Matthew, > Why not diff-ing the 2 html files, the one produced with your settings > and the other one produced with -Q ? This may give you a pointer.
thanks, that helps a lot. this *does* seem to be an org-mode bug (modulo my brain functioning). the actual thing that seems to break things is running the current git version of org-mode. if i revert to 8.2.10 (that came with emacs 24.5.2), and *really* move my local org out of the way, things work well. (this is effectively what -Q was doing for me.) a diff of the two html files shows a number of differences. but, if i add one line from the good file to the bad html file: ---- bash greg-minshalls-mbp: {1373} diff -wu bad-foo.html try-foo.html --- bad-foo.html 2015-11-29 17:14:17.000000000 +0200 +++ try-foo.html 2015-11-29 17:47:57.000000000 +0200 @@ -215,6 +215,7 @@ </head> <body> <div id="content"> + <h1 class="title">foo</h1> <div id="table-of-contents"> <h2>Table of Contents</h2> <div id="text-table-of-contents"> ---- (the name of the file i was exporting was "foo.org"), the browser displays the contents of my file. and, in fact, if i add ---- #+TITLE: foo ---- my browser again displays the contents of my file. however, even with that change, it doesn't start off showing the file in the view:overview i was expecting. given that i'm running off the git version, and maybe things are changing under me, i'm not sure if i should try to track this down any more. but, if i should, i'm happy to debug further. thoughts? cheers, Greg Minshall