Re: [PATCH] Export: Override headline numbering via properties

[Mark Edgington <edgimar@gmail.com>]

Hello Nicolas,

I'm sorry for not having provided more explanation of the patch's
purpose.  The motivation is basically to permit any kind of "manual"
(in contrast to "automatic") control over the section-numbering
behavior connected with a particular headline.  In LaTeX, for example,
you are able to make any section numbered or un-numbered, however in
org-mode, there is an artificial restriction when using numbering that
sections of a particular depth must be either all numbered, or all
un-numbered.

A couple possible use-cases:

1. a document (or chapter of a document) where the first  headline
contains general "introduction" information explaining what the rest
of the document (chapter) is about (similar to an abstract, but not
identical -- something that might contain sub-headings, lists, tables,
etc.), and the remainder of the document (chapter) is the "real"
content of the document -- the place where you want the numbering to
begin.

2. a document where only one of the headlines and its child-headlines
halfway through the document should be un-numbered (maybe they
represent an "example docoument" embedded within an
instruction-manual).

The reason there are two different properties (a normal, and an
"inherited" version) is because use-case #2 could be painful if you
had to add a ":NUMBERED: n" property to every node of the
sub-document.  There are probably several other use-cases to be
discovered that this allows.  Simply put, the patch makes it possible
to control the numbering for a single headline (one specific headline,
not a headline-level), or to set a manual default numbering behavior
for a sub-tree of headlines.  All other headlines behave according to
the current org-mode numbering rules.

Regards,

Mark