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I want to export my org-mode document, but filter out all the actual content (well, ideally, just show it in the current buffer, but if that's harder to do, export is fine). That is, I want to only see the headlines. Except, the first paragraph after each headline should still be shown. Or, what would be even cooler, if I could use a demarcation such as a horizontal line ("-----") to indicate where it should end.

Basically, I intend these first paragraphs to be short summaries of what follows. (But I dont want to split it into two sub-headings 'summary' and 'content', which is what I've been doing so far.)

Could you help me, give some pointers, or maybe examples for something similar that I could modify? I am sadly not well-versed in emacs lisp.

Thank you!

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  • You'd be fighting org-mode all the way. Your original sub-heading solution is much better IMO: you can tag the content subheadings as noexport and you are done. Why don't you like it?
    – NickD
    Apr 11, 2019 at 17:37
  • @NickD I didn't like it because it just cluttered my notes so much, each paragraph having two seperate subheadings that had no semantic value. For the export it worked fine though, yeah.
    – horst
    Apr 11, 2019 at 18:06
  • Why would each paragraph have two subheadings? The idea is to have headings for sections, each section consisting of multiple paragraphs: the first paragraph would be under ** Summary, all the subsequent ones in the section would be under ** Contents - or am I misunderstanding? Maybe you could augment your question with an example.
    – NickD
    Apr 11, 2019 at 18:35
  • Uh, yeah, sorry, I meant section, not paragraph.
    – horst
    Apr 12, 2019 at 20:32

1 Answer 1

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Here are two solutions you can try. The first solution deletes the delimiter and anything after it at the beginning of the export process:

(add-hook 'org-export-before-processing-hook
          (lambda (_backend)
            (let ((hls (org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer) 'headline
                         (lambda (hl)
                           (org-element-property :begin hl)))))
              (dolist (beg hls)
                (save-excursion
                  (save-restriction
                    (goto-char beg)
                    (org-narrow-to-subtree)
                    (when (re-search-forward "^---*" nil t)
                      (beginning-of-line)
                      (delete-region (point) (point-max)))))))))

In case you want to keep the subtree, change the delete-region expression to:

(delete-region (point) (save-excursion
                         (org-next-visible-heading 1)
                         (point)))

The second solution hides non-summary text from the Org buffer using overlay properties:

(defvar text-summary-overlay-p nil)

(defun toggle-text-summary ()
  (interactive)
  (if text-summary-overlay-p
      (progn (remove-overlays)
             (setq text-summary-overlay-p nil))
    (let ((hls (org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer) 'headline
                 (lambda (hl)
                   (org-element-property :begin hl)))))
      (dolist (beg hls)
        (save-excursion
          (save-restriction
            (goto-char beg)
            (org-narrow-to-subtree)
            (when (re-search-forward "^---*" nil t)
              (beginning-of-line)
              (overlay-put (make-overlay (point) (point-max))
                           'invisible t)))))
      (setq text-summary-overlay-p t))))
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  • Hey, thank you so much! The first solution worked well, but somehow only for the first section, it just ignored all the other ones.
    – horst
    Apr 14, 2019 at 15:28
  • And I can't get the overlay to work yet, it just does nothing at the moment. Thanks though! I don't have the time atm, but will look into your code in detail later. Much appreciated. @jagrg
    – horst
    Apr 14, 2019 at 15:29

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