Re: New Link Syntax: Adding ATTRIBUTES (Was: org-e-html: Including ATTR_HTML)

[William Crandall <bc3141592@gmail.com>]

Hello Nicolas,

Many thanks for expanded clarity, and a new direction.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 2:51 AM,
Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com> wrote:

> I understand your problem, but inserting ATTR_HTML
> keywords in a paragraph isn't possible anymore. I cannot
> allow that as it would defeat a fundamental change in the
> new Org syntax.

This is good. While not familiar with the details, I clearly
see the value of maintaining the logical integrity of the new
architecture.

> ATTR_HTML could ... accept a list of properties that would
> be applied in order to each link in the paragraph.  But it
> wouldn't scale well...

Agreed; this is not the way to go.


> I'm open to any other suggestion. For example, link's
> syntax could be extended to allow attributes.

I like this idea, and think it is the way to go.
--------------------------------------------------

One approach would be to expand the current link syntax
from TWO to THREE pairs of square brackets.

Current syntax:
http://orgmode.org/org.html#Link-format

New syntax:

[[link]]

[[link][description]]

[[link][description][ATTRIBUTES]]


Description and attributes would be optional.

ATTRIBUTES would consisting of name:value pairs, perhaps
giving names export-type prefixes, such as HTML_STYLE and
HTML_TITLE, or LATEX_PDFBORDER and LATEX_URLCOLOR.

HTML ATTRIBUTES would map to HTML 'attributes':

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/section-index.html#attributes-1

LATEX ATTRIBUTES would map to Latex \hypersetup 'options':

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Hyperlinks#.5Chyperref
(Subsection: Customization)


--------------------------------------------------

This would be a significant change, but it would make LINKS
"first class objects," and allow Org mode users to directly
apply rich families of link attributes/options.

The Manual should then indicate that ATTR_HTML is a
/paragraph/-level mechanism, and is no longer intended
for use with links:
http://orgmode.org/org.html#Links-in-HTML-export

There may, of course, be different/better solutions.

Thanks for continuing to move this forward!

-BC