org - hyperlink to external image: Function to download it and adjust link to local location?

Question

I have an org file and buffer named test.org that contains this line:

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#/media/File:Emacs_Dired_buffers.png][myimg]]

I want to put my cursor/point somewhere on this link and then run a function that downloads this png file and adjusts the link to something like this

[[file:img/Emacs_Dired_buffers.png][myimg]]

I use img/ because I prefer relative paths. So I'd like to download the picture to a subfolder which is in the same folder as my org file.

At the moment I can't find a solution.

Answer 1

You can easily build this functionality by getting at abo-abo's org-download package. Look at the command org-download-image which takes an image address as its argument and downloads it to an attachment directory.

For associating an image directory with an org document, I would always recommend to use the org attachment mechanism. I prefer to have a clear naming convention for attachments and my org documents. For an agenda it may be appropriate to have an attachment directory associated to a particular heading (task), but for authoring documents, I usually prefer a single attachment directory for the whole document. Currently I do this by setting the attachment dir to a directory I conventionally name {documentname}-att/. Else an attachment will be created in data/ + some hash based on the current headline ID. I also add the inherit property, so that all sub-headlines also inherit this setting.C-c C-a brings you to the attachment dialogue where you get a menu for all of these options.