Hello all,
Currently, if a macro is not defined, it will silently produce an empty
string while exporting. This situation could arise for example if a
macro name is acidentally mistyped. I think it’s desirable to warn the
user in this case. The attached patch introduces a function to do so,
and shows how it would be integrated in the latex backend. This raises
several questions:
1. Should the warning be a “message” (allows the export process to
continue) or a “user-error” (stops the export process)? Or, should
this be configurable?
2. Since this is a feature that many backends will want to use, should
we introduce a new “abstract” backend from which other backends can
inherit, which incorporates this feature, and others like it in the
future? The idea would be similar to prog-mode in emacs, the major
mode from which programming-language modes can derive. The
alternative is adding the (macro . org-export-macro-warn) entry
manually to all the relevant backends, and relying on future backend
authors to do the same.
3. Should this even be implemented as part of the backend’s
translate-alist, or at a lower level?
Thanks,
--
Aaron Ecay
>From 1c9f85bcb93dbc56d01b138f5a4a11ad0933b5c6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Aaron Ecay <aarone...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:46:37 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] ox: warn if unexpanded macros are found when exporting
* lisp/ox.el (org-export-macro-warn): New function.
* lisp/ox-latex.el: Use it.
---
lisp/ox-latex.el | 1 +
lisp/ox.el | 5 +++++
2 files changed, 6 insertions(+)
diff --git a/lisp/ox-latex.el b/lisp/ox-latex.el
index f59d6b2..7670ccb 100644
--- a/lisp/ox-latex.el
+++ b/lisp/ox-latex.el
@@ -65,6 +65,7 @@
(latex-fragment . org-latex-latex-fragment)
(line-break . org-latex-line-break)
(link . org-latex-link)
+ (macro . org-export-macro-warn)
(node-property . org-latex-node-property)
(paragraph . org-latex-paragraph)
(plain-list . org-latex-plain-list)
diff --git a/lisp/ox.el b/lisp/ox.el
index f01f951..a4988f4 100644
--- a/lisp/ox.el
+++ b/lisp/ox.el
@@ -5619,6 +5619,11 @@ to `:default' encoding. If it fails, return S."
(plist-get translations :default)
s)))
+(defun org-export-macro-warn (macro contents info)
+ ;; TODO: should this be a user-error?
+ (message "WARNING: undefined macro %s" (org-element-property :key macro))
+ ;; Return empty string to avoid interfering with the export output.
+ "")
;;; Asynchronous Export
--
2.1.0
