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

[Sebastien Vauban]

Marcin Borkowski wrote:
> 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?

+1^{2} ;-)

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sebastien Vauban