[DISCUSSION] May we recognize everything like [[protocol:uri]] as a non-fuzzy link? (was: [BUG] URI handling is overly complicated and nonstandard [9.6.7 (N/A @ /gnu/store/mg7223g8mw90lccp6mm5g6f3mpjk70si-emacs-org-9.6.7/share/emacs/site-lisp/org-9.6.7/)])

[Ihor Radchenko]

Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

> However I do not mind to have an easy way to delegate URI from :export 
> function to the link transcoder of active export backend.

Just make the :export function return nil.

> Current behavior with with treating link paths as fuzzy search targets 
> is a kind of compromise. It allows internal search links to be shorter. 
> One may have e.g. #+name: fig:something code blocks, so not every link 
> looking as having some "scheme:" prefix should be treated as an external 
> URI. As a result link types must be enabled explicitly.

This is exactly the reason why Org recognizes a closed list of link
types and not just "anything looking like protocol:uri".

And I am honestly not a big fan - because of the limitations of Elisp
regexps, there is actually a hard limit on the number of link types we
can support - no more than few hundreds, AFAIR. This is because Elisp
regexps cannot be larger than certain length.

On the other hand, Org also supports "plain" links without brackets and
for such links it does make sense to avoid parsing something like A:B as
a link.

In theory, we might change the parser to treat anything like foo:bar or
<foo:bar> or [[foo:bar]] as a link with "foo" protocol and "bar" URI.
And introduce [[::fig:something]] to allow explicit internal links.
But, despite simplifying the parser, it will certainly be a breaking
change.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>