Org Vocabulary

  • backend: this is the format org is being told to export to. Examples are html, odt, latex, and many others. Check all your loaded backends in org-export-registered-backends
  • AST: abstract syntax tree. This is a representation of an org document that's easy for lisp to manipulate. It's a tree datastructure.
  • parsing: this is the process of building the AST. Loosely, org copies your org buffer into a temporary buffer and certain actions like macro expansion, #+includes, and comment removal happen on this temporary buffer.
  • transcoder: a translater. It is a function that takes some element inside org mode (like a source block), and transforms it into a string that can be parsed by the backend.
  • derived backend: is a backend that has a parent. You specify transcoders when creating a custom backend for export, falling back to the parent's transcoder, for say, a link. When deriving a backend, one important keyword property is :translate-alist, which is a list of the transcoders you specify.
  • org-link-parameters: This is a list of link types and their behavior when certain actions are taken. Most commonly, you :follow a link, and the follow function is then used. In our case, we mostly will care about the :export. Read the help doc for the many more parameters.
    Here's an example of a link type for [[nov:a-path-i-made-up]] 
    (("nov" :follow nov-org-link-follow :store nov-org-link-store)...)
  • filters: are functions. They run after the transcoder is run and get the transcoded string. The positional arguments for a filter are (text backend info), where info is a giant context object that gets populated during parsing.