Question

I’d like to use mark-paragraph (also for movement with forward/backward-paragraph) in org-mode buffers in the same way as in other major modes, i.e. to mark a continuous region delimited by empty lines. This should apply also to headings, list items, lines starting with ‘#’ etc. – i.e. I’d like for the purposes of paragraph editing to everything be treated as regular text.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

See the variables paragraph-start and paragraph-separate, and possibly also the use-hard-newlines function which is related (but probably not actually relevant in this case).

(defun use-default-paragraph-delimiters ()
  (setq paragraph-start (default-value 'paragraph-start)
        paragraph-separate (default-value 'paragraph-separate)))

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'use-default-paragraph-delimiters)

Edit: Admittedly, org-mode might depend upon its paragraph definitions for more than just interactive marking and moving, so here is a more targeted approach for customising the paragraph definitions for those commands only when called interactively using their key bindings.

(defmacro with-default-paragraph-definition (&rest body)
  "Evaluate body forms using the default definition of a paragraph."
  `(let ((paragraph-start (default-value 'paragraph-start))
         (paragraph-separate (default-value 'paragraph-separate)))
     ,@body))

(defalias 'my-org-mark-paragraph 'mark-paragraph)
(defadvice my-org-mark-paragraph 
  (around my-org-mark-paragraph-advice activate)
  (with-default-paragraph-definition ad-do-it))

(defalias 'my-org-forward-paragraph 'forward-paragraph)
(defadvice my-org-forward-paragraph
  (around my-org-forward-paragraph-advice activate)
  (with-default-paragraph-definition ad-do-it))

(defalias 'my-org-backward-paragraph 'backward-paragraph)
(defadvice my-org-backward-paragraph
  (around my-org-backward-paragraph-advice activate)
  (with-default-paragraph-definition ad-do-it))

(defun my-org-paragraph-overrides ()
  "Use the default paragraph definitions in org-mode
        when marking or moving by paragraph."
  (local-set-key [remap mark-paragraph] 'my-org-mark-paragraph)
  (local-set-key [remap forward-paragraph] 'my-org-forward-paragraph)
  (local-set-key [remap backward-paragraph] 'my-org-backward-paragraph))

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'my-org-paragraph-overrides)