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

[John Williams]

I, for one, find your ideas exciting, Marcin.  If you're simply looking
for votes in order to start work on this: +1.

Thanks!

>>>>> Marcin Borkowski <address@hidden> writes:

    > 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