Re: CUSTOM_ID vs ID

[Nathan Neff <nathan.neff@gmail.com>]

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On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 3:10 AM Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Nathan Neff <nathan.neff@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I've often been confused why org-mode has both a CUSTOM_ID
> > and a ID property.  I mean, why not just use one or the other name?
>
> Custom ID are user-defined, and only meaningful in the scope of the
> document. Also, they may appear as-is when exported, e.g., as an anchor
> in HTML.
>
> ID are (or should be) generated by Org, and are valid across files,
> which means they need to be absolutely unique.
>

I have a lot of org files and one of the main purposes of links is to be
able to link
to different headings across documents.  This seems to imply I should use
the ID property.

However, I usually *do* manually assign IDs (not CUSTOM_IDs) myself.   The
reason is so I can reasonably search for the ID within my org files and
that the link
ID makes some sense to me.

For example, if I see a link to "id:keyboard_shortcuts" I can tell where
it's going.
Later on, if I want to insert a link to my keyboard shortcuts heading in
another place
in my org files,  I can make a guess of the ID I want to link to.

So, I guess I'm okay manually assigning ID properties, as long as I don't
have conflicts.

Thanks for the explanation!

Thanks,
--Nate




>
> Org keeps track of ID if `org-id-track-globally' is non-nil (the
> default). If this is nil, there is almost no difference between ID and
> custom ID.
>
> > When would I ever have both an ID and a CUSTOM_ID property for
> > a heading?
>
> You may want to refer to a heading from anywhere with id:... but need
> a clean anchor in HTML export, for example.
>
> FWIW, I never use ID property.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Nicolas Goaziou
>

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