Re: internal links not being followed; instead, offer to create new heading

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Brian van den Broek
<brian.van.den.broek@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am having trouble with following internal org links. After carefully
> reading the documentation (especially 4.2 Internal Links
> <http://orgmode.org/org.html#Internal-links>) with the following
> test.org file, I would expect that C-c C-o on the link text in the bar
> tree would jump to the corresponding text in the foo tree.

I'd never heard of being able to do this, so I read the documentation
as well and this how I parsed it:

- Is link text a URL?
  - If yes -> open url
  - If no, check current file

- Is link text a custom ID?
  - If yes -> go to headline with matching ID
  - If no, check for custom target

- Is there a match between [[link text]] and an occurrence of <<link
text>> (dedicated target)?
  - If yes -> go to the dedicated target location
  - If no, check file type

- Is this a .org file?
  - If yes, check for a *headline* (or possibly keywords/tags)
matching the [[link text]] [1]
  - If no, conduct a string search for the [[link text]]

[1] Quote: "If no dedicated target exists, Org will search for a
headline that is exactly the link text but may also include a TODO
keyword and tags"

So, let's test this out...

I created test.org with your contents and can verify that C-c C-o asks
if I should create a new headline. I also created test.txt with the
same contents, did =M-x org-mode= and tried the same and got the same
results. So, either:

1) The documentation is incorrect (maybe), or
2) I don't know how to do C-c C-o provided by Org in a non-org file
correctly (more probable)

Scratch that... tried again and left Emacs in text mode (default for
me when opening .txt) and manually did =M-x org-open-at-point= and the
cursor moves to the first "s" in "string to search."

So, the documentation, at least from my read, does seem to describe
the situation accurately.


Best regards,
John

>
> #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
> * foo
>
>   a string to search for
>
> * bar
>
>   [[string to search]]
> #+END_EXAMPLE
>
> Instead, what occurs is that I get the following in the Messages
> buffer:
>
> #+BEGIN_QUOTE
> Position saved to mark ring, go back with C-c &.
> No match - create this as a new heading? (y or n)
> org-link-search: No match
> #+END_QUOTE
>
> where the last line appears after I hit `n' in respond to the prompt.
>
> This works as expected with a minimal init loading org 6.33 that
> shipped with my Emacs.
>
> I have tried it with the following minimal init:
>
> #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
> (setq load-path (cons "/home/brian/code/foreign/org-mode/lisp" load-path))
> (setq load-path (cons "/home/brian/code/foreign/org-mode/contrib/lisp"
> load-path))
>
> (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org\\'" . org-mode))
>
> (global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
> (global-set-key "\C-cc" 'org-capture)
> (global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
> (global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)
>
> (setq org-directory "/home/brian/docs/org")
> (setq org-default-notes-file "~/docs/org/inbox.org")
> #+END_SRC
>
> My emacs and org:
>
> Org-mode version 7.9.3e (7.9.3e-973-gba38de @
> /home/brian/code/foreign/org-mode/lisp/)
> GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.20.1) of
> 2012-08-24 on trouble, modified by Debian
>
> I don't rule out that I have misunderstood something, but the observed
> behaviour doesn't match (how I understand) the documented behaviour.
>
> Thanks and best,
>
> Brian vdB
>