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? So, after reading this article: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-export.html, I've then realized how powerful the org-export feature is. I can basically do this: * Keep the text in a (very) human readable format that I'm used to and that is much better to maintain than any other format I know (markdown / asciidoc) and integrated with my own orgmode personal information manager! * Add / customize the LaTeX output in *ANY* way I want to. Thanks to org AND babel! From what I can see, there are no limitations on how complex the LaTeX customizations can be, it can essentially match up any other "pure" latex documents out there. * As noted above, fully support LaTeX while still allowing me to export to: * plaintext * HTML * DocBook (and hence an array of other formats) I mean, how cool is that? I'm only starting in TeX/LaTeX so I might be overlooking some limitations, but from what I can see, orgmode is the most pragmatic and powerful publishing framework I have ever come to know. And what excites me even more is that I can keep my book in my preferred format and still output a beautifully-formatted PDF book *and* still support other formats (such as mobi or epub through docbook). Amazing! By the way, if I want to use raw TeX or maybe ConTeXt, is it possible? Not that I need, only curious :) This needs more hype! I don't think people realize how powerful this is ;) Cheers! Marcelo.
