Re: [Exporter] Why fall-back to :title if :alt-title is nil?

[Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com>]

Hello,

Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi List, 
>
> in ox.el I find this function for getting the (optional) alternative title of
> a headline:
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
> (defun org-export-get-alt-title (headline info)
>   "Return alternative title for HEADLINE, as a secondary string.
> INFO is a plist used as a communication channel.  If no optional
> title is defined, fall-back to the regular title."
>   (or (org-element-property :alt-title headline)
>       (org-element-property :title headline)))
> #+end_src
>
> I'm not so sure that it is a good idea to fallback to the regular title in
> case :alt-title is nil, because when extracting both, title and alt-title,
> from a headline, there is a almost always a duplication (the regular title
> string is received two times, via the get-title and get-alt-title functions)
> because :alt-title isn't really set very often.
>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to just return nil when :alt-title is nil? If the
> application code needs a title string anyway, it can always fall-back to a
> call to the get-title function.

There is no "get-title" function.

When building a TOC, you are required to get a title for the current
entry. This function prevent checking both sources.

Anyway, I think this is nitpicking, because you can always check if its
return value equals (org-element-property :title headline).


Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou