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I have a very large orgmode document that has internal links to many different parts of the document.

If I try to export a subtree that has an internal link that points to a part of the document outside of the subtree exported, I get an error

Unable to resolve the link: "Determinism"

to get around this, I've written

#+OPTIONS: broken-links:auto

which makes it so that when I export the subtree, it can export but in the export the link's title isn't exported, it's simply a blank spot.

Basically in the original document's subtree I'll have this internal link that points to outside of the subtree like this

Philosophers love [[determinism]]

but upon export It becomes

Philosophers love

and what I want in the export is 

Philosophers love determinism

I'm wondering if this is achievable.

I'm using spacemacs on MacOS, Mojave.

Jim Larsen
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    I see the same behaviour with `broken-links:t`. This is not consistent with the documentation, which says the broken links are clearly marked in the output. You should report this as a bug. – Andrew Swann Apr 04 '19 at 18:13
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    This seems to still be the case even with what I believe is the latest version of org-mode unfortunately. – avv Jun 04 '20 at 06:55

1 Answers1

3

As of org version 9.5-dev in 2021 (and possibly earlier), the option

#+OPTIONS: broken-links:mark

Produces nearly the desired behaviour:

#+OPTIONS: broken-links:mark

* Test

Philosophers love [[determinism]]

enter image description here

The documentation for the customization option org-export-with-broken-links is:

org-export-with-broken-links is a variable defined in ‘ox.el’.

Its value is nil

  You can customize this variable.
  This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
  version 26.1 of Emacs.

Non-nil means do not raise an error on broken links.

When this variable is non-nil, broken links are ignored, without
stopping the export process.  If it is set to ‘mark’, broken
links are marked as such in the output, with a string like

  [BROKEN LINK: path]

where PATH is the un-resolvable reference.

This option can also be set with the OPTIONS keyword, e.g.,
"broken-links:mark".

There is no option to customize the appearance of the broken link. However, the function involved is org-export-data in the file ox.el, and it would be relatively straightforward to over-write the function if you want to tweak things.

Tyler
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