Re: Bug: HTML export ignoring CUSTOM_ID properties

[Aaron Ecay <aaronecay@gmail.com>]

Hi Terry,

I don’t think it’s necessary to be combative.  Rasmus is doing his best,
as are all the org developers.  Sometimes things break by accident –
that is the nature of beta software.  The problems you raised are
important.  Let’s try to figure out how to fix them.

You wrote:

> Links may work from inside Org, but the original intent of CUSTOM_ID was
> to produce a stable ID for the HTML export that could be linked to from
> outside Org.

I think this is true.  Looking at the pages in Worg, for example,
provides ample evidence of this strategy in action.

CUSTOM_ID is also sometimes needed for latex export
(cf. org-latex-prefer-user-labels).  It is important for IDs to be
unique, and to conform to certain format restrictions.  What if
CUSTOM_ID properties were checked for these requirements when exporting,
raising an error if they are not suitable and otherwise passing through
to the export output?  This would maintain CUSTOM_ID as an interface to
labeling systems outside org (latex \ref{}, html #anchor links, ...),
but would also make export more robust.  It’s also in line with recent
changes to raise export errors for undefined macros, unresolvable links,
etc.

--
Aaron Ecay