Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com>]

Paul <mafeuser@gmail.com> writes:

> thank YOu for the function
>
> I believe that there must be something ready to be used, because 
> org-mode does provide function that is able to export document 
> or its  part as text file. Of course such function probably 
> removes more  elements than link only, but that would be no 
> harm.

Oh, well, if you're not worried about affecting other elements, 
then you could wrap the `org-export-as` function like so:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp

    (defun org-delinkify-region-2 () 
      "Replace all Org-style links within the region with only the 
    link description text, and return the result." 
      (interactive) (org-export-as 'ascii nil t t)) 

#+END_SRC 

The four arguments to `org-export-as` mean:

- Use the 'ascii export backend;
- Don't transcode the sub-tree at point; we're relying on 
  `org-export-as` working on the 
  region if the region is active.
- Don't export the contents of hidden elements.
- Don't add a surrounding template.

Note that `ox-ascii.el`, which defines the 'ascii export backend, 
/does/ have an `ox-ascii-link` function, but that function needs 
to be /passed/ the 'description' part of the link, the very thing 
we want to extract. In usual usage, this extraction is done by 
building a parse tree of an Org buffer, then calling 
`ox-ascii-link` with the relevant parse tree data for all links in 
the parse tree. So if i understand correctly, my code above is 
probably as simple as one can get for your use-case.

Hope that helps!


Alexis.