Re: [O] Org as a publishing toolkit

[Marcelo de Moraes Serpa]

Thanks for the tip Mike. I had no idea about this approach, I'm still
too naive in TeX/LaTeX. I'll definitely have to get my head around
both -- but it's reassuring to know that I can write the content in
orgmode and tweak the LaTeX output it later as I want.

By the way, any book recommendations ? I'd like something that could
lay down the foundations and not take too much time. Also, not sure if
I should start with TeX or LaTeX.

Thanks!

Marcelo.

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Mike McLean <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 5/10/11 1:52 PM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
>> 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?
>
> I've done the same thing over the past few months and agree that
> org-mode as the front end for a LaTeX document production system is the
> way to go. The low-level tweak that I've added is a definition of a set
> of LaTeX custom classes that map to my "roles" in life. For example, I
> am the president of a non-profit organization and I have a LaTeX class
> for that organization. This class defines chapter heads, title pages,
> etc. to have a look-and-feel of the organization. I have a day job, the
> LaTeX class for that reflects the corporate communication guidelines.
> (And so on).
>
> I had tried the route of defining various low-level LaTeX tweaks in
> header statement in org export option files, and this was wayyyyy to
> complex, fragile, and very difficult to maintain. The time I spent the
> last few weeks creating 3 (of 4) necessary LaTeX =.cls= files has so far
> been time well spent. I would strongly recommend thinking about putting
> any desired low-level LaTeX tweaks into a class (or set of classes) that
> are *your's*.
>
>
>