Re: [O] Confusion about attr_latex and new exporter

[John Hendy]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 4:57 PM, John Hendy <address@hidden> wrote:
> Just making the transition to the new exporter, finally, today. Just
> some notes regarding the documentation that I wanted to pass along. I
> think there's some possibly conflicting information (or at least
> ambiguous) out there.
>
> - From the Worg page on transitioning to the new exporter
> (http://orgmode.org/worg/org-8.0.html):
> #+begin_quote
>
> Attribute lines now take plists:
> #+attr_latex :width "5cm"
> #+attr_beamer :options "width=5cm"
>
> #+end_quote
>
> However, from a previous email, I think a caveat should be added, as I
> found the above misleading in trying my first test drive of the new
> exporter. I recalled an earlier response on the mailing list to an
> inquiry I had about the old exporter, which evolved into some
> discussion about the new one:
> - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-02/msg00850.html
>
> So, as this pertains to the transitioning guide: using =:width= as an
> example of the new syntax is perhaps a bad idea since it's heavily
> associated with #+attr_latex: width=Xcm for images and yet is
> incorrect for image attributes. At the very least, some further
> specification of the :width option should probably be referenced right
> then and there.
>
> Another fantastic quote one might consider adding, which really helped
> make things "click" for me is from the same thread a bit later:
> - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-02/msg00882.html
>
> #+begin_quote Nicolas
>
> An argument within curly brackets gets its own keyword. Optional arguments
> are stuffed within an `:options' keyword.
>
> #+end_quote
>
> That's quite helpful!
> - \begin{tabular}{align=blah} --> :align "blah" (curly gets :keyword)
> - \includegraphics[width=blah]{file.jpg} --> :options "width=blah"
> (optional gets :options)
>
> Now, even having digested some of this a bit better, using any syntax
> option (at least that I can tell is correct from the above) with
> quotes yields quotes in the resulting .tex file and a resultant fail
> of pdflatex compilation.
>
> In other words:
>
> - Org:
> attr_latex: :options "width=5cm"
> [[file.jpg]]
>
> - LaTeX:
> \includegraphics["width=5cm"]{file.jpg}
>
> - Org
> attr_latex: :align "lp{4cm}"
> | column 1 | column 2 |
>
> - LaTeX:
> \begin{tabular}{"lp{4cm}"}
>
> I also tried =:width "5cm"= for images. Despite this being options and
> sounding like it needs to be in the :options string instead of :width,
> it still works but quoted parts still get quotes =[width="5cm"]= in
> the resultant .tex file. If I remove quotes, it works. That's fine,
> but not sure if I'll ever run into any multi-word option occurrences
> where I'll possibly need quotes to differentiate one set of option
> values from another (don't think I've run into this before, but just
> thinking out loud).
>
> Am I doing something wrong if this is the behavior I'm getting, or is
> the documentation incorrect and I shouldn't be quoting these options?
>
>
> Thanks,
> John

Sigh. Just when I thought I'd done my due diligence, I [re]found this:
- http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/68256

Which points to this:
- http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/68011

Talk about a fairly massive amount of time to discover that it's
simply using the babel syntax =:width value= (no quotes). I'll state
that the announcement (second link above) is still confusing to me, as
Nicolas has stated:

#+begin_quote
>From the user POV, it removes necessity to quote or escape characters.
For example, these are now valid:

  #+attr_latex: :font \footnotesize :align |l|c|c|
  #+attr_foo: :prop var="value" :another-prop nil

#+end_quote

Thus, I would have expected =#+attr_latex :options width="value"= to
work, but it doesn't. Seems like :width is being treated specially, or
did I just not parse =:prop var="value"= correctly?


Thanks,
John