[O] Exporting book handouts

[Jarmo Hurri]

Greetings.

I have been writing a math book, and am still exploring the possibility
of using org for the task. Currently all my material is still in plain
LaTeX. The tools used are LaTeX, Asymptote, and R.

We all know many advantages that the use of org would bring. ;-) For me,
one of the possible benefits would be the use of org to export in
different formats: a PDF containing the whole book, an HTML site with
the same contents, and last, but not least, a set of Beamer handout
slides containing _only some parts_ of the material. I am using the
material to teach, and sometimes give handouts to students. Having to
create the handouts separately is boring and counterproductive.

Usually handouts contain relatively little information. There is a
title, often accompanied by a figure, and perhaps a sentence or two with
some equations. Typically at least parts of the equations are the same
as in the main text (we may derive the final results in class). The
figures in the book and handouts contain the same information, but the
handout figures may have e.g. larger fonts. The title of a handout may
be a part of the book text, or it may not.

I guess the things I would need include the following.

1. A way to denote that a certain element (figure, equation, part of a
   longer equation, a piece of text etc.) goes into the Beamer
   export. By default, material should _not_ be included in the Beamer
   export. I don't know how to achieve this.

   I did find SELECT_TAGS in the manual, so if I were to export entire
   subtrees into Beamer, maybe I could change the value of this when I
   am doing a Beamer export. But could I use this for individual
   elements, such as an equation or a figure?

2. A way to add some material into the Beamer handouts, material that is
   not in the book. I think this is easy to achieve with #+BEAMER and
   #+BEGIN_BEAMER ... #+END_BEAMER.

3. A way to change some values in Asymptote and R Babel blocks depending
   on whether I am exporting a Beamer or regular PDF / HTML. I don't
   know yet how to achieve this.

I am still in an explorative stage, so I am sure I will come up with
10^6 other questions when I need to face the details. But I would first
like to clear these general issues before I even try to proceed.

All the best,

Jarmo