Re: multipage html output

[Orm Finnendahl]

Hi,

Am Montag, den 08. Juli 2024 um 15:05:58 Uhr (+0000) schrieb Ihor Radchenko:
> 
> We might also consider adding MULTIPAGE as an additional argument to the
> API function (just like BODY-ONLY, VISIBLE-ONLY, SUBTREEP that we
> already use), but that's probably an implementation idea we may or may
> not need to use.

Currently I set the :multipage property in info, but that's a detail
that can be sorted out later.

> Yes, roughly like this.  Ideally, we should simply modify
> `org-export-as', but handling output file name may be a bit tricky -
> it is somewhat awkwardly placed in the current ox.el API (see the
> discussion in
> https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/25393.61240.135445.401251@gargle.gargle.HOWL/T/#u).

Today I had a look at ox.el when upgrading my code to
9.8-pre. Unfortunately the code (and behaviour of org-element, etc.)
has changed quite a bit and I had to fix many things.

Especially in org-export-as the parsing of the tree is now done in the
lexical context of a copy of the buffer which makes implementing a
multipage backend even more awkward.

IMHO the code is just the wrong way around: org-export-to-file calls
org-export-as which combines the parsing with generating the output
string. The multipage code has to split that part and that doesn't get
easier when both parts have to be evaluated in the context of
org-export-with-buffer-copy. I'd rather have that turned inside out:
Instead of org-export-as being a part of
org-export-to-file/buffer/etc., its functionality could be at the
top-level and then call org-export-to... appropriately (either for
multipage output, single-page output, buffer-output...). I will handle
it by splitting org-export-as just before the
org-export-with-buffer-copy, but consider it a bit ugly.

> I do not think that we need to go too deep into this rabbit hole for
> now. A simple toggle based on `org-export-dispatch' might be good
> enough. It can be easily extended to something like multi-state switch
> (t/nil vs. t -> option A -> option B -> nil -> t -> ...).

There is something else: A lot of my energy in the multipage backend
went into getting links and footnotes correct. Footnotes aren't a big
deal, but I have no idea how to handle cross document links if
different backends are present (e.g. linking from html to a pdf
document and vice versa ;-) I think this requires quite a bit more
thinking and maybe is unrealistic altogether, but at least the
framework could be changed to be able to tackle that in the distant
future...

--
Orm