Build a menu for an HTML publish

[Sébastien Gendre]

Hello,

I (continue to) write an online documentation with Org-mode and I want
to build the main navigation menu dynamically. I would like to have your
opinion about what I plan to do.


# What I plan

I plan to write a function that I can assign to the variable
`org-html-preamble` or the publish setting :html-preamble.

This function would take as parameters:

* The brand name and/or the brand logo url

* The main menu structure

And optionally the HTML templates for:

* The brand name and/or logo url

* The menu item

* The menu item with submenu

* The menu surrounding

* The preamble

This function will return the formatted preamble in HTML format.


# What I need to define

I need to choose how the menu structure is defined. An Elisp
alist ? An org-mode file containing only a list ?

If I choose an Elisp alist, do I reuse the Org-mode URL format ? If yes,
is there any org-mode internal function I can use to convert an url like
"file:example.org::*some headline" to "https://example.html#custom-id" ?

With the Elisp alist, I could use keys as menu labels and associated values as
targets. With this solution, I can have different kinds of targets.

If I choose an org-mode file, I cannot control how the HTML export is
built. I will need to write my own function that parse the file, extract
the needed information and format the HTML result. And I need to use a
different extension to avoid having to exclude this file with
org-publish.


# How to pass parameters to this function

If I set a function as value to the variable `org-html-preamble`, this
function will receive a plist containing all the export options.

But can I set custom export option in the publish project alist ?
And when I export manually a file, can I set custom export option on
buffer level ?

Or each option in the plist that my function receive need to be defined
in the HTML export backend level ?


Best regards

-------
Gendre Sébastien

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