Re: [Orgmode] Integration of Org mode and mairix

[Adam Spiers]

Carsten Dominik (address@hidden) wrote:
> On Aug 7, 2007, at 19:54, Bastien wrote:
> >Here is a patch against latest org-mode 5.04 as a first attempt of
> >implementing custom link-types (stored in `org-link-custom-types'.)
> >
> ><org.el_07082007.patch>
> >It lets you define an alist of custom link-types. See the docstring of
> >`org-link-custom-types'.
> >
> >Then you need to define the follow/store functions by yourself. Here 
> >are the defuns I use (in addition to Georg's mairix.el):
> 
> I have read the discussion about extending link capabilities with
> great interrest, and I do like the code that has been written.
> Thanks in particular to Adam Spiers and George Greve for their
> inspiring mairix hack.

My pleasure :-)

> Here is my take on it.
> 
> First about the mairix integration.  If I understand correctly, mairix 
> does only the search, and you still do need to select a way how to display
> the results.  In this case, wouldn't a syntax
> 
>   gnus:mairix:.....
>   vm:mairix:.....
> 
> be better?

Possibly - that depends on whether any user would ever want to create
links which fired up more than one MUA; otherwise the choice of MUA
could be set with a defcustom.  I can't think of a use case for the
former, and the latter seems cleaner (and means that if you change MUA
you don't have to do a search/replace on all your links), but no doubt
someone will think of an opposing argument.

Personal plea: please bear in mind those of us who use MUAs not based
in emacs!  For example, my preferred action when following a mairix
link is to pop up a fresh xterm with `mutt -f $mairix_folder' running
inside it.

> Then I understand that mairix is only one of many possible indexing
> tools, so we probably should go for a general solution.

Agreed.

> So far I have liked the fact that many more common Emacs packages
> are integrated with Org-mode right out of the box, and that no setup
> steps are needed.  However, with this indexing stuff, it seems that
> the time for a general extension mechanism has come - this will also
> allow many other hacks.  Bastien, I looked at your code, and I want
> to propose to you to modify it in the following way - making it
> closer to how John Wiegley has implemented it for planner/wiki/muse.

This leads to the other point I wanted to make, although its scope is
possibly too great for this list: I would greatly prefer any such
solution to allow hyperlinking from within other modes - muse in
particular.  Perhaps this could be done via orgstruct, or maybe the
org and muse camps could get together and agree to standardize on a
single syntax for hyperlinking, e.g. implemented via a shared minor
mode.  Wishful thinking?  I don't know, but it does strike me that
there is some duplication of effort across not just org and muse,
but also browse-url.el and possibly others.  

Incidentally, I think it's great that org-mode already uses URL-like
locators for external links.  This would be a good foundation for a
unification project.