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Comment by unsignedint | Hacker News Reader

I tried to like Org-mode, but one major complaint I have with Org-Mode syntax is its inability to effectively handle text in a language without spaces; some format syntax and link can't be segmented in languages like Japanese.

I guess this is also said to be true for other format like markdown, but at least format like HTML doesn't have that problem...

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Could you provide an example document that exhibits the issue, and a more detailed description of what goes wrong? Say, to one of the email addresses in my profile. Thanks in advance!

Pretty simple things;

  テスト*テスト*テスト
  テスト_テスト_テスト
  テスト[[http://orgmode.org/][テスト]]テスト

Back when I actually have been using org-mode extensively (loved ID based document linking, Calendar file export, etc.) just I couldn't use it for anything that involves Japanese text which was 1/3 of things I had to deal with. I've actually tried suggesting on a developer's list for possibility of "negative" space where it can denote "space, but not quite space" which wasn't received well..

Yeah, that's a somewhat tricky problem, I think - the regexes depend on surrounding whitespace and are pretty hairy in general, as I recall. Something might be done with surrounding word boundaries instead, but I'm not sure how Emacs regexes handle those, and also unsure how the semantic applies in Japanese text - as I'm very unfamiliar with the language, I haven't yet found a chance to experiment. As I find the time, I'll see what I can do with these examples - thanks for providing them!

And yet RTL languages ...

What about them? Does org mode handle them better/worse than other formats?

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