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Re: [O] Comments and control lines (# vs. #+)
From: |
Mark Shoulson |
Subject: |
Re: [O] Comments and control lines (# vs. #+) |
Date: |
Fri, 25 May 2012 02:14:22 +0000 (UTC) |
User-agent: |
Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) |
Samuel Wales <samologist <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> The following, which is general and I wrote a long time ago,
> might also be relevant to the recent thread on comments
> breaking lists.
>
> ===
>
> There might be really good reasons for the #+ comment
> convention in Org, but I am not sure what they are. So
> please bear with me.
Probably the most important one is that # is often used in ordinary writing
without the intent of commenting out the rest of the line. Like saying "We're
#1" or talking about #hashtags. It could be escaped for things like that,
maybe, but the whole point is to keep the markup as minimal and unobtrusive as
possible. Comments are specifically a departure from the norm; they are things
*excluded* from the usual functioning of whatever they're in. Let _them_ be
what has to get extra markup. #+ is a sufficiently rare combination that it
can be spared.
> This list is not complete or minimal. Please disregard the
> items you don't like.
Most of them can't really counter the above issue, I think (you may feel
otherwise).
> 1) #+ is not as standard as #
Standards are per-format anyway.
> 2) there are tools for commenting and uncommenting regions
> with #, but not with #+
Org is its own tool. If it needs region-commenting features, let them be
added, and they can use #+. Besides, the COMMENT keyword in headlines
also comments out regions quite effectively (if the region is a subtree).
> 4) imported (or pasted) text will often have # commenting
> and this will need special processing to make it work
> with Org
This is perfectly sensible if you're a programmer (I haven't seen # used as
a comment character anywhere outside of computer-parsable input). Org has a
much larger scope than talking about programming. I would say that "Imported
(or pasted) text will often have # without intending to comment and this will
need special processing..." That's more or less what I said above.
Org is mainly about prose. If you're pasting in programs with comments they
probably belong in code-blocks anyway.
> 5) fill functions and packages often don't understand #+
Org is its own tool, and is what's best suited for editing org files.
> 6) plain # works in column 0 in Org, leading to user
> expectation that it will behave consistently in other
> columns as it does in most other languages that use #
# in column 0 is a special case precisely for something simpler than #+ since
# is rarely seen in column 0 in ordinary text, though it could happen if a
# sign or something like #1 happened to be wrapped at a bad place.
This present paragraph does serve as a counterexample, to be sure, but
I think it is a rare case.
~mark