Re: Org mode and Emacs

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

     > The .org falls in the category of lightweight markup formats and I
     > believe it should stick close to this definition.

   If people keep this unchanged, Org mode will remain useful for the
   tasks it can do today.  But it won't be able to do the job for which
   we now use Texinfo.

   There are many different Texinfo markup constructs, so to do the job
   of Texinfo, Org mode would need to be able to distinguish them all.

   So the basic question is: to extend Org mode to do that job, or not?

It would make more sense to extend Texinfo to allow for org-mode like
markup (or lighter markup), than try to stuff Texinfo into org-mode.
Texinfo is despite its issues, very nice and easy to write.

Handling the version chasm between existing Texinfo and "new" Texinfo
can easily be solved by having a small @texinfo-version thing at the
top.

But replacing Texinfo outright with some org-mode variant seems like yak
shaving.  The big issue with Texinfo is that it is hard to make your own
complicated constructs (like @defn ..), and the lack of macro support of
any kind.