multipage html output

[Orm Finnendahl]

Hi,

 after my clunky publishing chain from org to gitbook with multipage
page output broke down recently I finally decided to tackle adding an
export backend for multipage html output to org-export.

It is done now and mainly working. The backend uses all the
funcionality of the ox html exporter, only slightly modifying the code
in places where it is necessary for multipage output. In addition I
tried to make it as general, as possible to enable adding other
multipage backends (like for md output) easily.

Before sharing it I thought it might be a good idea to think about
integrating it properly/officially into org. I would be willing to
provide the code, docs, patches, etc.

There are a couple of decisions to make (should it be integrated as an
option into the html output backend or should it be a separate backend
altogether?  What options concerning footnotes, toc, etc. should be
provided?  etc...) and this mail is basically asking about how to
proceed.

My questions:

- Is there widespread interest to fully integrate it into org mode?

- If so, whom should I contact, or is it expected that I just go ahead
  and supply merge requests?

I'm a bit hesitant putting in the extra work of fully integrating it
without approval by the maintainers to go ahead.

In case someone wants to take a peek at the current state of the code
you can check out my github repository here:

https://github.com/ormf/ox-html-multipage

Be aware and warned that the code is in constant flux, not finalized
and there still are some open questions for me what would be the best
way to integrate the code into the old export engine, like whether
adding optional args to the transcoding functions or using properties
in the info channel, etc... Once it is finalized, the current single
page html export will work exactly as before (it already does, but
while checking it out I am modifying the html templates for the
multipage navigation, toc, etc.)

Hope to hear from you, especially if the maintainers are reading this.

--
Orm