Re: [BUG] Child's visibility property is overridden by parent's [9.5.2 (9.5.2-gbc8c3e @ /home/john/.emacs.d/straight/build/org/)

[Ihor Radchenko]

John Mathena <jmmathena@gmail.com> writes:

Confirmed.

> It seems like the visibility property on a parent heading overrides
> the visibility property on a child heading - is this expected? e.g.
> when I have the raw text:
>
> * Foo
> :PROPERTIES:
> :VISIBILITY: content
> :END:
> ** Bar
> :PROPERTIES:
> :VISIBILITY: folded
> :END:
> *** Baz
>
> ... I would expect (and would like) to see
>
> * Foo...
>  * Bar...
>
> that is, where Foo shows only the content below it, and Bar has all of
> its children folded. Instead, I get
>
> * Foo...
>  * Bar...
>   * Baz...

The behaviour you observe is because
org-cycle-set-visibility-according-to-property explicitly ignores all
the VISIBILITY properties in all the descendent headings of a heading
with VISIBILITY property. i.e. VISIBILITY property of Bar is ignored
when its ancestor Foo has VISIBILITY property.

This behaviour is not documented in the manual:

>>    Furthermore, any entries with a ‘VISIBILITY’ property (see *note
>> Properties and Columns::) get their visibility adapted accordingly.
>> Allowed values for this property are ‘folded’, ‘children’, ‘content’,
>> and ‘all’.

I would say that the existing behaviour is a confusing and might be
considered as a bug. However, it may not always be straightforward how
to deal with different combinations of VISIBILITY setting for
ancestor/descendent headings. Consider the following example:

* Foo
:PROPERTIES:
:VISIBILITY: folded
:END:
** Bar
:PROPERTIES:
:VISIBILITY: content
:END:
*** Baz

Foo is supposed to be folded, but it is unclear how to process Bar.
Should Bar's contents be visible? Should it be folded?

Best,
Ihor