Re: About exporting

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Martin Steffen <msteffen@ifi.uio.no> writes:

> 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''.

Unfortunately today the old 'division of powers' that always worked has
been broken in many scenarios: the author writes, the typesetter
composes the book and the publisher publishes it, and neither of them
interferes in the other's work, although all three live together in the
same body. The WYSIWYG word processors have had a lot to do with
distracting the author in untimely typographical concerns by imposing an
unnatural way of writing, where the format is confused with the content
and its structure. And DTP software, on the other hand, which is
intended for magazines and graphic design, have imposed a rather
negligent way of producing books.

Knuth created TeX in the '70s for his own books, because he was
disgusted with the result he was getting from an increasingly poor
publishing industry, in the transition from mechanical printing and
photocomposition to computerized editorial production. But somehow he
also reinvented the printing press of the digital age, since TeX is
first and foremost an emulator of the art and technique of ancient
linotypists, monotypists, typesetters and so on. Lamport wrote LaTeX for
his own documents, as a high-level language for TeX, since TeX only
works on the physical plane, and plainTeX was quite spartan. But time
has shown that LaTeX (and later ConTeXt) is the perfect semantic layer
of TeX. Tex and LaTeX are essentially *typographic* tools, with true
professional demands, but which authors can use on "autopilot" (a very
small part of LaTeX).

However, *I would not recommend anyone to use LaTeX for writing*. A
light markup language is more comfortable and efficient for me. Some
people prefer Markdown, but IMHO, Org Mode represents the most natural
way (aside from paper) to write. It helps me organize my ideas. And when
I write I don't worry about typographical problems at all, although I
work as a professional typesetter. Of course, with LaTeX and its
autopilot (standard classes, basic packages, no direct formatting, no
custom code, etc., etc.) you can do the same. But Org represents one
more step in confort and productivity.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel