Re: [O] Feature request: simplify usage of special blocks (for beamer)

[Carlos Pita]

> > 1. Allow for special blocks to take an :options argument.
>
> Although I agree that this would be nice, I imagine the difficulty would be 
> that it would be difficult to cater for multiple backends.

It's not really difficult, more on the trivial side. For example, as
an end user I already can install a filter like:

(defun my-special-block-parse-filter (tree backend symbol)
  (when (org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'latex)
    (org-element-map tree 'special-block
      (lambda (element)
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char (org-element-property :begin element))
          (when (looking-at "[ \t]*#\\+BEGIN_\\S-+[ \t]+\\(\\S-+\\)")
            (let ((options (format ":options [%s]"
(match-string-no-properties 1))))
              (org-element-put-property element :attr_latex (list
options)))))))))

And then write:

#+BEGIN_definition Special Block
A block mostly left uninterpreted by core org for the sake of backends
#+END_definition

This is as devoid of boilerplate as possible.

Notice the filter only applies to latex derived backends and won't
take effect if there is an #+ATTR_LATEX clause before the block (this
because it's considered part of the element the regexp won't match
it).

Obviously this can be implemented in a cleaner way by changing
org-latex-special-block in ox-latex.el. Again, the change would be
trivial.

> > 2. Mention the possibility of using special blocks to represent beamer
> > blocks, be it in the manual or in the tutorial.
>
> Given that beamer inherits everything that the LaTeX exporter supports, is 
> the special blocks section in the LaTeX exporter documentation not already 
> enough?

Not much users seem to be aware of the ablity of using special blocks
for beamer. No example, answer, tutorial out there even mentioned the
possibility. Given its convenience, I would say the beamer export
section should explicitly suggest the alternative.

Best regards
--
Carlos