> Perhaps Org Mode reskinned to look more like Markdown.

or, reskinned to look visually whatever one wants...

https://sophiebos.io/posts/beautifying-emacs-org-mode/

https://zzamboni.org/post/beautifying-org-mode-in-emacs/

I mention this, because I am not particular about which character symbolises what as long as it is consistent and documented.

However, some people do want things to look just so, and for them, few tools come close to Emacs orgmode.

One can certainly reskin the plaintext rendering to show up however one wants. This has the downside of "two systems" though, e.g. type ** but see it insta-rendered as ###. Although, I rarely type headings like that (character by character). I use the keybindings to "make header", "indent", "de-indent" etc.

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getnormality a day ago | parent [-]

Precisely. Emacs folks often talk about how incredibly powerful and flexible their system is, so working with a reskinned Org Mode markup system when dealing with other people's stuff should be completely trivial for them, right? They should consider accommodating less technically sophisticated people for whom different notations are a bigger burden, no?

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adityaathalye a day ago | parent | next [-]

Your wish is our command... I'd argue that Emacs package maintainers care a lot about usability, in general. This extends to when they craft a package for general use.

https://github.com/tvraman/emacspeak "the complete audio desktop" by our blind and sight-impaired friends, for our blind and sight-impaired friends (and others who must necessarily use speech interfaces)

https://github.com/pprevos/emacs-writing-studio for writers at large

fountain-mode for screenwriting and playwriting https://fountain-mode.org/

https://chrismaiorana.com/emacs-guides/org-mode-syntax/ ("for writers and thinkers")

markdown beautification

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/10h9jf0/beautify_mar...

https://oxal.org/blog/powerful-emacs-hacks-image-markdown/

general beautification

https://github.com/pretty-mode/pretty-mode

etc. etc. etc.

If there is a specific kind of person's specific kind of text editing need, there's probably an Emacs package for that.

The real tragedy is how poorly Emacs itself is conveyed to people. Mouse-pointing etc. works just fine out of the box. And as the emacspeak package demonstrates, at its core, it is a very usable and humane piece of technology.

	▲	getnormality 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe I'll try it someday! I'm always up for an underrated, high quality life improvement technology.

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dietr1ch a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem isn't customising your editor to use the symbol you want, but to have a spec that allows freely sharing files back and forth without trouble.

Org has no specification other editors can follow (although people have tried adding support to other editors and also writing such a spec).

	▲	adityaathalye a day ago \| parent [-]
		There is a written-down specification, but not a formal grammar (I assume you implied the latter): https://orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html The standalone project, org-parser is pretty good! https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser (usable from Javascript, Java). See also: "Formal Specification and Programmatic Parser for Org-mode" https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/s0zvlh/formal_specif...