Hello everyone in the org-mode community!

I'm Julien and, for the past year, I started to add rich metadata inside my org 
links.
I'm writing this email to ask for feedback about the best way to do it, and 
whether it's desirable to add it into org-mode. Also, I'm not sure if there 
already is a functionality that does this (could not find it).


For the past year, I've been integrating org links in my daily workflow to a 
great extent (the cornerstone is the linkin-org package [1] that makes links 
reliable).
I wanted to do more than just opening my files with it, so I added metadata for 
a smoother workflow.


The current syntax I'm using uses a plist instead of the usual placeholder for 
page number or regexp to search.
Here is an example of the pdf link that I use on a daily basis:
[[pdf:<path>::(:page 12 :edges (0.240196 0.478535 0.331699 0.494949))]]
When I open that link, the pdf opens on page 12 and highlights a particular 
region defined by its edges.
I can create such a link by selecting the region I want to keep a trace of and 
hit a keystroke, this is so useful I now only use this to take notes of any 
reading-related task I'm doing.


The use cases are numerous. I also use links as playlists to start music 
through mpd (then the metadata is the time stamp at which to start the music), 
or to retrieve a particular id in a file (need metadata here, otherwise the 
search may take me to the link since the id is also inside it).


I was wondering what you think about this: is there a preferred way to add 
metadata in links? does such a feature already exist? Can this be somehow added 
to the core?
There are also some technical questions that I had while writing the linkin-org 
package: should I add another entry in the org-element object of a link (a 
:metadata one), or should I just access metadata from the raw-path entry.

Best regards,

Julien Dallot


[1] linkin-org: https://github.com/Judafa/linkin-org


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