[O] Org as a publishing toolkit

[Marcelo de Moraes Serpa]

Hi list,

So today I have been reseaching about higher-levels toolkits that
could help me get into TeX (and or LaTeX) and at the same time
allowing me to keep the text in a more human-readable format (easier
to mantain and to convert to other formats if needed).

I know that if I want beautiful formatted PDFs I will need to get into
TeX / LaTeX, and I already started doing that, but as I said, keeping
the text in a higher level format has benefits that you already know
about.

So I looked at asciidoc, the lower-level XML-based docbook, markdown,
pandoc, ConTeXt, etc.

Then I thought, why not try orgmode?

So, after reading this article:
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-export.html, I've then
realized how powerful the org-export feature is.

I can basically do this:
 * Keep the text in a (very) human readable format that I'm used to
and that is much better to maintain than any other format I know
(markdown / asciidoc) and integrated with my own orgmode personal
information manager!
 * Add / customize the LaTeX output in *ANY* way I want to. Thanks to
org AND babel! From what I can see, there are no limitations on how
complex the LaTeX customizations can be, it can essentially match up
any other "pure" latex documents out there.
 * As noted above, fully support LaTeX while still allowing me to export to:
   * plaintext
   * HTML
   * DocBook (and hence an array of other formats)

I mean, how cool is that? I'm only starting in TeX/LaTeX so I might be
overlooking some limitations, but from what I can see, orgmode is the
most pragmatic and powerful publishing framework I have ever come to
know.

And what excites me even more is that I can keep my book in my
preferred format and still output a beautifully-formatted PDF book
*and* still support other formats (such as mobi or epub through
docbook). Amazing!

By the way, if I want to use raw TeX or maybe ConTeXt, is it possible?
Not that I need, only curious :)

This needs more hype! I don't think people realize how powerful this is ;)

Cheers!

Marcelo.