# Org-transclusion -- now on ELPA! **URL:** \ **Category:** Development\ **Created:** [October 6, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830 "2020-10-06T19:30:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/1 "2020-10-06T19:30:21Z")
I have done a quick show & tell video on the work-in-progress version of Org-transclusion. I will appreciate questions, feedback, and discussions. [![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/orgroam/original/2X/0/0407b4e8b225803ec3ce5302dd6c70e738fdeee7.jpeg "Org-transclusion (alpha v0.2.1) Demo #9") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueaPiA622wA) v0.2.1 is merged with main today 2021-08-01 [Video #8](https://youtu.be/JViI7u_PB9M) featuring `:only-contents` and `:exclude-elements` properties per transclusion [Video #7](https://youtu.be/idlFzWeygwA) on live-sync edit feature with much more (2021-05-16) [2-minute video on how to install Org-transclusion from GitHub repo](https://youtu.be/c1aelYM3m9U) [Demo #6](https://youtu.be/nXQXLz-rsDk) 2020-12-06 Source code is on GitHub. I included README to explain how it (should) work(s) currently. > **[GitHub - nobiot/org-transclusion: Emacs package to enable transclusion with...](https://github.com/nobiot/org-transclusion)** > > Emacs package to enable transclusion with Org Mode - GitHub - nobiot/org-transclusion: Emacs package to enable transclusion with Org Mode Just very quickly, it’s my take on the idea John Kitchin outlined (link included in the GitHub README). ---
**Author:** ![zaeph](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/zaeph/32/764_2.png) [@zaeph](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/zaeph)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:04pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/2 "2020-10-06T20:04:17Z")
Hi there. This is amazing work, @nobiot. I’m liking a lot of things I’m seeing in your demo, and although I do have concerns about optimisation and recursion, this seems to be a solid proof of concept. I’d love to look at your code to see how we could iterate on it. Could you ping me when you get around to it? ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:24pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/3 "2020-10-06T20:24:42Z")
Thank you! Yes, I’ll share the code. I hope one or two weekends away to clean things up and commenting to communicate the intentions, etc. more clearly for others. Recursion is taken care of; as in, if you have another ortc: link within a transclusion overlay, the code skips it. Optimization, as in performance, might be a valid concern. In my use case, though, I will probably have max 10s or 20s in one buffer; hoping that should not cause a big lag in the system… ---
**Author:** ![zaeph](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/zaeph/32/764_2.png) [@zaeph](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/zaeph)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:36pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/4 "2020-10-06T20:36:14Z")
> [@nobiot](#): > > Optimization, as in performance, might be a valid concern. In my use case, though, I will probably have max 10s or 20s in one buffer; hoping that should not cause a big lag in the system… It’s nothing that we wouldn’t be able to fix with some elbow grease. I had my own ideas about transclusions which I hoped to achieve with indirect buffers and narrowing, but your solution seems to work just as well. At any rate, I’m starting to get more breathing space with work, and I’d love to have a look at your code in a couple of weeks, so take as much time as you need to review your code. Thanks again! ---
**Author:** ![noorah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b3f665/32.png) [@noorah](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/noorah)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:43pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/5 "2020-10-06T21:43:14Z")
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thank you so much 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![timquelch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@timquelch](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/timquelch)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 1:21am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/6 "2020-10-07T01:21:26Z")
This looks pretty cool. Would love to see the source code. ---
**Author:** ![jethro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5a626/32.png) [@jethro](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/jethro)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 3:55am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/7 "2020-10-07T03:55:01Z")
Looks fantastic as is 🙂 sharing this on Reddit. ---
**Author:** ![forkrul](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/forkrul/32/515_2.png) [@forkrul](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/forkrul)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 8:30am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/8 "2020-10-07T08:30:50Z")
I haven’t been this excited about something in ages. **Thanks for building this**. This opens up a ton of opportunity for content creation, note, and book note embedding, and a bunch of other use cases. Do you plan to have this to work for “turtles all the way down”? Example: all inclusions and sub-inclusions of other files would also work? 🐢 🐢 🐢 🐢 ---
**Author:** ![YvesK](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/yvesk/32/381_2.png) [@YvesK](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/YvesK)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 10:52am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/9 "2020-10-07T10:52:03Z")
Wonderful. I think transclusion would be a very very good companion to org-roam. Atomic notes assembled together to form a complex thought path, it’s the goal of roam/zettlekast, isn’t it? Using the special ortc custom link is already a great functionality, but an idea immediately pops to my mind: would’nt it be even better if it worked with the simple standard org-mode stuff (like org-roam do). What about using a :transclude: drawer property and standard org-mode links. These links would work normally when the transclude-mode is not activated. Of course, even as I’m very very far from being an old elisp guru, I can guess that it would be quite harder to code. Would it be worth? Would it be interesting to keep that goal for later? ---
**Author:** ![nv-discourse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/53a042/32.png) [@nv-discourse](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nv-discourse)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 3:10pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/10 "2020-10-07T15:10:25Z")
> [@YvesK](#): > > Using the special ortc custom link is already a great functionality, but an idea immediately pops to my mind: would’nt it be even better if it worked with the simple standard org-mode stuff (like org-roam do). What about using a :transclude: drawer property and standard org-mode links. These links would work normally when the transclude-mode is not activated. I would encourage development in this direction. Not necessarily implementing via a property, but implementing in a general way so that one can take advantage of the transclusion without using org-roam. It should be its own library and needn’t be “ortc” when it’s just general transclusion. ---
**Author:** ![mshevchuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@mshevchuk](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/mshevchuk)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 6:09pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/11 "2020-10-07T18:09:11Z")
Very cool work! Hope a package will appear on GitHub soon! ---
**Author:** ![timquelch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@timquelch](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/timquelch)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 4:21am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/12 "2020-10-08T04:21:26Z")
> It should be its own library and needn’t be “ortc” when it’s just general transclusion. Agreed. There isn’t really anything that is specific to org-roam. It would be great to be able to use this in any org file ---
**Author:** ![mancub](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/mancub/32/347_2.png) [@mancub](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/mancub)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 2:02pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/13 "2020-10-08T14:02:38Z")
Great work @nobiot. This would be very helpful for academics as well, especially ones like me who use multiple papers to build an argument. I hope this makes it into the main org-roam package soon. PS Allow me to buy you a beer to support your efforts. ---
**Author:** ![dangirsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dangirsh](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/dangirsh)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 10:27am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/14 "2020-10-09T10:27:48Z")
Very excited for this! In Roam, block embeddings are bi-directional. That is, there’s a way to find all places a given block has been transcluded. This can be very useful for e.g. finding all arguments that reference some source quote. If this feature is desired, we may favor an implementation with custom link types (like in the prototype) over a more generic transclusion mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 12:08pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/15 "2020-10-09T12:08:01Z")
Everyone. Thank you for your encouraging comments, thoughts, and suggestions. I will share the source code soon, and respond to the comments. Just a little hectic this week at work and beyond (well, I knew this would be the case, and this is why I wanted to share the demo when I did). It will be clear once you see the source code. Currently I have only about 300 lines of code (including comments!) to get the demo working. It’s my very humble attempt as a non-developer/programmer. What I am saying is, I suppose, it’s an indication of both potential encouragement (300 lines of code, cobbled together by a non-programmer, and you get here), and potential disappointment (“what?! that’s it? That’s not going to cut it!”). In any case, I will get back to this community. Stay tuned 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JeffBrown](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/jeffbrown/32/254_2.png) [@JeffBrown](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/JeffBrown)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 4:47pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/16 "2020-10-09T16:47:10Z")
This is brilliant! It makes me think about recursion, and homogeneity, and how to avoid getting lost. It’s not obvious to me that using two separate kinds of links, transcluding and normal, is optimal. It seems more natural for a link to another file to appear as a heading, just like any other heading, except with some kind of indication that it’s not in the same file. In that case the user would open it just like any other heading. They could moreover recurse, opening transcluded files within transcluded files, and the indentation would help them understand where they are. Here’s an example. Suppose we have three files: ```auto #+TITLE: a #+TITLE: b #+TITLE: c * a1 * b1 * c1 **a11** b11 ** c11 **a12** ** * a2 * b2 * c2 ``` We can then unfold the \ header in file ‘c’ to reveal: ```auto #+TITLE: c * c1 ** c11 ** #+TITLE: b * b1 ** b11 ** * b2 * c2 ``` and then recurse: ```auto #+TITLE: c * c1 ** c11 ** #+TITLE: b * b1 ** b11 ** #+TITLE: a * a1 ** a11 ** a12 * a2 * b2 * c2 ``` That whitespace to the left of the transcluded files would ideally, I think, be unavailable – i.e. the cursor can’t go there. If a lot of headers were unfolded at this point, it could be hard to see where you are. In fact this is a problem with org mode in general – the path to “home” might be well off screen. It would be cool if there was a command fcalled something like `org-where-am-i` that would display the header path to where you are. For instance, from header `a2` in the last image, running `org-where-am-i` would display the following: ```auto #+TITLE: c * c1 ** #+TITLE: b * b1 ** b11 ** #+TITLE: a * a2 ``` ---
**Author:** ![YvesK](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/yvesk/32/381_2.png) [@YvesK](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/YvesK)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 12:39am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/17 "2020-10-10T00:39:59Z")
> [@JeffBrown](#): > > If a lot of headers were unfolded at this point, it could be hard to see where you are. In fact this is a problem with org mode in general – the path to “home” might be well off screen. It would be cool if there was a command fcalled something like `org-where-am-i` that would display the header path to where you are. There is a package that does something like this: > org-sticky-header is an available package. > Status: Available from melpa – Install > Archive: melpa > Version: 20191117.549 > Commit: 1053ebdeb3bd14fc8d4538643532efb86d18b73c > Summary: Show off-screen Org heading at top of window > Requires: emacs-24.4, org-8.3.5 > Homepage: [GitHub - alphapapa/org-sticky-header: Show off-screen Org heading at top of window](http://github.com/alphapapa/org-sticky-header) > > This package displays in the header-line the Org heading for the > node that’s at the top of the window. This way, if the heading for > the text at the top of the window is beyond the top of the window, > you don’t forget which heading the text belongs to. > … ---
**Author:** ![JeffBrown](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/jeffbrown/32/254_2.png) [@JeffBrown](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/JeffBrown)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 3:13am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/18 "2020-10-10T03:13:47Z")
Nice! It looks like it only displays the nearest header, though, not the entire chain of headers leading to where you are. Still, probably not hard to modify the package you found to show the whole path. ---
**Author:** ![jethro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5a626/32.png) [@jethro](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/jethro)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 5:16am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/19 "2020-10-10T05:16:07Z")
@nobiot not sure if you’re on Reddit but Prot has a comment for you regarding the faces for the transcluded section: [https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/j6k2j8/orgmode\_transclusionblockreference\_prototype/](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/j6k2j8/orgmode_transclusionblockreference_prototype/) The other comments have already been reflected in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![nobiot](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/org-roam.discourse.group/nobiot/32/159_2.png) [@nobiot](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/nobiot)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 6:37am UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830/20 "2020-10-10T06:37:10Z")
I’m just about to put it up on GitHub. I’m not really on Reddit, but I agree with Prot’s comment re face – it’s his theme I am using with slight adjustment 😉 Thanks for bringing it here for me to read. [Next page](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/org-transclusion-now-on-elpa/830.md?page=2)