[Orgmode] Re: Unintended behavior? Links without description

[Thomas S. Dye]

Aloha Christian,

I explored the possibility of bisecting but found two things: 1) with  
my setup I can't run versions of Org-mode earlier than approximately  
7.01h because of requirements for ob.el, and 2) the current behavior  
has been around at least since last summer--Org-mode version 7.01trans  
(release_7.01h.209.g2c33b) yields the same results as the current git  
master.

All the best,
Tom


On Dec 28, 2010, at 12:29 AM, Christian Moe wrote:

> (sorry -- hit "send" too early by mistake in the previous mail)
>
> Hi,
>
> In pre-processing for export with org-export-normalize-links, links  
> that lack a description part are given one, which consists of the  
> full raw path of the link. In other words, link descriptions are  
> never nil. This seems to conflict with the expectations of org- 
> bbdb.el and custom links based on that example.
>
> The link [[bbdb:Carsten Dominik]], for instance, is exported to html  
> and latex as follows:
>
>  <i>bbdb:Carsten Dominik</i>
>  \textit{bbdb:Carsten Dominik}.
>
> Org-bbdb.el is clearly prepared to be passed a desc that is nil, in  
> which case it would use path instead:
>
> (defun org-bbdb-export (path desc format)
>  "Create the export version of a BBDB link specified by PATH or DESC.
> If exporting to either HTML or LaTeX FORMAT the link will be
> italicized, in all other cases it is left unchanged."
>  (cond
>   ((eq format 'html) (format "<i>%s</i>" (or desc path)))
>   ((eq format 'latex) (format "\\textit{%s}" (or desc path)))
>   (t (or desc path))))
>
> However, desc is never nil, because a missing description part is  
> replaced in export pre-processing by a string consisting of the link  
> type, a colon, and the path. This takes place in the function org- 
> export-normalize-links.
>
> This makes for unexpected behavior in custom links that some of us  
> have defined. E.g., Thomas S. Dye's `cite' links (the thread `org- 
> add-link-type'):
>
> >  (org-add-link-type
> >   "citet" 'ebib
> >   (lambda (path desc format)
> >     (cond
> >      ((eq format 'latex)
> >       (if (and desc)
> >             (format "\\citet[%s]{%s}" desc path)
> >             (format "\\citet{%s}" path))))))
> >
> > [[citet:green84:_settl_patter_studies_ocean]]
> >
> > yields this:
> >
> > \citet[citet:green84:_settl\_patter\_studies\_ocean] 
> > {green84:_settl_patter_studies_ocean}
>
> Some of my links, more closely modeled on org-bbdb.el, have similar  
> problems.
>
> I haven't done the bisection thing, but I suspect this is a fairly  
> recent change.
>
> I think I've tracked down the problem, but I don't necessarily  
> understand what org-export-normalize-links is supposed to do or what  
> other behaviors depend on this, so I'm not going to submit a patch.  
> If this is now the intended behavior, it will be no problem to  
> rewrite the custom link export definitions to take account of it.
>
> Yours,
> Christian