Re: configurable link export

[Austin Frank <austin.frank@gmail.com>]

David O'Toole wrote:
> All we need is for people to specify a property called :link-base that
> is the prefix for a URL. For example, if :publishing-directory is
> "/ssh:user@host:~/public_html/images", the user should probably set
> the :link-base to "/images" or "http://foosite.org/images"

This will definitely work for linking between projects.  But not all of
my links in a given org file are to files in projects.  If I have a link
[[file:///home/aufrank/my_movie.mpg][movie I made]], and that movie is
not part of a project, and there is no chance I am ever going to upload
that movie to my webserver, then I don't really want the link to be
published as <link-base>/my_movie.mpg.  I want to have a way to say "you
know what, don't bother trying to make this into a hyperlink.  I already
know it won't work as one."

> Given this one extra piece of information, then it is a simple matter
> for the :link-transform function to actually generate proper URLs
> (instead of simply validating them.) This would free projects from the
> requirement that the web server must have the exact same directory
> layout as your local project files.

This makes sense, and I would love to see it implemented.  But I'm still
not sure it addressed the problem described above.  If it does and I'm
just not getting it, please explain :)

> This would allow, as you say, for link targets to be validated and
> transformed automatically, given just the structure and contents of
> org-publish-project-alist.

Again, ideal for publishing projects and the links between them, but
does not address how to handle links to non-project local files.  My
vote is to export them as bracketed text, just as they're written in the
raw org file, but the really important thing is that they _not_ be
exported as hyperlinks if I tell org ahead of time that they're
guaranteed to be dead-on-upload.

Thanks,
/au