Re: Org as a book publisher

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hi Diego,

Thank you very much for your comments.

Diego Zamboni <diego@zzamboni.org> writes:

> I think with Org and a setup like you describe, we are one step closer
> to separating content (what) from form (how) in a document. This was
> one of the original goals of LaTeX, but of course in a LaTeX document
> much of the "how" is still visible through the "what". With Org the
> separation becomes clearer, by hiding the LaTeX structures (almost)
> completely, and by allowing to produce multiple formats from the same
> source document.

I Totally agree. Leslie Lamport originally created LaTeX (as far as I
know) as a simplified way of handling TeX for his own documents, since
the other format of TeX, plainTeX, was quite spartan. Then LaTeX has
grown incredibly thanks to its extensibility qualities: a small kernel
(unlike ConTeXt, which is more monolithic) and a ecosystem of macro
packages. If we make an analogy with the old days of mechanical
printing, I always say that TeX is the typographer, the one who gets his
hands dirty with ink, while LaTeX wears a tie and is in the editorial
design department. TeX works on the merely physical plane, and he is
only interested in how each element on the page is positioned in
relation to other elements. Here the minimum indivisible element would
be the letter, which to TeX's eyes is a box with certain dimensions.
LaTeX lives more on a semantic plane: for LaTeX there is no lines or
letters or paragraphs, but rather headings, heading levels, lists,
quotes, verses, chapters, tables, equations, tables of contents... But,
as you say, in LaTeX you can still see too many gears. With Org we can
work on a lighter and cleaner document. And with a single source for
multiple formats!

Before moving to Org, I applied this `philosophy' to the markdown/pandoc
tandem. But since I migrated to Emacs/Org a few years ago, it's almost
like having superpowers :-D

Best regards,

Juan Manuel