Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

[Grant Rettke]

Good evening,

Just learned about CUSTOM_ID property. It seems like if you want to
define a custom identifier, then you do it here and that identifier
will get used correctly in all of the weavers. It also seems like a
human should never set the value of the ID property.

The reason I ask is that I've got code that makes sure that every
headline has an ID property set unique because org-uuid makes it so
easy. At the time CUSTOM_ID didn't exist. It kind of looks like I
ought to refactor all of it to use CUSTOM_ID because it will "just
work" in the rest of org mode.

Am I grokking things correctly here?

Sincerely,

Grant Rettke

Re: Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Grant Rettke <gcr@wisdomandwonder.com> writes:

> Good evening,
>
> Just learned about CUSTOM_ID property. It seems like if you want to
> define a custom identifier, then you do it here and that identifier
> will get used correctly in all of the weavers. It also seems like a
> human should never set the value of the ID property.
>
> The reason I ask is that I've got code that makes sure that every
> headline has an ID property set unique because org-uuid makes it so
> easy. At the time CUSTOM_ID didn't exist. It kind of looks like I
> ought to refactor all of it to use CUSTOM_ID because it will "just
> work" in the rest of org mode.
>
> Am I grokking things correctly here?

I don't think that's really necessary, why not just continue to use the
"regular" built in ID commands?

My understanding (and I may be grokking things *incorrectly* here) is
that CUSTOM_ID is mostly useful when you expect to be to be typing the
ID itself (ie when linking to a headline), or when it's otherwise
important that the text of the ID be some precise string, and not a
random string.

If all you want to do is ensure that all headlines have an ID, I would
assume that the regular built-in functions would do the trick just fine.

Lots of assumptions there!

E

Re: Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

[Grant Rettke]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Eric Abrahamsen
<eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>
> My understanding (and I may be grokking things *incorrectly* here) is
> that CUSTOM_ID is mostly useful when you expect to be to be typing the
> ID itself (ie when linking to a headline), or when it's otherwise
> important that the text of the ID be some precise string, and not a
> random string.
>
> If all you want to do is ensure that all headlines have an ID, I would
> assume that the regular built-in functions would do the trick just fine.
>
> Lots of assumptions there!

Thank you Eric. Agreed. For my use case, they are perfect. If I want
to change them, too, I can change them in the document itself.
CUSTOM_ID seems to be used more for links and capturing.

Re: Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

[Karl Voit]

* Grant Rettke <gcr@wisdomandwonder.com> wrote:
> Good evening,

Hi!

> Just learned about CUSTOM_ID property. 

I was not aware of it either until a couple of minutes ago.

> It seems like if you want to define a custom identifier, then you
> do it here and that identifier will get used correctly in all of
> the weavers. It also seems like a human should never set the value
> of the ID property.

Well, either I don't understand CUSTOM_ID vs ID not completely or
I've got some arguments for writing IDs by myself:

I only create ID-properties manually and only for cases where I want
to link to a heading. My IDs look like
"2016-08-25-install-xubuntu-notebook" and therefore, all links to it
are self-explanatory: id:2016-08-25-install-xubuntu-notebook

I use them with org-depend.el for blocking, setting status on
completing tasks, and so forth.

So far, I do not think that I can use CUSTOM_ID for org-depend.el.
At least a test with ":BLOCKER: a-custom-id" (or "#a-custom-id") did
not seem to have any impact.

My blogging system[1] is also using (manually crafted) IDs to refer
to blog articles.

> The reason I ask is that I've got code that makes sure that every
> headline has an ID property set unique because org-uuid makes it so
> easy. 

I can't follow your argument. What is org-uuid and why should I have
automatically generated IDs? 

I once had "org-mobile-force-id-on-agenda-items" activated which
produced random(?) IDs for all headings. I could not find any use
for it.


[1] https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg
-- 
mail|git|SVN|photos|postings|SMS|phonecalls|RSS|CSV|XML to Org-mode:
       > get Memacs from https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <

https://github.com/novoid/extract_pdf_annotations_to_orgmode + more on github

Re: Should a human ever set the ID property? Should a human only ever set the CUSTOM_ID property?

[Grant Rettke]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 3:50 AM, Karl Voit <devnull@karl-voit.at> wrote:
> What is org-uuid and

http://orgmode.org/w/?p=org-mode.git;a=blob_plain;f=lisp/org-id.el;hb=HEAD

";;; org-id.el --- Global identifiers for Org entries"

> why should I have automatically generated IDs?

I do because I want `org-babel-detangle' to make sense whether the
reader has Emacss+Org-Mode, or not, and whether the writer has set ID
on headlines and NAME on codeblocks, or not. It is tedious to set
allocate a name for every single code block and headline when each of
them simply doesn't need a name or id. It is easier to give it a
default a name and id.