Re: [Orgmode] Writing a dissertation using org-mode

[Scot Becker]

Henri-Paul,

I'm doing the same, with basically the same setup, but using biblatex, and Zotero, but planning to give Mendeley a serious test for PDF management. (And yes there are still problems and repeated manual tweaking associated with using Zotero + bibtex.  The export is just not bibtex-y enough).   It remains to be seen whether I'll wish I had worked in pure LaTeX at the end.  It's true that I have run into occaisional problems with the latex conversion.  Sometimes things like quotes (") and italics next to each other can conflict.  (I haven't done recent tests to see if I still have these problems). But the org-mode community has seemed pretty wiling to help navigate, fix or work around these problems.   

Still, I like the outlinability the oversee-ability of keeping all my work in org-mode, as well as the ability to use comments and "inline" TODOs.  (they're not really inline, but they are independant of the outline structure.)  And I figure when the thing is nearing its final form, I'll nix org if I have to and just work in the exportd LaTeX. 

My next small project is finding a way to make my thesis.org file keep a standard header outline (where the '** Headlines" hold the text that will eventually head the chapters, sections and subsections), and also an outline of my argument, which won't be printed, but is more useful for the writing process. I've tried a few things but have not settled on anything yet.

Keep well,

Scot

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 5:33 AM, Torsten Wagner <address@hidden> wrote:

Dear Henri,

On 03/04/2010 01:45 PM, Henri-Paul Indiogine wrote:

I started writing my doctoral dissertation in history using org-mode. I
am also using git.el for my version control and gnus for my email. Of
course I export my org file to LaTeX which I compile to pdf.  My
bibliography is managed using BibTeX.

please consider that you might have to follow a very stricy layout style depening on your university, department, lab or supervisor. If your are lucky there will be a LaTeX template somewhere at your university. If you are unlucky there is nothing like that or even worse only a MS-word template.

I'm not sure how good org-mode might be usable in that case. org-mode is really great and I try to use it for many purposes. However, for a thesis I would use directly LaTeX which gives me a bit more control of what is going on.

Furthermore, try biber [1] and biblatex [2]... the somehow next generation of bibtex and bib-file compatible. For me they work very well already despite of the fact that they are still beta-versions. biblatex gives you much more freedom of formatting your citations and bibliography... I guess both highly needed in your scientific field.

Good luck

Torsten

[1] http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/biblatex.html

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