thanks for the ideas. I put together a new kind of link that takes you to files inside of emacs packages, or to paths relative to where a library is installed.
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2014/01/19/Making-org-mode-links-to-files-in-Emacs-packages/ basically I find where the library or package is installed, and then construct an org-link relative to that. from the tests at the post above, it seems to work pretty well! John ----------------------------------- John Kitchin Associate Professor Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Nick Dokos <ndo...@gmail.com> wrote: > John Kitchin <jkitc...@andrew.cmu.edu> writes: > > > The files are all on a unix file system served over nfs, so everyone > > has the same / root. the users (students) have read access to my > > files. > > > > I am working towards creating "packages" of notes in org-mode (they > > might even be installed as emacs packages) for the courses that I > > teach. Having relative paths within a package certainly makes sense. I > > would like to link to notes in other packages too, as the courses are > > related, and build on each other. but I won't know in advance where > > those get installed. It sounds like those packages will have to have > > some variables configured to make that work out. > > > > IIUC, everybody sees the same namespace (students in read-only mode, you > in rw: but /a/b/c/foo.org is the same file for everybody). If that's the > case, then all methods (absolute or relative pathnames and/or ids) > should work, no? > > I'd still do relative pathnames for individual "packages". For > interpackage links, you might want to do a sort of double > indirection[fn:1]: for each package, create a directory with a symlink > farm where the symlinks point off-package: > > package1: /p1/c/foo.org contains an org link to file:../farm/bar.org > /p1/farm/bar.org -> /p2/c/bar.org (-> means symlink) > > package2: /p2/c/bar.org > > It should be possible to construct the symlink farms mechanically (and if > not, see [fn:1] :-).) Assuming that the indirections are not too onerous, > it > should be possible to arrange things so that installation consists of > setting one symlink in each package: > > > package1: /p1/c/foo.org contains an org link to file:../farm/bar.org > /p1/farm/bar.org -> ./bar/bar.org > /p1/farm/bar -> /p2/c > > package2: /p2/c/bar.org > > Only /p1/farm/bar needs to be adjusted. > > Or just go whole-hog with ids (but take good care of the id file: double > and triple backups would not be excessive imo). Since only you can > modify the file, it should work OK. > > Footnotes: > > [fn:1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirection - the David Wheeler > quote :-) > > Nick > > >
