Re: About exporting

[Martin Steffen]

>>>>> "autofrettage" == autofrettage  <autofrettage@protonmail.ch> writes:

    autofrettage> Hi,


    autofrettage> Not even the most streamlined DTP-wysiwyg-program is

I agree. I did not want to imply that. 
    autofrettage> safe from this.  Far from. I even doubt typewritten
    autofrettage> documents can be written colla- boratively, without
    autofrettage> someone messing things up.

Also that is common (I wrote many publications collaboratively with
latex. One can mess up at every level (from the line where a revision
merge conflict occurs, to latex incompatibilities (though that's not a
big problem resp. one can get that under control) up to notational,
linguistic or ``semantic'' incompatibilities (section 4 contradicts
content-wise what has been written is section 3). None of that can (or
should) be prevented by any form of tool. it depends on communicating
with each other, using one's brain, and a few other qualities.


As far as LaTeX vs. org is concerned (for producing readable documents
in varying degree of requirements as far as the complexity of document
is concerned and the typesetting quality), in my experience it's as
follows: of course everything that can be done by latex can be done with
org (trivially). As far as collaboration is concerned, if you get more
experienced with latex (and learn from mistakes and get better making
use of it), you will somehow rely on provided classed and other things
offered (and making good use of macros etc), and not messing it up,
knowing better than latex how it should looks like. That may including
writing class files yourself or style files (and sharing them with your
collaborators), but with experience you get more "disciplined" (if you
are willing to follow that discipline).


Though one can do the same in org (to disipline oneself to avoid messing
up collaboratively working on a shared document), I simply think it's
harder.

Both latex and org gives you freedom whatever you do (and you can use it
to mess it up; and as you send, also in a restrictive DTP or a harsh
straightjacket of producing "text" by filling out many small web-forms,
each free-form text at most 200 characters, like in a web-questionnaire,
you still can mess it up).

I enjoy the freedom that editing latex (and the support given by emacs)
for the same reason I enjoy the freedom of org (and the support given
many org-packages).


The difference is, in latex I don't want to explore the freedom I have
(like messing up things that styles prepared from me, or write
{\Large\textbf{Chapter 1: \hspace{4mm} Introduction}} instead of using
the command \chapter{Introduction}. And this experience of NOT using
parts of the freedom is shared with between experienced latex users
(especially those that collaborate in a good way with latex together on
shared documents) In org, getting experienced with org for me leads me
doing more and more creative things.  I have one or two colleagues, they
do completely different things than me or do it completely differntly,
and that's fine. But it's not a basis for using org for collaboratively
writing books. Of course it's doable, but requires more
(self-)discipline. I have also seen people I collaborate with that do in
LaTeX things like {\Large\textbf{Chapter 1: \hspace{4mm} Introduction}},
though this are either beginners (if they stick to this for them
established use of how to write LaTeX, makes a text-based collaboration
not useful for me.... On can still talk things through etc but not write
a common text :-))

In my experience, ith latex, it's possible to write text together for
well-intended people. Publishing houses tell you ``these are the classes
and style files (among perhaps others) that you _have_ to use, and also
do the following...''  (same possible for wisiwyg-editors, I assume),
and if you don't mess that up (like overwriting the defaults) you have a
chance to get a uniformely looking output (and on a halfway portable
platform, like a CTAN compatible latex installation). I cannot imagine
that publishers would prescibe ``this is the org-settings and features
you as author must to use to publish with us''.

Org (for the discussed usecase of exporting documents) is just a way to
produce LaTeX, latex takes care of portability and can assist with
uniformity and quality of type setting, but org intends (many) other
(useful) things.

Martin










    autofrettage> There should be something like pilot licences for
    autofrettage> using certain computer tools, not to speak about
    autofrettage> programming, but let's not sink into squabbles about
    autofrettage> that...

    autofrettage> cheers Rasmus