Re: [POLL] Should we accept breaking changes to get rid of Org libraries that perform side effects when loading?

[Russell Adams]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 12:56:01PM +0000, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Bastien Guerry <bzg@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:
> >
> >> This will break export and folding.
> >> Also, I often simply archive inlinetasks once they are done. The above
> >> will archive too much.
> >
> > I see.  So not only inline tasks are ugly syntactic-wise, but they
> > also have a specific behavior when exporting.  All this pleas for an
> > external module, not for something we support in Org's core IMHO.
>
> I do not think that it would be possible. In order to support
> inlinetasks in agenda/sparse trees/todo setting/tag setting, we need to
> modify the internals. I see no way around that.
>
> Too many aspects of Org are designed for one specific heading syntax.
> Even modifying inlinetask *****... syntax will likely require adding
> more special support where things "magically" work for now because
> inlinetasks often look the same as headings.

I hear "we have a bunch of extra complex code for an ill defined
special case". Org's designed around headings, and this special case
was a hack to abuse the threshold for heading detection to support a
nonstandard heading.

Sometimes there are features we just can't support.

Would removing inline tasks in core clean up anything?

Could we normalize the code if some of the features were enabled in a
cookie/flag on a heading?

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Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com
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