[Orgmode] Unintended behavior? Links without description

[Christian Moe]

Hi,

In pre-processing for export, 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: