Thanks for the tip Mike. I had no idea about this approach, I'm still too naive in TeX/LaTeX. I'll definitely have to get my head around both -- but it's reassuring to know that I can write the content in orgmode and tweak the LaTeX output it later as I want.
By the way, any book recommendations ? I'd like something that could lay down the foundations and not take too much time. Also, not sure if I should start with TeX or LaTeX. Thanks! Marcelo. On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Mike McLean <mike.mcl...@pobox.com> wrote: > On 5/10/11 1:52 PM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote: >> 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? > > I've done the same thing over the past few months and agree that > org-mode as the front end for a LaTeX document production system is the > way to go. The low-level tweak that I've added is a definition of a set > of LaTeX custom classes that map to my "roles" in life. For example, I > am the president of a non-profit organization and I have a LaTeX class > for that organization. This class defines chapter heads, title pages, > etc. to have a look-and-feel of the organization. I have a day job, the > LaTeX class for that reflects the corporate communication guidelines. > (And so on). > > I had tried the route of defining various low-level LaTeX tweaks in > header statement in org export option files, and this was wayyyyy to > complex, fragile, and very difficult to maintain. The time I spent the > last few weeks creating 3 (of 4) necessary LaTeX =.cls= files has so far > been time well spent. I would strongly recommend thinking about putting > any desired low-level LaTeX tweaks into a class (or set of classes) that > are *your's*. > > >
