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* Re: Using Org for a dissertation
@ 2012-05-15 16:44 Markus Grebenstein
  2012-05-16  1:26 ` Richard Lawrence
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Markus Grebenstein @ 2012-05-15 16:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode, richard.lawrence

Hi Richard,

I recently have written my dissertation in orgmode.

I switched to latex for the final 4 weeks between the correction version 
(completely written in orgmode) and the final version.

What I liked about org:
- Outlining functionality
- Synopsis drawers and view
- Markup
- Compiling subtrees
- noexport tag
- tagging

What I disliked/ preferred in auctex:
- missing footnote folding in stable version
- footnotes frequently lead to trouble with overlapping latex groups.
- missing/spare syntax highlighting
- reference handling in especial w.r.t headings (if you change the 
heading you use the reference)
- debugging
- missing subfigure abilities
- compile time i.e. if you have much babel-snippets
- whitespace handling i.e. after e.g. \si{someunit} (you cannot place a 
footnote at the place where it should be.

The main reasons to switch to auctex in the end for me has been the 
much  better debugging possibilities and the better reftex integration 
(you have to fix quite a bit of wrong references in the final stage of 
your work. Furthermore, I had to do some additional time consuming 
debugging of the orgmode markup several times (most frequently related 
to org-babel).

I would do it again but I'd switch to latex as soon as the basic 
structure of the text is fixed.

Just my 2 cents.

Best Markus

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* Using Org for a dissertation
@ 2012-05-12 18:23 Richard Lawrence
  2012-05-12 16:49 ` Eric Schulte
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Richard Lawrence @ 2012-05-12 18:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

Hi all,

I am a graduate student in philosophy, and I am about to begin writing
my dissertation.  I am wondering about whether I should write it in Org,
or stick to plain LaTeX.

This question has been asked before:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/22756

But that was two years ago; Org has changed a fair bit, and I'm
wondering if there are any updates to the advice given there.  Moreover,
I'm wondering if anyone has written a dissertation or other long
documents in Org in the meantime, and what their experiences have been.
(Henri-Paul, do you still read this list?)

I have used Org to write most of the shorter papers I have so far
written as a graduate student, and been very happy with the results.  I
prefer most of Org's editing features and conventions to bare LaTeX.  I
haven't previously had much of a need to mix TODO items and writing, but
imagine I will with a dissertation.  I *have* been relying on Org's
to-do list features for my reading: I enter new readings as TODO items
via capture, and include the bibliographic fields that make them
suitable to export via org-bibtex when it comes time to reference them.
None of the writing I've done so far has had strict formatting
requirements, however, and I have run into enough small formatting
issues in the past that I want to avoid having them grow into large
issues in the context of a dissertation.

Since I am not in the sciences, I doubt that I will have many figures or
complex tables, which I know can lead to headaches.  Here are a few of
the things I *am* worried about.  I'm sure most of them can be dealt
with; I am guessing that most of these issues reflect my ignorance or
outdated knowledge of Org features.  I'd be grateful for pointers or
workarounds for them:

1) Section labels and other in-document references.  It's nice that Org
generates these on export, but I need to be able to assign and use
labels that will not change if the document is reordered.  I know I can
simply add such labels via a \label command, but I am worried that using
them in addition to Org's autogenerated labels might cause numbering
problems in LaTeX.

2) Escaping/unrecognized commands.  I have occassionally run into
annoyances where Org escapes characters or commands that I intend to be
exported literally ("~" and "$" are perennial offenders).  Export also
tends to break when fill-paragraph breaks a LaTeX command across a line,
like:

some preceding text up to the end of the line \cite{SomeAuthorReference,
AnotherReference}.

3) Indentation around #+BEGIN_*/#+END_* environments. (I most often use
QUOTE.)  I usually have to explicitly control indentation in a way that
I wouldn't have to in LaTeX, because Org inserts blank lines around them
during export.

4) Inline footnotes.  I usually prefer to use inline footnotes, but I
think I have found in the past that Org's syntax for inline footnotes
([fn:: ...]) interacts badly with LaTeX commands, especially anything
requiring a "]" in the footnote text.

5) Bibtex and bibliographies.  I love keeping my reading list as Org
TODO entries, but would like a more automated way to export (just) the
entries I need for a particular document to a .bib file.  I would also
like to have more control over the bibliography as a section of my
document.  The \bibliography command must live under some Org heading or
other, and as far I as know it can't live under its own without
generating an extraneous heading, so I have to be careful that it ends
up at the end of the last section.

Are there other issues that people have run into when using Org to write
a longer document with strict formatting requirements?  Again, any and
all advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Richard

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2012-06-14 17:28 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2012-05-15 16:44 Using Org for a dissertation Markus Grebenstein
2012-05-16  1:26 ` Richard Lawrence
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2012-05-12 18:23 Richard Lawrence
2012-05-12 16:49 ` Eric Schulte
2012-05-15  5:02   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-06-14 12:39   ` Rasmus
2012-06-14 16:13     ` Eric S Fraga
2012-05-12 19:27 ` Thomas S. Dye
2012-05-15  5:16   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-15 17:08     ` Nicolas Goaziou
2012-05-16  0:38       ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-12 20:29 ` Peter Münster
2012-05-15 12:26 ` suvayu ali
2012-05-16  1:15   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-21 13:21 ` Matt Lundin

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