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

[Timothy]

Hi All,

On Sat, Aug 12, 2023, at 1:46 PM, Bastien Guerry wrote:

> Same here, I'd be tempted to deny Org citizenship to inline tasks: it
> always felt like a nice hack for a niche use-case, but a hack anyway.
>
> If it modifies Org syntax in surprising ways, this is another argument
> for removing org-inlinetask.el from Org's core.  Remember: this is not
> to say that inline tasks are forbidden, it's just a message for users
> that inline tasks are something not maintained by Org's core team.
>
>> And it is not clear how to fix this. We did not make inlinetasks into
>> standard Org syntax in the past and now it is in the weird state when we
>> have (featurep 'org-inlinetask) sprinkled across the code just to
>> accommodate for this conditional syntax.
>
> Yes, this is ugly.

As I've done the V2 rewrite of org-syntax and written a non-elisp Org parser 
from scratch, I feel like I'm in a decent position to comment on inline tasks.

They are a syntactic abomination.

If there is any chance of making inlinetasks an extra that is outside core 
Org/the Org spec, I think that would be for the best. Having a 15+ level 
headlines sometimes transform into a completely different syntactic element is 
... really not nice.

All the best,
Timothy.