[O] Macros [was: Re: ATTR_HTML for a clickable image, howto?]

[François Pinard]

Christian Moe <address@hidden> writes:

> There are other drawbacks [to macros], such as needing to
> backslash-escape any commas (as in the above example).

Oh, thanks!

This (partly) replies to the message I sent a few minutes ago.  Before
sending that message, I checked in the Org manual, and the manual is
silent about the possibility of such escaping.

The manual is also silent about nesting, which has been mentioned
elsewhere in this thread.  The examples in the manual do not hint either
about whether newlines are allowed or not in macro arguments.

In fact, the manual section "Macro replacement" says very little, so
when I initially read it, I guessed that macros are only usable in very
simple cases.  However, the last statement says that macros can be used
to construct "complex HTML code".  Yet, the definition method at the
beginning suggests that macro definitions have to fit on one line, and
this seriously limits the complexity of what we can do with them.  So,
on initial reading, I just decided I understood nothing about them :-).

If macros are there to stay in Org, it might be worth documenting a more
complete specification about how to define and use them.

François