Re: [O] Changed behaviours of LaTeX exporter in version 8.0+

[Kyeong Soo (Joseph) Kim]

Hi Richard,

I do really appreciate your taking time to further explain the use of CUSTOM_ID.

Now I can understand why this CUSTOM_ID-based solution is better and, in some cases as in your example, needed.

With version 7.x, what I did was to reference sections in main texts (not in embedded LaTeX blocks) using 'C-c l' on a sections header and 'C-c C-l' in a part referring to it (i.e., no manual setting & typing involved).

Fortunately, for most journal & conference papers in my area (i.e., up to ~15 pages), there is virtually no chance that more than one sections have the same title at the same level; note that "*Numerical Examples" and "**Numerical Examples" are different. This may be the case for a thesis as well, much longer though.

Except for the said case of embedded LaTeX blocks, therefore, the use of CUSTOM_ID with manual labelling is something I want to avoid if possible.

By the way, as said, [[*Foo][Section Foo]] does not produce the link in LaTeX export any longer; version 8.x generates just "\texttt{Section Foo}" unlike version 7.x.

But I do agree that new export engines are more flexible and powerful (e.g., filters) and will see whether and how all these compatibility issues will be addressed; otherwise, I would have to update tens of papers based on version 7.x org-mode, which is my major platform/format for academic publications and teaching materials.

Again, many thanks for your sharing valuable experience and great insight on these!

Joseph 

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Richard Lawrence <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Joseph,

"Kyeong Soo (Joseph) Kim" <address@hidden> writes:

> Great thanks for your answering my two questions, especially sharing your
> experience for cross-referencing in LaTeX export.
>
> Though your suggestion for cross-referencing is an excellent workaround, I
> wonder whether there is any benefit using org-mode in writing papers in
> this case; for instance, manual setting of CUSTOM_ID would be a hassle,
> considering that it can be easily & automatically done in LaTeX with
> AUCTeX/RefTeX's label function.

Don't you need to make sure that your sections have a consistent label
in order to refer to them?

At any rate, one of the reasons I use this solution is that I want to be
able to easily use plain LaTeX at points where I discover that I can't
make Org do everything I want.  One of the cases I was worried about,
for example, is having a section reference inside an embedded LaTeX
block.  If you don't know the label ahead of time, you can't use a raw
\ref command inside #+BEGIN_LATEX...#+END_LATEX.  So I like being able
to set the labels via CUSTOM_ID on an as-needed basis. (I don't do it
for every section.)

You might be able to get away with less; it looks to me like the
[[*Foo][Section Foo]] still produces a link to a headline in LaTeX
output.  Does that not work for you?

> I still don't know why the new export engine has brought so many
> compatibility issues in its behavior.  It seems that I'd better go
> back to the prior version (7.X) in order to focus on my research.

The new export engine was a complete re-write, and came with an attempt
to define and standardize Org syntax.  Some of the incompatibilities are
due to that standardization: the old LaTeX and HTML exporters might
treat some text differently, for example, or not deal with some corner
case, so in writing a new export engine, it was necessary to define the
correct behavior.  Other incompatibilities are just bugs that come with
any new piece of software; the exporter is under heavy development and
those are constantly getting fixed.

The new exporter really is a *lot* better, and in my experience it is
worth the effort to upgrade.  I found myself bumping into the
limitations of the pre-8.0 exporter very frequently.  If you don't, you
can wait, but I think you'll find the new exporter a lot easier to work
with and to get help with.

Best,
Richard

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