I don't think making chemdraw a babel language is the answer here. The way I know chemdraw is as a standalone binary executable that is all gui. there is no scripting. maybe you could build an xml file by hand, but i would never dream of that! maybe I am missing how you would use it.

[[chemdraw:file.cdxml][file:file.png]]

Is pretty close to what I had in mind. I would define the link click function to just strip off the png, and open the file.cdxml for example, then you do not need both of those pieces. I suppose this means you would have had to export the file as a new png after editing it to make a change though.

The real examples I had in mind were some clean way to integrate emacs with my tablet and drawing pictures that are inline in a buffer. Clicking on the link would open the image in my tablet drawing program, where I would draw on it with a pen, and then save the figure. this is not all images though, just some. Hence the differentiation by a different link. In my course notes, I often have hand-drawn pictures in them. Right now I go through a somewhat annoying process of drawing in powerpoint, selecting the drawing and right clicking to save as an image, which I then put in as a link. I havent had time to find a much better solution. A link could save me some of that hassle, except that the link doesn't show in the buffer as an inline image.

I also wanted a "figure" link that would export different ways. For example in html export it would export as html, for latex as eps, and for pdflatex as pdf, but it would show inline in some supported format. I know I can use filters to do that on export to replace or remove extensions, but I haven't had time to write one, and I thought a link would be a nice alternative. We typically make all three versions (png, eps, pdf) of figures, and put the png files in org so they show inline, but we often have to switch them out to one of the other formats at the end for manuscript submission. A link like figure:filename  that would somehow show inline if a filename.png existed would solve this problem.

Those are what I was thinking about for using other links as images.

j


John

-----------------------------------
John Kitchin
Associate Professor
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu



On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Rick Frankel <rick@rickster.com> wrote:
On 2013-10-24 06:08, Carsten Dominik wrote:
On 24.10.2013, at 09:28, Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org> wrote:

Hi Rick and John,

rick@rickster.com writes:

On 2013-10-22 21:53, John Kitchin wrote:
Is it possible to define new links that would be rendered as inline
images?

I am imagining something like

chemdraw:benzene.png

which would show the benzene.png file inline, but when I click on it
would open a chemdraw file for editing.

unfortunately, it seems that `org-display-inline-images' has a
hardcoded regex which searches only for =file:= links.

This may be related to a question I had a couple weeks ago (see
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/77567). The current logic
seems to be to display inline images when the link points to an image,
it would be great to extend it when the description, or part of the
link, points to an image.

Indeed, currently this is not possible.  I would be interested to get
a patch to this effect.

Carsten-

In terms of inlining images in the description portion per the linked
posting, do you think that it should depended on the value if the
=include-linked= argument? (IMHO no, since the default usage of
`org-display-inline-images' doesn't set this argument). I would be
glad to take a stab at this enhancement.

John-
In reviewing `org-display-inline-images', and the handling of org
links in general, i see no safe (and not overly complex) way of making
added link types expand inline images. In the case mentioned, i still
feel that adding chemdraw as a babel language is the correct approach.
However, if we add the expansion of images in the description, would
that work:

[[chemdraw:file.cdxml][file:file.png]]

rick