

[Robert Weiner]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 6:37 PM, aditya siram <address@hidden> wrote:

​Org has very useful facilities there.  I would say that Koutliner's properties are much more lisp-like and separate from the visible buffer text​, so you maintain a cleaner view of what you are working on, though I understand the properties can be collapsed in Org-mode.

But org-mode also has much more generic notion of a node. It understands source blocks, example blocks, result blocks, headlines etc. Obviously I have way less experience with Koutliner but it seems to understand only chunks of text.

​Yes, each Koutliner node is just unstructured text but it can have any kind of Hyperbole button or link embedded within it as well, in addition to the specialized klinks.  Thus, Hyperbole and the Koutliner can easily be made to understand any types of structure in Org mode.  With 2 or 3 lines of new code, Hyperbole was able to follow all org-mode links, so no doubt Hyperbole is broader in terms of links than Org mode and Org has more application-specific facilities.

 

​How do you reference a headline without including much of its text?

Adding names with special syntax again visually litters the buffer.  

Koutlines have built-in link anchors​

 

​with no extra effort.

See above, the special syntax is due to org's more flexible notion of a node.

​Hyperbole devotes a lot more effort to recognizing implicit structure embedded in all kinds of other buffer and file formats and then acting upon that structure without littering the format with specialized markup that creates visual noise and can be hard to maintain across time.  The next Hyperbole release forthcoming this week now recognizes all sorts of hash-character links without a single change to the native formats themselves:

    - pathname Implicit Button Type: generalized to handle hash-style links to

      HTML files, to Github Markdown # sections and to Emacs outline *

      sections.  So an Action Key press on any of the following links displays

      the link referent:

            "man/hyperbole.html#Questions-and-Answers"

   "README.md#why-was-hyperbole-developed"

   "DEMO#HTML Markdown and Emacs Outline Hash Links"

      Even links split across 2 lines like this now work: "DEMO#Social Media

      Hashtags and Usernames", as long as point is on the first line.

      Within HTML and Markdown files, in-file hash links without any file name

      prefix work as well.

      HTML hash-links are case-sensitive; other hash-links are not.  Hash links

      typically use dashes in place of the spaces that referents may contain,

      but if the link is enclosed in quotes, Hyperbole allows spaces to be used

      as well.  In fact, it is best practice to always enclose hash-style links

      in quotes so Hyperbole can distinguish them from other similar looking

      constructs, such as social media hashtags (see "(hyperbole)Social Media").

      Pathnames surrounded by literal non-ASCII quote marks now work as well.

      For example, ‘http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hyperbole/’.

    - New Implicit Button Type, markdown-internal-link, displays any in-file

      Markdown link referent, aside from pathnames and urls.  Together with

      other types, all Markdown links can now be followed by the Action Key.

​If I have 100 nodes in a list, imagine how long it would take to create all the named references and hyperlinks in Org-mode versus pointing and clicking to generate the links only in the Koutliner.

Without programming, yes, that would be a pain. Furthermore org does not update internal links when a subtree is re-parented etc. Hopefully Koutliner is better in this regard.
 

​Hyperbole is certainly good for embedding explicit and implicit links within comments of programming languages and also giving you implicit links within the code.

org-babel supports literate programming in the more traditional form, chunks of code interspersed into a document rather than vice versa. Although implicit links from comment is a very nice feature.

​Org would be much better for literate programming as Hyperbole has never sought to provide any particular support for that.

​

 

I'm excited about the future of Hyperbole. I see a lot of potential with third-party custom button packages, language specific implicit links, perhaps even leveraging Koutliner for literate programming so I hope that a community builds up around it. Org-mode was just an outliner until people grabbed it and ran with it.

​Great, we are happy to have you helping us bridge Org mode and Hyperbole and using your creativity to come with new areas in which Hyperbole can help speed information retrieval and management.

Bob

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