Re: [O] transcluding some org-elements in multiple places

[David Talmage]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Eric S Fraga <address@hidden> wrote:

On Friday,  9 Dec 2016 at 15:29, John Kitchin wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have an idea for how I could transclude "copies" or links to

[...]

> Any thoughts? Do you see any potential issues?

Potentially very interesting and useful idea.  Some thoughts/issues:

I'm interested in this, too.  In my lab notebook org file, I have a section that should be put into its own file and either linked or transcluded in several places.  Transclusion would be better because I could see the text without following a link.  It suits my lazy nature. ;-)

 

...

- what about more than level of indirection: link to a trancluded
  headline which transcludes to another etc.  What is shown?  Is there a
  performance hit?

It seems to me that transclusion should be transitive.  A transcluded org file should be able to transclude other org files.  It should be transclusion all the way down. 

It also seems to me that org-mode transclusion must detect cycles so that it does not infinitely transclude documents.

- what happens if the destination moves or gets deleted?  the link to
  it, which looked like something "complete" is now meaningless.  This
  could be quite confusing.  This is probably the most serious issue.

How does org-mode handle broken links now?  That's probably the right way to handle broken transclusion.

- the table aspect is almost a "view" on a database which is really
  appealing but would benefit from a fully defined syntax a la sql?
  Would table formulas work as expected from the view of the contents?

Why wouldn't table formulas work?  Transclusion is/could be/should be just another way to put org-mode formatted text into an org-mode buffer.

...

- could we have "read-only" views?  I may not want the original touched.

Perhaps that would be property of the transcluded document.

 

- how does an export work?  On the view or the actual contents?

Export works on the view.