Re: Problem in removing the invisible brackets of a link

[Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>]

Hello,

Alain.Cochard@unistra.fr writes:

> The manual says:
>
>       If you place the cursor at the beginning or just behind the end
>    of the displayed text and press <BACKSPACE>, you will remove the
>    (invisible) bracket at that location.
>
> The problem for me it that it depends on the way I arrive at those
> locations.  For example, for '[[xx]]', seen as 'xx' underlined, if I
> have the cursor on the right of it and have it go towards the left
> just after the second 'x' and press <BACKSPACE>, then the behavior is
> as I expect (I see '[[xx]'), but, if I have the cursor on the left and
> have it go to towards the right just after the second 'x' and press
> <BACKSPACE>, then I see a single underlined 'x' (after a second
> <BACKSPACE> I see '[[]]').
>
> Is this normal?  (tested with emacs -Q with master, with emacs 24.5.1
> and 26.1)

Yes, it is normal Emacs behaviour. See (info "(elisp) Invisible Text").

I guess we could clarify the manual. Suggestions welcome.

> Incidentally, is there a way to have things like [[xx]] behave as
> plain text?

Yes, there is. Insert a zero width space after the opening brackets.

> (I am not talking about literal links which are still
> understood as links.)  I have tried 'quote', 'verse', 'verbatim',
> 'comment', 'example', and org code block: none work.

=[[xx]]= and ~[[xx]]= are not links; try to export them. 

However, `org-open-at-point' still treats them as such -- see last
paragraph in its docstring -- because this was a desirable feature for
some users, IIRC.

> PS: for me this is not a theoretical issue: In many circumstances I
> would like '[[xx]]' instances not behave as links.  I would be happy
> if I could change the link format (e.g., use {{xx}} instead -- is it
> possible? (I fear it is not.)

No, you cannot change link syntax, but you don't need to, either.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou