xee VS orgdown

I took a look at the git blame, and the commit title is perfect.

https://github.com/gco/xee/commit/750196023da5457d9535b30299...

PDF is not my favorite file format

It's also the one with the famous rant, "PSD is not my favourite file format": https://github.com/gco/xee/blob/7aec0d65f776fa59c58eb6cf163b...

// At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format. // PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an // insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having // worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire // that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns. // If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different // places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those // too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide // that these particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement // should not be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned, // or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included. // Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD, // of course, uses all three, and more. // Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of // your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th // birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but // at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people // responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format. // Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this, // I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending // me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or // other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so // difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I // was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done // so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire. // Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch // them on a spaceship directly into the sun. // // PSD is not my favourite file format. ``` Source

Source

I don't understand what the blog adds, I would rather the link pointed directly to

https://github.com/gco/xee/blob/master/XeePhotoshopLoader.m#...

which has been shared quite a lot in the past

It's the same with html and css: people shit on it all the time, but this just shows they don't have the imagination to see how much worse it could be.

Just compare to e.g. Photoshop file format: https://github.com/gco/xee/blob/master/XeePhotoshopLoader.m#...

There are two reasons why I call Org mode standardized.

> I imagine there aren't really various flavors of Org Mode, but that doesn't make it standardized.

All the implementations that call themselves org-mode follow the conventions set by the canonical implementation - the Emacs org-mode. While this may not sound like a good reason to call it standardized, the practical implication is a vast difference from what you get with various markdown flavors. In the latter case, the only way to make sure that your markdown is correct, is to test it with the target implementation.

The second reason is that there is an actual effort to standardize org-mode - called Orgdown [1]. Org-mode is already more or less uniform across implementations. This effort tries to write it down as a reference. Markdown has a similar effort called CommonMark. But if you want to know why it's different, you have to look at the history of why it isn't called 'Standard Markdown'.

[1] https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown

And yes, at least my setup fulfills all of your requirements and much more. For starters, I can add tags, date- and timestamps everywhere, generate "agenda" views for days/weeks/months/... which collects all those time-related items and visualizes them, I can link emails/urls/... and links to files which I tag as well, I can search through search strings or regex to find meta-data on files/notes/events/... and it's all in the most versatile file format possible: plain UTF-8 text files containing simple orgdown syntax, the most beautifully designed lightweight markup language (LML) there is IMHO.

Are you aware of orgdown?

If you want to parse Orgdown files yourself, expect to invest some time in setting up a testing environment.

I think we've got a misunderstanding here. Text files (in this case in orgdown syntax format) are files that contain the information in its original form: characters, words, sentences. So you only need a software that lets you open a text file to view it. If you want to modify the information stored in the text files, you need an application that lets you modify text files. In case of orgdown, you can find options on https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org or choose any non-syntax-specific editor of your choice.

So the links are working in Markdown? So Markdown-export is working and your issue starts with the conversion from Markdown to Orgdown?

Well, the difference is that Orgdown, the syntax of Org mode for GNU Emacs is a Lightweight markup language while HTML is a more complex markup language.

Since your notes are in orgdown format, you may use any compatible app that understands to read and probably write orgdown. One of them is GNU Emacs with its org-mode.

I'm thinking of a screen that pops up when booting Emacs that only shows the files I was working on recently in large font (maybe as buttons to click on). The file extension should be hidden, so that I may use it with Orgdown files that have long, descriptive file names (most probably within the same directory).