Re: [O] Org-mode for school work

[Nick Dokos]

Steve Prud'Homme <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi,
> I realy like the org-mode. I use it for my school work. I have a questions 
> about litle things like :
> 
> 1. It is possible when i export a org file in pdf to make a title page 
> verticaly centered.
> 
> 2. It is possible when i export a org file in pdf It is possible to do a page 
> brake after the table
> of content
> 
> 3. It is possible when i export a org file in pdf It is possible give the 
> text a interline of 1.5 for
> certain part of the text.
> 
> 4. When i make table i use table - create (ex: 7x3). It is possible to merge 
> cell like in word
> (example first row 1 colomn second row 4 column)
> 
> 5. It is possible when i export a org file in pdf It is possible to set the 
> font size
> 
> 6. Finaly it is possible to make a table that i use a lot a form that i can 
> fill and it is possible
> with i don't know a short-cut or something to call this form when i need it.
> 

1., 2., 3. and 5. are really LaTeX questions. Both 1. and 2. can be obtained by 
using
the appropriate LaTeX class, e.g.

#+LaTeX_CLASS: report

at the top of your document will give you a dedicated title page, vertically 
centered,
and a dedicated TOC with a page break afterwards. But it will also give you 
Parts and
Chapters, in addition to Sections, etc. which may not be what you want. You can
certainly customize all of that in LaTeX, but I suspect that it's going to be a 
fair
amount of work.

You can change the font size of the text globally by adding something like:

#+LaTeX: \huge

at the top of your file. This will only take effect after the TOC however, and 
it
will not affect the font size of headings, IIUC. You can also wrap a portion of 
the
text like this:

#+LaTeX: {\huge
some text
#+LaTeX: }

to make font size changes locally.

You can also change the interline spacing, (see e.g. p. 136 of the french 
version
of "A not-so-short introduction to LaTeX" by Tobias Oetiker

    http://mirror.math.ku.edu/tex-archive/info/lshort/french/lshort-fr.pdf

) by changing \baselineskip appropriately.

I don't understand 4. - it might be a good idea for you to provide an example
of what you want.

There are various ways to accomplish 6. : you can put the template in a file,
define a function to insert the file and bind it to a key, you can define a 
macro
or a function that inserts what you want, you can use any of the abbrev/template
systems that emacs provides...

Here is a bare-bones implementation of the first idea: you have a file

     /home/stevep/lib/org/templates/my-favorite-table.org

with the table template in it.

You define a function (put this stuff in your .emacs):

    (defun stevep-org-insert-my-favorite-table-template ()
       (interactive)
       (insert-file "/home/stevep/lib/org/templates/my-favorite-table.org"))

and you bind it to function-key F4 (probably not a good idea, but this is just
an example):

    (define-key global-map [f4] 'stevep-org-insert-my-favorite-table-template)

HTH,
Nick