Re: [O] [RFC] Org document concept + document property drawers

[Adam Porter]

Gustav Wikström <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm continuing on my proposal to introduce a "document" element in
> org-mode and the idea of seeing everything before the first headline
> as the base level 0 outline for a file. I've attached two patches that
> I'd like some public review of before pushing to master.
>
> Patch 0001 introduces the document element into org-element.el, and
> some restructuring related to that.
>
> Patch 0002 makes it possible to use property drawers at the document
> level. I've hopefully covered all related commands to make this work.
> And I've added a bunch of tests to guard against future regressions.
>
> Waiting for your comments!

This is a very interesting idea, and I don't want to dismiss your work,
but I am concerned about how much third-party code will likely break by
changing the results returned by org-element for parsing an Org buffer.
I haven't thoroughly studied all of the code in your patches, so I may
be wrong, but I think the breakage could be extensive.  For example,
simple operations like destructuring the results of org-element parsing
functions may be broken.  Have you done any investigation into this
issue?

Maybe there should be a transitional period in which the existing
org-element parsing functions would work as before, and the new
document-level elements would be returned by a new org-element
document-level parsing function.  Frankly, if there is breakage,the
transition would probably take a few years, because there is a lot of
code out there that has worked for years and may not be updated or
replaced for years.