Category: Link

What all of those org-babel functions do

For the lazy org users like myself who want to know what the functions
listed here do, just evaluate the one you want: 

(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-open-src-block-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-load-in-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-pop-to-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-previous-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-next-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-maybe)
(describe-function 'org-babel-open-src-block-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-expand-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-src-block-head)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-named-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-named-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-buffer)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-subtree)
(describe-function 'org-babel-demarcate-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-tangle)
(describe-function 'org-babel-tangle-file)
(describe-function 'org-babel-check-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-insert-header-arg)
(describe-function 'org-babel-load-in-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-lob-ingest)
(describe-function 'org-babel-view-src-block-info)
(describe-function 'org-babel-switch-to-session-with-code)
(describe-function 'org-babel-sha1-hash)
(describe-function 'org-babel-describe-bindings)
(describe-function 'org-babel-do-key-sequence-in-edit-buffer)

There are some very special functions in there!

The Standard Function Library

The SFL (Standard Function Library) from iMatix is a portable function library for C/C++ programs. The SFL is the result of many years’ development, and is provided as Open Source software for the benefit of the Internet community.

The SFL provides about 450 functions that cover these areas:
Compression, encryption, and encoding;
Datatype conversion and formatting;
Dates, times, and calendars;
Directory and environment access;
User and process groups;
Inverted bitmap indices;
Symbol tables;
Error message files;
Configuration files;
String manipulation and searching;
File access;
Internet socket access;
Internet programming (MIME, CGI);
SMTP (e-mail) access;
Server (batch) programming;
Program tracing.

It is free software.

SCALABLE VECTOR GRAPHICS (SVG)

SVG is a markup language for describing two-dimensional graphics applications and images, and a set of related graphics script interfaces.

That is probably one of the “understatements of the century” kind of things. At least, it would appear that way to folks like myself who have never worked with such things (nor had the need to hand-code Postscript as seemingly many others have).
The fact that full access to the document is provided for the HTML container and is entirely accessible both to and from JavaScript makes this a quite amazing computational/visual platform.