Hello all,

Currently, if a macro is not defined, it will silently produce an empty
string while exporting.  This situation could arise for example if a
macro name is acidentally mistyped.  I think it’s desirable to warn the
user in this case.  The attached patch introduces a function to do so,
and shows how it would be integrated in the latex backend.  This raises
several questions:

1. Should the warning be a “message” (allows the export process to
   continue) or a “user-error” (stops the export process)?  Or, should
   this be configurable?

2. Since this is a feature that many backends will want to use, should
   we introduce a new “abstract” backend from which other backends can
   inherit, which incorporates this feature, and others like it in the
   future?  The idea would be similar to prog-mode in emacs, the major
   mode from which programming-language modes can derive.  The
   alternative is adding the (macro . org-export-macro-warn) entry
   manually to all the relevant backends, and relying on future backend
   authors to do the same.

3. Should this even be implemented as part of the backend’s
   translate-alist, or at a lower level?

Thanks,

-- 
Aaron Ecay