Improvements in the default LaTeX preamble (was: [PATCH] ox-latex.el: Unify in one single list Babel and Polyglossia languages alists)

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Max Nikulin writes:

> My vote is to configure babel by default if it is possible to provide
> default preamble that allows reasonable quality of PDF for simple Org
> documents with no explicit configuration.
>
> Ideally, the following should be possible out of the box. When no
> advanced features are involved, user should be able to just export
> document to e.g. having printed version of their notes during a
> meeting, to send a summary to the boss. etc. It should be possible for
> users completely ignorant in respect to LaTeX.
>
> Likely language is not enough and e.g. paper size should be guessed
> (LC_PAPER?) as well.
>
> If a document require careful tuning then a couple of extra lines in
> the org file or a couple of additional custom variables in the init
> file should not be a problem.

I think that my position, after all these discussions here and in other
threads, needs a couple of clarifications:

- I am in favor of Org producing a consistent "standard" preamble for
  LaTeX out-of-the-box, so that users get a technically optimal PDF
  without messing with LaTeX code. This would include not only issues
  related to document languages (babel and polyglossia) but also fonts
  (especially XelaTeX and LuaLaTeX support), page layout (with geometry
  package), publishing support and some other things that can be
  proposed here. In this regard, I have changed the subject of this
  thread, if that's okay with you.

- I can agree that all of the above is by default. But it seems
  essential to me that there is at least the possibility of giving all
  that a nil value at a global level, for users who need more control
  and want to write (La)TeX code or want to load the entire preamble
  from an external document (a .tex file or a .sty file) . Which is not
  incompatible with document-level control and fine-tuning (*only* if
  the above is enabled).

Best regards,

Juan Manuel