Based on a Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/10xhvd8/a_little_readstring_utility_using_an_org_mode/j7xziao/?context=3 I did a small experiment to see if I can re-use org-capture, to just capture a string from a buffer, without actually writing to any file. My plan was to just let-bind org-capture-finalize with cl-letf: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun my-read-string () (cl-letf (((symbol-function 'org-capture-finalize) ;; C-c C-c (lambda (&optional _) (interactive "P") (buffer-string))) ((symbol-function 'org-kill-note-or-show-branches) #'kill-buffer)) ;; C-c C-k (let ((org-capture-templates '(("s" "string" plain (function ignore))))) (org-capture nil "s")))) #+end_src Unfortunately, that does not work. Regardless of binding, and if I used cl-letf or cl-flet or cl-labels, or old let, or something brewed on the internet, the binding org-capture see for org-capture-finalize, is the original one from org-capture.el. My second experiment was to abstract the finalize function into a funcallable fariable in org-capture.el (I have patched org-capture.el with this): #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defvar org-capture-finalizer #'org-capture--default-finalize) (defun org-capture-finalize (&optional stay-with-capture) "Finalize the capture process. With prefix argument STAY-WITH-CAPTURE, jump to the location of the captured item after finalizing." (interactive "P") (funcall org-capture-finalizer stay-with-capture)) (defun org-capture--default-finalize (&optional stay-with-capture) "Default implementation for org-capture finalizer function." ;; this is the original org-capture-finalize just renamed to "default-finalize" ) #+end_src So I could then have something like this (never mind C-c C-k function being removed): #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun my-read-string () (let ((org-capture-templates '(("s" "string" plain (function ignore)))) (org-capture-finalizer (lambda (&optional _) (interactive "P") (buffer-string)))) (org-capture nil "s"))) #+end_src However I see that the binding for the org-capture-finalizer, in capture buffer, is still the default 'org-capture--default-finalize' and not my lambda. I am really not an expert on emacs lisp; and I do understand that this is somewhat "creative" use of org-capture (to put it nicely :-)), but I would like to understand what is going on here. I don't understand why let-binding here does not work? If I take (symbol-functon 'org-capture) I see it is a closure. I am not sure if it has something with the problem to do? I have tested to disable lexical binding, re-eval things, but the let-binding seems rock stable :). Nothing makes org-capture to reconsider using my local let-binding. I would really like to understand this, so please if someone can explain it, I will appreciate to hear. Thanks in advance /arthur
