Issue with with org-link-descriptive = nil

[andersjohansson]

Hi, and thanks for this brilliant work. I notice a great speed-up!

However I realized that this interferes with some of the standard behaviour of org links.

A minimal test case:

* Org link test
[[https://example.com][A link to a site]]

When org-link-descriptive is nil (it can be toggled with org-toggle-link-display, which removes org-link from the invisibility spec), the link is still visible when folding the headline.

Tested with emacs -Q -L ./lisp -l org as well
I am on emacs built from the native-comp branch:
GNU Emacs 28.0.50 (build 5, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.23, cairo version 1.17.3) of 2020-11-19

Normally, I have org-link-descriptive = t, and wouldn’t have noticed this if it wasn’t for a custom link type that I use, where I previously were able to use a custom :activate-func to display a selected part of the link (outer brackets + description). This doesn’t work either.

[yantar92]

I confirm. ol.el uses invisible text property to hide/unhide links, which interferes with implementation details of org-fold. I will need to rewrite link fontification to use the new folding library.

[andersjohansson]

Ok! Note that this is both in ol.el and in the definition of org-mode in org.el:4684, and also in org-activate-links (org.el:5062). org-link-parameters supports using a custom value for the invisible text-property (added in org-activate-links), and recommends to use full (which is never added to buffer-invisibility-spec) if the full link text should be displayed for a certain link type (see docstring of org-link-parameters). I gather this also interferes with the org-fold mechanisms.

[andersjohansson]

I’m of course glad to test any updates! (I could also, hypothetically, contribute code (have FSF copyright assignment), although my understanding of how org-fold works is still limited)

[yantar92]

Can you test now? Should be fixed.

org-link-parameters supports using a custom value for the invisible text-property

Thanks. It should be correctly handled by org-fold.

I could also, hypothetically, contribute code (have FSF copyright assignment),

I certainly don't mind someone who is actually a programmer helping with this :)

... although my understanding of how org-fold works is still limited

Feel free to ask anything you want to know. The very general idea is described in https://github.com/yantar92/org#org-modeorg-fold-branch. Also, I tried to explain the logic as much as possible in comments within https://github.com/yantar92/org/blob/feature/org-fold/lisp/org-fold.el

[andersjohansson]

Yes, in my small testing everything seems to work as expected! Loading org, toggling with org-link-display and also my custom displayed links (after adapting to using org-fold).

For reference, this is what I am using now for displaying citation links (I am using zotxt, for generating references from Zotero, although I have hope for better integration of citations into org (wip-cite-new branch)).

;; Special fontification, I often manipulate rows of references,
;; and then it’s useful to display the outer brackets, for easy
;; killing and yanking.

(org-link-set-parameters "zotero"
                         :display 'full ; invisibility is handled in the activate function
                         :activate-func #'aj/org-zotxt-activate)


(defun aj/org-zotxt-activate (start end path bracketp)
  "Add text properties to display zotxt citation links in a good way"
  ;; it’s always 36 chars, I think: "[[zotero://select/items/1_EEIVB8QC]["
  (org-fold-region (1+ start) (+ start 36) t 'org-link)
  (org-fold-region (1- end) (- end 2) t 'org-link))

As for being an actual programmer, even if I have taken a few programming courses, I am also just an academic using Emacs for writing, mail and planning (and some research), and fiddling with elisp 😄

[yantar92]

For reference, this is what I am using now for displaying citation links (I am using [zotxt](https://gitlab.com/egh/zotxt-emacs), for generating references from Zotero, although I have hope for better integration of citations into org (`wip-cite-new` branch)).

I personally prefer org-ref with my custom web-scrapper [1] for capturing papers. I can keep all the paper notes in org-mode directly and capture them as easily as with Zotero browser extension.

;; Special fontification, I often manipulate rows of references, ;; and then it’s useful to display the outer brackets, for easy ;; killing and yanking.

Interesting idea. You might propose it to add as a built-in org-link feature in the mailing list ;)

(org-fold-region (1- end) (- end 2) t 'org-link))

Setting 'invisible text property to t should also be safe, though with org-fold, you can also reveal the hidden part of the link during isearch (it is hard-coded not to do so right now (for the sake of consistent behaviour), but I plan to add this option in future).

As for being an actual programmer, even if I have taken a few programming courses, I am also just an academic using Emacs for writing, mail and planning (and some research), and fiddling with elisp 😄

Greetings to fellow academician ;) Footnotes: [1] https://github.com/yantar92/org-capture-ref

[andersjohansson]

Thank you!

Interesting solution with the scraper! Yes, everything in emacs... Zotero helps me interact with others from time to time (I can export to valid zotero-marks in odt... via some steps). Well.

[yantar92]

Yes, everything in emacs...

Unified interface :)

I can export to valid zotero-marks in odt

What is zotero-marks?

[andersjohansson]

Actually I export via generating these kinds of marks: https://zotero-odf-scan.github.io/zotero-odf-scan/, which can then be converted to "active" zotero citations in odt. My sort of messy code for this is here: https://gitlab.com/andersjohansson/emacs-zotxt-extra

The benefit is that I can get correct "active" citations when exporting both to odt and latex. But it is still a bit too much of a hacked together solution.

[yantar92]

Actually I export via generating these kinds of marks

Thanks. I see what it means now. I think something along that lines is natively supported by org-ref (probably, limited to pdf export).