org-commentary

org-commentary — generate or update conventional library headers using Org mode files.

Why?

If you have a README file with the description of your Emacs Lisp package (which you definetely should have), you may as well want to use that file as the canonical source of the documentation for the package. However, there is another place which needs this documentation: the commentary section of your main library file; you can update it manually, but it’s tedious and error prone (not to mention it’s a violation of the DRY principle).

Org mode has built-in export facilities which can be used to convert Org documents into various formats, including a simple plain text format (ascii backend).

This package employs these facilities to generate library headers from Org files automatically; it may be used either from inside of Emacs or from the command line.

Installation

You can skip this section if you’re going to use org-commentary as a development dependency of a Cask-managed project.

MELPA

org-commentary is available on both MELPA and MELPA Stable. Enable the corresponding repository by adding an entry to package-archives:

(require 'package)
;; you can enable MELPA Stable instead:
;; (add-to-list 'package-archives
;;              '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-initialize)

See the documentation on more details about setting up MELPA repositories.

To install org-commentary use Emacs’ package menu at M-x list-packages or run M-x package-install RET org-commentary RET.

Getting started

Note: these steps are written with assumption you’re using Cask for project management; otherwise, see Not using Cask? section below for instructions on how to use org-commentary CLI without Cask.

1. [Optional] If you have installed org-commentary manually, create a link to org-commentary:

   $ cask link org-commentary path/to/org-commentary/installation
       

2. Add org-commentary to the development dependencies of your library:

   (development
    (depends-on "org-commentary"))
       

   Fetch dependencies:

   $ cask install
       

3. Put the library header boilerplate in your ELisp file.
4. Generate Commentary section of the library headers:

   $ cask exec org-commentary README.org your-package.el
       

5. [Optional] Generate Change Log section of the library headers:

   $ cask exec org-commentary --section changelog CHANGELOG.org your-package.el
       

6. Commit.

Command line interface

org-commentary provides an executable script which can be invoked like this:

$ cask exec org-commentary [OPTION]... ORG-FILE ELISP-FILE

Run cask exec org-commentary --help to see available options.

Not using Cask?

Provided org-commentary is installed via the built-in package manager, you can invoke it from the shell like this:

$ emacs -Q --batch --eval '(package-initialize)' -l org-commentary-cli -f \
    org-commentary -- [OPTION]... ORG-FILE ELISP-FILE

For example, to see available options, run

$ emacs -Q --batch --eval '(package-initialize)' -l org-commentary-cli -f org-commentary -- --help

API

Use M-x describe-function <NAME> for details.

• command org-commentary-update

  Update library headers using the content of an Org document.

• function org-commentary-export-buffer-as-string.

  Export the Org document opened in the current buffer as a string.

• function org-commentary-export-file-as-string.

  Export an Org document as a string.

Customization

The user can set a number of options which affect the exporting process.

Each option can be set in several ways:

• in-file keyword

  A line which starts with a #+ followed by a keyword, a colon and then individual words defining a setting. Example:

  #+TITLE: the title of the document
      

• in-file option

  An option in compact form using the #+OPTIONS keyword:

  #+OPTIONS: opt1 opt2 opt3 ... optN
      

  opt consists of a short key followed by a value. For example, option toc: toggles inclusion of the table of contents; the following setting excludes the table of contens from export:

  #+OPTIONS: toc:nil
      

  Accepted values vary from option to option.

  To specify a rather long list if such options, one can use several #+OPTIONS lines.

• property

  An option specified via the optional property list EXT-PLIST passed as the last argument of the public functions (see the API section). For example, to enable export using UTF-8 characters, pass (list :ascii-charset 'utf-8) as the last argument of an export function.

• variable

  A global variable.

This package also enables setting the options via command line arguments, which are mapped to the corresponding properties.

In-file settings take precedence over keyword properties, which in turn override global variables.

This section gives a brief description of common options; for more details, see the dedicated sections (Export settings, Publishing options) of the Org mode manual.

Inclusion of the table of contents (TOC)

The table of content is normally inserted before the first headline of the file.

• in-file option toc:

  If this options is a number, use this number as the depth of the generated TOC. Setting this option to nil disables default TOC.

  Synonyms:

  • property :toc
  • variable org-commentary-with-toc
• in-file keyword #+TOC

  Insert TOC at the current position.

See Table of contents for more details.

Inclusion of subtrees

• in-file keyword #+EXCLUDE_TAGS

  The tags that exclude a tree from export (the default value is :noexport:).

  Alternatives:

  • in-file option exclude-tags:
  • property :exclude-tags
  • variable org-export-exclude-tags
• in-file keyword #+INCLUDE_TAGS

  The tags that select a tree for export (the default value is :export:). This setting takes precedence over #+EXCLUDE_TAGS.

  Alternatives:

  • in-file option select-tags:
  • property :select-tags
  • variable org-export-select-tags

Inclusion of drawers

Note: you need to specify custom drawers using the #+DRAWERS keyword for Org mode versions prior to 8.3.

• in-file optons d:

  A list of drawers to include. If the first element is the atom not, specify drawers to exclude instead.

  Alternatives:

  • property :with-drawers
  • variable org-export-with-drawers

Inclusion of tags

• in-file option tags:

  Toggles inclusion of tags.

  Alternatives:

  • property :with-tags
  • variable org-export-with-tags

Export charset

• property :ascii-charset

  The charset allowed to represent various elements and objects during export (the default value is ascii).

  Alternatives:

  • variable org-ascii-charset,
  • command-line argument --charset (-c)

Contributing

Prerequisites

You need Cask installed (see docs).

Setup

Clone the repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:smaximov/org-commentary.git

Install dependencies:

$ make dep-install

Preparing a pull request

Make sure all tests pass:

$ make test

Update package’s commentary header if you have made changes to README.org (do not edit it by hand!):

$ make update-headers

Commit final changes and create a pull request, describing briefly what it does.

Similar projects

• org2elcomment - provides an interactive function to update the commentary section of an Emacs Lisp file using the contents of an Org file opened in the current buffer.
• make-readme-markdown - in contrast to org-commentary, this package treats an Emacs Lisp file as the canonical source of documentation. That file is used to generate README in the Markdown format. The package provides additional features like auto-detected badges and API documentation of public functions.

License

This program is distributed under the terms of GNU General Public License, version 3 or any later version. See COPYING for details.