Re: [O] [ox, patch] Add #+SUBTITLE

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-03-22, at 16:29, Rasmus <address@hidden> wrote:

> IMO it is.  The only place where there's a "hack" is in ox-latex and
> that's cause article is the default class.  If you prefer, it can just
> output to the \subtitle{·} by default and say it's KOMA-script only.  That
> seems harsh, though.

Hi there,

being like a Pavlov's dog trained to dribble on seeing the word
LaTeX;-), let me add my 2 cents here.

[TL;DR: imho, the right way to do LaTeX export is to prepare a dedicated
package for Org-mode generated files (easy/medium), arrange for it to be
included in all major TeX distros (easy) and simplify the LaTeX exporter
to comply with it (easy).  This could greatly enhance the quality of
PDFs produced by Org-mode and make modifying their look easier on the
Org side.  I could do the LaTeX side of the work.  Now the question is:
does the community /want/ it.]

The (default) LaTeX markup sucks.  (It’s not about Org-mode-produced
LaTeX files, it’s about LaTeX itself.)  And I'm telling that as
a long-time TeX and LaTeX user and fan.  I would strongly suggest not
caring too much about “what does LaTeX support out-of-the-box” – in
fact, it supports almost nothing without a heap of packages.

What I really think Org-mode community should do is the following.

We (if I may use that pronoun here) should prepare a dedicated Org LaTeX
package, properly supporting all Org’s fancy stuff like tags,
timestamps, todo keywords etc., and allowing for parametrizing their
look-and-feel through a reasonable LaTeX interface.  I think it should
/not/ be a class, since then people would be free to use it with
article/amsart/koma-script/memoir/whatever.  This is not very difficult
nor time-consuming, and in fact I might be tempted to do it (more on
that below).  This would require (simple) changes in the LaTeX exporter
(generally, simplifying it); this I cannot do, since I don’t have the
FSF papers signed (and I don’t want to sign them).  OTOH, the package
does not have this problem, since LaTeX licensing is much more sane than
Emacs’; this package should be imho part of every TeX distro (which is
important, and in fact easy to arrange), so that we could send an
Org-generated LaTeX file to any TeX user.

The biggest advantage would be the possibility of exporting e.g. TODO
lists or agendas to LaTeX, and have them formatted as TODO lists and
agendas and not as “articles”.  Currently, LaTeX export is more or less
limited to scientific articles (unless you want to tweak it /a lot/ so
that it looks even remotely reasonable), where you don’t really care
about layout and design, since they are going to be changed by the
journal anyway.

Just think about the possibilities.  We could make a TODO list in Org,
and send it (as a pdf file) for non-Org-users to print, and it could
look like a TODO-list.  (I guess there are still lots of people who
depend on paper todo lists; I do, for sure, though I make them
manually.)  We could have an option (on Org side, which would translate
to a LaTeX one) to have more Word-like layout.  (You can say what you
want about Word – my personal opinion is that it is unsuitable for
documents larger/more complex than a piece of paper with an arrow
showing the direction to the restroom – but sometimes, especially for
short memos/notes, LaTeX’s extremely generic spacing can be annoying.
Of course, you could just load the savetrees package – but let me make
a short, informal and unscientific survey here: how many of you would
find it useful, but never thought that something like that exists?  If,
OTOH, there would be such option for the LaTeX exporter, it would be
right there, in Org-mode manual.  In fact, since not everyone might
follow this thread, let me start another one, with this very question in
a minute;-).)

The added benefit would be much cleaner structure of Org-generated LaTeX
files.  Currently, they have a huge preamble and a few hard-wired
things.

Summing up: as we know, there are many ways people use Org-mode, but the
current PDF exporter (through LaTeX’s article class, heavily biased
toward scientific material) is suboptimal for all but one of these ways.

As I said, if there is some consensus on whether something like that is
needed, I can start working on it.  (In fact, it might be a fun
side-project.)  I would estimate that I’d need a week or two to come up
with a proof-of-concept, sort-of-working thing, and something like two
months with a first production version.  (Though I don’t have time for
a project like this now, realistically I could start in August.)  (Let
me thank here for Org-mode clocking feature – the above estimate is due
to the fact that I did some work on coding a dedicated, quite complex
LaTeX class for a journal, and I know that it has taken me about 32
hours as of now.  Assuming an average pace of 2-4 hours a week, and
assuming about 16 hours for a first version of this one – it would be
a much simpler project – gives 1-2 months or so.  NB. Fun fact: the work
on the class for the journal I’m talking about includes coding some
Emacs Lisp to extract metadata from LaTeX (and aux) files and generate
XML files for uploading pdfs to the journal site.)

WDYT?

> —Rasmus

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University