Re: Re: Limited #+INCLUDE ?

[Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk>]

Sébastien Vauban <wxhgmqzgwmuf@spammotel.com> writes:

> Hi Giles,
>
> Giles Chamberlin wrote:
>> I've been using org-mode for some course work: "write an essay about
>> your software including the interesting bits, add all source code in an
>> appendix".
>>
>> #+INCLUDE solves the inclusion of source code files very nicely - I'm 
>> guaranteed that my document includes the latest versions, type set as I
>> wish.
>>
>> Unfortunately at the moment I'm cutting and pasting the snippets of
>> "interesting" code into the body of the essay.  What I'd like to do is
>> be able to label interesting regions of code in the source file and then
>> import the labelled blocks into my essay. Is there a way of doing this?
>
> Have a look at Org-Babel.
>
> Though, it means your source code would be *inside* your Org document, and you
> would have to "tangle" it (generate it) from there.
>
> Seb

I'm considering investigating the following and would appreciate
comments on this idea. The aim is to make it easier to use Org-mode to
work pure code files which are *external to Org-mode* (i.e. this
proposal lies outside of the current org-babel tangling framework).

- Extend Org file links to allow links to a range of lines in a
  file. The syntax could be
  [[file:/path/to/file::from::to][linkname]]

- These links will bring up a buffer visiting the target file, narrowed
  to the target region.

- The link back in the Org-mode file can be adjusted from the target
  file, by widening and then narrowing again. (During this procedure the
  target region would be highlighted.)

- Export to HTML and LaTeX will have the ability to include the target
  regions, fontified according to the appropriate major-mode, similar to
  how begin_src blocks behave on export.

- 'from' and 'to' could be line numbers, or regexps for text search.

For programmers, this would allow a sort of org-mode mediated literate
programming in projects where it is not feasible/desirable to actually
include the source code in the org-mode file.

Any comments or suggestions?

Dan