Re: [BUG] link abbreviations do not work inside property drawers [9.5.2 (release_9.5.2-38-g682ccd @ /home/ignacio/repos/emacs/lisp/org/)]

[Ignacio Casso]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Ignacio Casso <ignaciocasso@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> Link abbreviations do not work inside property drawers and are instead
>> confused with internal links. The following org file illustrates this
>> behavior.
>
> This is to be expected. org-open-at-point does the following:
>
>        ;; No valid link at point.  For convenience, look if something
>        ;; looks like a link under point in some specific places.
>        ((memq type '(comment comment-block node-property keyword))
>       (call-interactively #'org-open-at-point-global))
>
> That is, links are only partially recognised inside comments, node
> properties, and keywords.
>
>> I know that there is discussion of whether timestamps and links should
>> work or not inside property drawers, but since they currently work, I
>> think link abbreviations should be supported too. Let me know if you
>> agree and I'll debug the issue and send a patch with a fix proposal.
>
> I do not think that it is an easy problem to solve properly.
>
> In the discussion you referenced [1] Nicolas raised the problem that we
> cannot modify org-element parser to support links in more contexts as it
> may create various issues (e.g. in exporter).
>
> Without modifying the parser, supporting abbreviations will require code
> duplication or referring to internal org-element functions - a fragile
> approach.
>
> I am currently tinkering with an idea to implement several parser
> contexts, similar to optional argument in org-at-timestamp-p.
> Basically, org-element parser could allow using multiple
> named org-element-object-restrictions: 'agenda, 'export, 'lax, etc.
> This is not ideal, as Org syntax will be more complex. However, multiple
> interpretations of Org syntax are already implemented de facto (e.g.
> org-at-timestamp-p). So, centralising the parsing into org-element could
> be beneficial.
>
> Probably, the contexts might be defined by let-bound
> org-element-parser-context value.
>
> Best,
> Ihor
>
> [1] https://orgmode.org/list/877d8llha9.fsf@nicolasgoaziou.fr 

Actually, I have investigated a little bit and I think the issue is more simple
than that:

- Link abbreviations rely in the variables `org-link-abbrev-alist' for
  global abbreviations and `org-link-abbrev-alist-local' for
  abbreviations defined with #+LINK for a single org file.

- `org-open-at-point-global' opens links with
  `org-link-open-from-string' as opposed to `org-open-at-point', which
  uses `org-link-open'.

- `org-link-open-from-string' ends up using `org-link-open' too, but
  inside a `with-temp-buffer' form:

    (defun org-link-open-from-string (s &optional arg)
      ...
      (pcase (with-temp-buffer
           (let ((org-inhibit-startup nil))
             (insert s)
             (org-mode)
             (goto-char (point-min))
             (org-element-link-parser)))
        (`nil (user-error "No valid link in %S" s))
        (link (org-link-open link arg))))

- But in a temporal buffer, `org-link-abbrev-alist-local' is nil, and
  thus all abbreviations defined with #+LINK are lost.


So a simple solution to this would be preserving the value of
`org-link-abbrev-alist-local' when switching to the temporal buffer. I
think this is orthogonal to the issue of the parser, and it's a bug on
its own, since as a user I would expect that evaluating
`org-link-open-from-string' would use my current buffer's local values
of variables.

What do you think? If you agree, I can send a patch fixing it in two
lines with something like this:

  (let ((org-link-abbrev-alist
         (append org-link-abbrev-alist org-link-abbrev-alist-local)))
    (pcase (with-temp-buffer ...) ...))

or this:

  (let ((tmp-var (org-link-abbrev-alist-local)))
    (pcase (with-temp-buffer
             (setq org-link-abbrev-alist-local tmp-var)
             ...) ...))

P.S. There is another variable defined with `defvar-local' in ol.el:
`org-target-link-regexp'. I don't know what it is used for but it could
potentially suffer from the same problem.