Re: About exporting

[autofrettage]

Hi Ypo and the rest of you all,

> After some years of using orgmode, and exporting using its defaults, I would 
> like to take a quality leap and find a way of exporting for life. My options: 
> LaTeX, ODT, HTML.
/.../
> How do you think I should spend some hundreds (or thousands) of hours to 
> achieve maestry exporting my documents?

I have some odd thoughts about this.

About 30 years ago I worked for a start-up company. As a young engineer, 
freshly hooked on LaTeX, I tried to convince my colleagues we should produce 
the users' manuals for our product with LaTeX. Since persuasive speech is not 
one of my strengths, they opted for Word 5.

For various reasons I stayed for only a few years. Recently I visited them, and 
heard that the users' manuals had been ported hither and thither between 
various wysiwyg DTP programs. They are now back in Word, and my former 
colleagues didn't even remember the documents had started their journey there!

If they only had listened to me in the beginning!

The moral seems to be that whatever time and effort you plow into learning 
LaTeX, will not be wasted. Chances are that LaTeX will be there in thirty 
years' time, working roughly the same as now.


Roughly. At a fine grain level, LaTeX -- not to speak about Org Mode -- is a 
moving target. How on earth can you hope for attaining mastery at exporting 
documents? Many individuals are continuously refining these tools, so the mere 
mortals among us will always fight a losing battle keeping up.


Late adoption is a great trick for making life a bit easier. Postpone teaching 
yourself the latest tricks, until other friendly internet citizens have had 
time to write streamlined explanations ;-)


Last but not least, think like Bruce Lee:

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it 
becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When 
you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can 
crash. Become like water my friend.”*

So, teach yourself whatever you need now (where "now" includes a foreseeable 
future).

Cheers
Rasmus

* LaTeX = ninjutsu, ODT = boxing, HTML = kick in the groin?