Re: org-capture config broken (org-protocol URI syntax)

[Maxim Nikulin]

On 25/08/2021 19:05, Orm Finnendahl wrote:
>   I use a custom script (dating back to a post from 2013) to capture my
> mutt Emails using org-capture. It worked flawlessly but stopped
> working some time ago (I don't exactly know, when, probably last
> year).

Unfortunately you did not specify version of Org you are currently using.

> I assume the code has changed and doesn't accept the syntax of the
> org-protocol line any more.
>
> emacsclient 
> org-protocol:/capture:/m/mutt:YSYuf6sKfSbwtIeB@example.com/mail/%20%20Subject%3A%20test%0A%20%20%20%20From%3A%20Unknown%20%3Cdummy%40example.com%3E

This the old style of Org protocol URI. See 
https://orgmode.org/manual/The-capture-protocol.html for an example of 
modern variant (it has typos fixed in master branch, some "?" should be 
"&"). I am unsure concerning order of parameters in old-style URLs. 
Older syntax should still be supported (a warning requesting update may 
be issued however), unfortunately there were some issues, see e.g. 
https://orgmode.org/list/s4cjck$156g$2@ciao.gmane.io

Some details: https://orgmode.org/Changes_old.html#org3da1425 (news for 
version 9.0)

> The emacsclient commmand above is generated with a perl script using
> uri_escape for everything after /mail/. The single slashes in the
> protocol line of the emacsclient command seem strange, but I couldn't
> find any hint in the internet how the syntax is supposed to be for a
> certain org-capture-template.

I suggest you to update perl script to generate URI with key-value 
parameters in query part.

Concerning number of slashes, I suppose, the following should minimize 
issues with desktop integration and intermediate bugs in various 
versions of Org

    org-protocol:/capture?template=X?url=URL&title=TITLE&body=BODY

namely no double slash after org-protocol otherwise in some cases slash 
might be inserted before question mark or second colon might be dropped 
in old-style URI. With double slash subprotocol might be interpreted as 
host name causing further normalization as dropping colon that is not 
followed by port number or adding path "/" before query part. Such 
considerations however are not applied for direct invocation of emacsclient.

Emacsclient considers org-protocol URI as relative path, so it prepends 
argument with current working directory and squashes multiple slashes 
into single ones. That is why it does not matter how much consequent 
slashes are used in emacsclient command, however desktop-wide handlers 
may modify URI depending on number of slashes.

Latest releases should tolerate URIs with slash before question mark like

    org-protocol://capture/?template=X?url=URL&title=TITLE&body=BODY