Re: org-exp-blocks: what about previewing blocks ?

From: "Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com>
To: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: org-exp-blocks: what about previewing blocks ?
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:59:08 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m2skhnyfmr.fsf@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <08E74544-CC3D-4AEA-B5C2-76826E46766A@gmail.com> (Carsten Dominik's message of "Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:31:00 +0200")

Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com> writes:

> On Jun 18, 2009, at 11:32 AM, Nicolas Girard wrote:
>
>> 2009/6/18 Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
>>
>> On Jun 17, 2009, at 2:40 AM, Nicolas Girard wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> currently the code in org-exp-blocks is intended for pre-processing
>> only.
>> It seems to me like org-mode would gain a very powerful feature, if
>> blocks could also be previewed in their own buffer, using the same
>> mechanism as the org-format-latex function.
>> What do you think ?
>>
>> I don't see how this could be done in a general way.  I guess you
>> mean in particular
>> the graphics blocks like ditaa?
>>
>> Yes. For any block type bt, if it makes sense, it would be possible
>> to write such org-block-<bt>-generate-image(body) that takes the
>> block as argument and returns the path of the image it produced.
>>
>> Then:
>> - for exporting: the existing org-export-blocks-format-<bt>
>> functions would simply call their respective
>> org-block-<bt>-generate- 
>> image and work the same ;
>> - for previewing a block of type <bt>: if such org-block-<bt>-
>> generate-image exists, call it and display it the same way org-
>> format-latex does
>>
>> Wouldn't it be great ?
>
> Yes, it would be.  First you will need to talk Eric Schulte into
> splitting the image generation functions into separate functions.
> The I could look into the preview functionality.
>

I recently sent out an email announcement of development on org-babel
which should provide a unified backend for evaluating source-code
contained in org-mode blocks.  If org-exp-blocks is using org-babel for
it's source-code evaluation the ability to interactively evaluate blocks
will come for free.  This would be my preference rather than
implementing a new code-evaluation schema for org-exp-blocks.

I suppose that this would assume that org-babel is accepted into the
core of org-mode (for it to be a requirement of org-exp-blocks which is
now part of the org-mode core).  While this would be my preference, it
is certainly not my decision to make, and I honestly haven't given it
much thought up until this point.

Thanks -- Eric

>
> - Carsten
>
>
>>
>> Nicolas
>> _______________________________________________
>> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
>> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
>> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode