Org-download

included in Emacs Org

Friday, Mar 25, 2022 479 words 3 minutes

abo-abo/org-download: Drag and drop images to Emacs org-mode

TL;DR Just use ‘attach mechanism and let files fall where they may

Current config

This is where I ended up. I am now able to drag and drop images and have them automatically included inline in the buffer as well as exporting them.

Here’s the org-attach settings

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(setq org-attach-preferred-new-method 'dir)
(setq org-attach-id-dir  "files/")
(setq org-attach-dir-relative t)
;;   (setq org-attach-auto-tag nil)
(setq org-attach-store-link-p t)
(setq org-id-method 'ts)
;; for sane attachment paths/names
(setq org-attach-id-to-path-function-list
      '(org-attach-id-ts-folder-format
        org-attach-id-uuid-folder-format))

And here’s the org-download config

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;; Org Download and Attachments
(setq org-download-image-dir  "files/")
(setq org-download-image-org-width 800)
(setq org-download-image-html-width 800)
(setq org-download-heading-lvl 1)
(setq org-download-timestamp "%Y%m%d-")
(setq org-download-method 'attach)

History

Configuring org-download save directory emacs

When I drag and drop an image into Emacs, I want the attached file to end up in ./img/YYYY/. This is how I tried configuring it in my setup (I use Doom Emacs):

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  (setq org-download-method 'directory
        org-download-image-dir (concat "img/"  (format-time-string "%Y") "/")
        org-download-image-org-width 600
        org-download-heading-lvl 1)

For some reason, org-download-method was being reset from 'directory to 'attach after loading, and this broke things. I thought maybe I needed to set the variables after org-download was loaded, so I did this:

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(after! org-download
  (setq org-download-method 'directory
        org-download-image-dir (concat "img/"  (format-time-string "%Y") "/")
        org-download-image-org-width 600
        org-download-heading-lvl 1))

That didn’t work. At startup I was seeing this error:

Error (org-mode-hook): Error running hook “org-fancy-priorities-mode” because: (void-variable org-download-image-dir)

Huh. I guess not everything can be set after org-download, so I tried only setting org-download-method

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(after! org-download
  (setq org-download-method 'directory))

This worked. Other settings are done in the (after! org block.

Update March 22, 2022: I guess it’s only org-download-image-dir that causes problems. This seems to work fine…

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(setq org-download-image-dir  "img/")
(after! org-download
   (setq org-download-image-org-width 800)
   (setq org-download-image-html-width 800)
   (setq org-download-heading-lvl 1)
   (setq org-download-timestamp "")
   (setq org-download-method 'directory))

Issues with org-download-method and export

After finally getting everything just the way I like it, I discovered that images aren’t shown correctly when exporting to HTML or PDF. There’s a Github issue that looks related, but no response from the developer.

If I change org-download-method to ‘attach’ it’s a whole set of other issues. I can’t get file paths where I want them without setting the DIR property everywhere. But exports work.

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;; Org Download and Attachments
(setq org-download-image-dir  "img/")
(after! org-download
   (setq org-download-image-org-width 800)
   (setq org-download-image-html-width 800)
   (setq org-download-heading-lvl 1)
   (setq org-download-timestamp "%Y%m%d-")
   (setq org-download-method 'attach))

(setq org-attach-preferred-new-method 'dir)
(setq org-attach-id-dir  "files/")
(setq org-attach-dir-relative t)
;;   (setq org-attach-auto-tag nil)
(setq org-attach-store-link-p t)
(setq org-id-method 'ts)
;; for sane attachment paths/names
(setq org-attach-id-to-path-function-list
     '(org-attach-id-ts-folder-format
       org-attach-id-uuid-folder-format))