#+title: Universal Languages

 #+author: Richard Westhaver

 #+email: ellis@rwest.io

 #+OPTIONS: toc:t

 This document describes a *U-Language* as described by the late great

 [[https://iep.utm.edu/haskell-brooks-curry/][Haskell Curry]]:

 #+begin_quote

 Every investigation, including the present one, has to be communicated

 from one person to another by means of language. It is expedient to

 begin our study by calling attention to this obvious fact, by giving a

 name to the language being used, and by being explicit about a few of

 its features. We shall call the language being used the

 U-Language. [...] There would be no point in calling attention to it,

 if it were not for the fact that language is more intimately related

 to our job than of most others.

 #+end_quote

 In this document, we will be calling attention to our own language -

 examining it, and describing how it works.

 Our job is to solve problems. Hard problems preferred. So we ought to

 pay close attention to the language we use because it brings the

 reader and writer /closer/ to the problem at hand.

 For starters, we are primarily concerned with /written languages/ like

 the one you're reading now. We will skip past the obvious details -

 English is our primary form of communication for example. The line you

 are reading currently is a sentence which is part of a paragraph.

 There are some non-obvious questions which deserve inquiry though.

 - *Who is this for?* \\

   This document is for authors and readers alike. It is a loose

   specification, but also serves as introductory material into our

   communication and design philosophy.

 - *What is this for?* \\

   The purpose of this document is to provide a /standard of

   communication/.

   All sources we write attempt to conform to this standard but this is

   not strictly enforced. If there is a reason to not comply with a

   rule, it is already broken.

 * Org Mode

 :PROPERTIES:

 :ID: 98a02bb2-3f39-49c6-898a-68ccd8f3cbe1

 :END:

 [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][GNU Emacs]] is our text editor, so naturally [[https://orgmode.org/][Org Mode]] is our word

 processor.

 If you are already familiar with Emacs and Org-Mode, I recommend

 opening the source of this document in Emacs and following along.

 If not, I recommend browsing through the [[https://orgmode.org/worg/][Worg resources]], but we won't

 be getting too deep into tribal hacker knowledge of Emacs.

 What's important to know is this: There is /Org Syntax/ and

 /Org-mode/ - these are different things.

 Our =ulang= is almost /exclusively/ based on /Org Syntax/ and we are

 not concerned about /Org-mode/ the application in this document.

 * ulang

 :PROPERTIES:

 :ID: ulang

 :END:

 As the title suggest we refer to our *U-Language* as *ulang*. Each

 section of this document describes a feature.

 ** Outlines

 In Org, headings can be summarize as any line starting with a star: =*

 H1=. Headings can be nested or 'demoted' by prepending another star:

 =** H2=.

 This is a useful pattern which we apply outside of Org - most commonly

 in our code comments.

 In our source code, we use the comment character instead of a star:

 #+begin_src lisp

 ;;; foo

 (print "H1") ;; just an inline comment

 ;;;; bar

 (print "H2")

 ;;; baz

 (print "H1")

 #+end_src

 A collection of /headings/ is what we call an *Outline* - which is

 also the name of the major-mode utilized for this feature and of

 course - what Org itself is derived from.

 ** Keywords

 :PROPERTIES:

 :ID: 2cadda9a-22a3-4b42-ad4e-d7a774f74cba

 :END:

 The following keywords indicate the state of an element. They often

 appear as the first word in a heading to indicate a [[*Tasks][Task]].

 - TBD :: A task to be done at a later date.

 - TODO :: A task yet to be done.

 - FIXME :: Item that needs fixing.

 - WIP :: Work In Progress task.

 - WAIT :: A suspended task.

 - DEAD :: Item that will not be completed.

 - DONE :: Completed task.

 - BUG :: Designate a bug item.

 - IDEA :: Designate an idea item.

 - NOTE :: Designates a note item.

 - DRAFT :: Designates a draft item.

 - COMMENT :: A 'commented' item.

 ** Tasks

 Tasks as they are known in Org, usually consist of a heading that

 starts with a [[#2cadda9a-22a3-4b42-ad4e-d7a774f74cba][Keyword]]. Here we describe some additional sections and

 metadata which are present in our collection of tasks.

 Our task management system is roughly a hybrid of two more

 conventional methods: GTD and Agile. For convenience I will describe

 these styles and how I use them separately, but the concepts may be

 spliced differently in real tasks.

 - *GTD* \\

 - *Agile* \\

   It's a dirty word in some tech circles - the dreaded PIs, daily

   standups, and still nobody knows what's going on, Oh my! Do not

   worry. For the most part we just borrow the vocabulary.

   Our /Agile/ workflow consists of roadmaps, features (epics/ARTs),

   issues (user stories), and of course, tasks.

 ** IDs

 We reference two different types of identifiers in documentation:

 - UUID :: ID property

 - User-defined :: CUSTOM_ID property

 Most of the time these Ids don't add any information for the reader -

 the UUIDs are used to index and graph documents, CUSTOM_IDs are for

 convenience but are rarely necessary given the many ways of

 identifying a headline.

 ** Macros

 :PROPERTIES:

 :ID: cdb4976b-1d0d-49df-bfb1-3dbd5d99590e

 :END:

 Several *global* [[https://orgmode.org/manual/Macro-Replacement.html][Org Macros]] are used throughout our documents. They are listed

 here for convenience.

 #+name: ulang-macros

 #+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports both :results replace pp

   org-export-global-macros

 #+end_src

 #+RESULTS: ulang-macros

 : (("header" .

 :   "#+TITLE: $1\n#+AUTHOR: $2\n#+EMAIL: $3\n#+DESCRIPTION: $4\n#+SUBTITLE: $4\n#+OPTIONS: ^:nil toc:nil num:nil html-postamble:nil\n#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://fonts.xz.style/serve/inter.css\"/>\n#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"https://cdn.compiler.company/css/new.min.css\"/>\n#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"https://cdn.compiler.company/css/night.css\"/>\n")

 :  ("opts" . "#+OPTIONS: $1\n"))

 Macros /are not expanded/ in source files - you will see them in the

 form ={{{NAME(ARGS)}}}=. You will need the relevant macro definition

 (in =ulang.el=) in order to use some Org-Mode functions (org-export)

 with our docs.