Re: transcluding some org-elements in multiple places

[David Talmage <david.talmage@shoutpoint.com>]

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On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Friday,  9 Dec 2016 at 15:29, John Kitchin wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have an idea for how I could transclude "copies" or links to
>
> [...]
>
> > Any thoughts? Do you see any potential issues?
>
> Potentially very interesting and useful idea.  Some thoughts/issues:
>
>
I'm interested in this, too.  In my lab notebook org file, I have a section
that should be put into its own file and either linked or transcluded in
several places.  Transclusion would be better because I could see the text
without following a link.  It suits my lazy nature. ;-)


> ...
>
> - what about more than level of indirection: link to a trancluded
>   headline which transcludes to another etc.  What is shown?  Is there a
>   performance hit?
>
>
It seems to me that transclusion should be transitive.  A transcluded org
file should be able to transclude other org files.  It should be
transclusion all the way down.

It also seems to me that org-mode transclusion must detect cycles so that
it does not infinitely transclude documents.

- what happens if the destination moves or gets deleted?  the link to
>   it, which looked like something "complete" is now meaningless.  This
>   could be quite confusing.  This is probably the most serious issue.
>

How does org-mode handle broken links now?  That's probably the right way
to handle broken transclusion.



> - the table aspect is almost a "view" on a database which is really
>   appealing but would benefit from a fully defined syntax a la sql?
>   Would table formulas work as expected from the view of the contents?
>
>
Why wouldn't table formulas work?  Transclusion is/could be/should be just
another way to put org-mode formatted text into an org-mode buffer.

...
>
> - could we have "read-only" views?  I may not want the original touched.
>

Perhaps that would be property of the transcluded document.



> - how does an export work?  On the view or the actual contents?
>
>
Export works on the view.

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