[David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[David O'Toole]

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I'm forwarding my response to the list, as I mistakenly sent it only
to Xavier...


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From: David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org>
To: "Xavier Maillard" <zedek@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: [Emacs-orgmode] org-publish future ?
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:18:41 -0400
Message-ID: <m3d5dnjo7i.fsf@gnu.org>


Hi Xavier, 

Muse is for people who wish to write all their documents with a single
markup syntax, and produce multiple target output formats from this
input. One result of this is that the markup syntax is an intersection
of the capabilities of the target output formats, so it is (in my
opinion) lacking in expressiveness in some situations.

Org-publish is still incomplete, but I imagine it is for people who
write directly in multiple formats depending on the situation, and
want a single system for publishing ALL their content. I write in
*.org when I am organizing, doing my webpages, or writing documents; I
write in LaTeX when writing larger documents or reports; I write in
emacs lisp when programming. So far org-publish doesn't support LaTeX
documents, but I can imagine a plugin that will create PDF files and
upload them whenever the .tex source changes. 

I think these styles are different enough to both deserve existing :-)

(Emacs-wiki is obsolete; muse is its successor. I don't know much about
BHL mode.)

You will have to choose the one that suits your style.

Some thoughts on the future of org-publish:

1. Report generation. I would like to be able to produce HTML reports
   of completed tasks, and possibly more sophisticated things like
   timeclock summaries. This will require org-publish to be able to
   scan text for some kind of tag, and replace the tag with
   appropriate org markup (tables of tasks etc.) Then org.el can just
   process the file, business as usual, because it will contain
   nothing but org markup.

2. More project planning support. I would like to be able to do Gantt
   charts in HTML. 

The reason for this stuff is, I am starting to do work as an
independent consultant, and I would like to be able to produce nice
reports and project plans for clients.  I used to do this with
Planner/Emacs-wiki but the rather limiting markup sometimes frustrated
me. I also need to be able to keep detailed records of time spent on
different tasks, so that I can produce accurate bills.

By the way, I used to generate nice PDFs of my reports with Firefox
and ps2pdf. I think, provided it can be made into a batch operation,
that this is a perfectly acceptable way of producing PDF output from
org.

On a related note, Carsten are you reading? Something came up in IRC
discussion, about making it easier to convert org documents to other
formats. Although I am a bit resistant to the idea, especially since
it would take things in a more muse-ish direction, I remember you had
mentioned making a "cleaned up" publishing function that produces an
intermediate format (s-expressions?) that could be transformed into
something else. Are you still thinking about this?

"Xavier Maillard" <zedek@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I was looking on emacswiki searching for publish engines for Emacs.
> Actually, I have found at least three of them:
>
> 1. muse
> 2. emacs-wiki
> 3. bhl
>
> Adding org-publish to this list, we got 4 engines that do merely the same
> thing except for org-publish which offers less features. So what is the
> current goal for org-publish exactly ? Is there any possiblity that
> org-publish be incorporated into something bigger and more insteresting for
> us as end users. are there any plans for orc-publish if at all ?
>
> I know David is quite busy with all his projects but I would like to know if
> it is worth I learn org-publish in depth or switch to something else. So
> David, what are your plans ? :)
>
> Regards
> -- 
> Xavier Maillard
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

-- 
Dave O'Toole
dto@gnu.org

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-- 
Dave O'Toole
dto@gnu.org

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Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Jun 5, 2006, at 23:19, David O'Toole wrote:
>
> On a related note, Carsten are you reading? Something came up in IRC
> discussion, about making it easier to convert org documents to other
> formats. Although I am a bit resistant to the idea, especially since
> it would take things in a more muse-ish direction, I remember you had
> mentioned making a "cleaned up" publishing function that produces an
> intermediate format (s-expressions?) that could be transformed into
> something else. Are you still thinking about this?

My interest in exporting Org-mode to more formats is quite limited.  I 
am not using Org-mode to write books.  And if I want to produce a book, 
moving away from the fantastic toolset for LaTeX available under Emacs 
to something that limits my possibilities to a subset of LaTeX is a 
loss, not a gain.

Personally, I am not often in a situation where I need to produce many 
different output formats of a document.  The only major application for 
this is documentation, for example of computer programs produce 
documentation.  There are many systems that can do this, for example 
POD (developed for the perl documentation), TeXInfo, muse.  I don't see 
why Org-mode needs to be able to do the same.

The one thing I would be interested in is indeed to produce one very 
general format that would allow people to do with it whatever they 
want.  My feeling is that such a format could be based on the current 
HTML exporter because it does a complete structural analysis of an 
Org-mode document, and the output could be some kind of semantic-only 
HTML, or XML, or whatever.  I have not taken any steps toward 
implementing this, and right now I don't see it happening.

- Carsten

Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[David O'Toole]

I tend to agree... I wasn't that hot about this possibility myself,
but thought it would be prudent to ask. 

Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:

> On Jun 5, 2006, at 23:19, David O'Toole wrote:
>>
>> On a related note, Carsten are you reading? Something came up in IRC
>> discussion, about making it easier to convert org documents to other
>> formats. Although I am a bit resistant to the idea, especially since
>> it would take things in a more muse-ish direction, I remember you had
>> mentioned making a "cleaned up" publishing function that produces an
>> intermediate format (s-expressions?) that could be transformed into
>> something else. Are you still thinking about this?
>
> My interest in exporting Org-mode to more formats is quite limited.  I
> am not using Org-mode to write books.  And if I want to produce a
> book, moving away from the fantastic toolset for LaTeX available under
> Emacs to something that limits my possibilities to a subset of LaTeX
> is a loss, not a gain.
>
> Personally, I am not often in a situation where I need to produce many
> different output formats of a document.  The only major application
> for this is documentation, for example of computer programs produce
> documentation.  There are many systems that can do this, for example
> POD (developed for the perl documentation), TeXInfo, muse.  I don't
> see why Org-mode needs to be able to do the same.
>
> The one thing I would be interested in is indeed to produce one very
> general format that would allow people to do with it whatever they
> want.  My feeling is that such a format could be based on the current
> HTML exporter because it does a complete structural analysis of an
> Org-mode document, and the output could be some kind of semantic-only
> HTML, or XML, or whatever.  I have not taken any steps toward
> implementing this, and right now I don't see it happening.
>
> - Carsten
>
>

-- 
Dave O'Toole
dto@gnu.org

Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Michael Olson]

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Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:

> My interest in exporting Org-mode to more formats is quite limited.
> I am not using Org-mode to write books.  And if I want to produce a
> book, moving away from the fantastic toolset for LaTeX available
> under Emacs to something that limits my possibilities to a subset of
> LaTeX is a loss, not a gain.

That may be true for those who have LaTeX experience.  For those who
don't, *any* decent attempt at making it easier to generate LaTeX
documents from Org files would be a gain.

-- 
Michael Olson -- FSF Associate Member #652 -- http://www.mwolson.org/
Interests: Emacs Lisp, text markup, protocols -- Jabber: mwolson_at_hcoop.net
  /` |\ | | | IRC: mwolson on freenode.net: #hcoop, #muse, #PurdueLUG
 |_] | \| |_| Project involvement: Emacs, Muse, Planner, ERC, EMMS

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Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Jun 6, 2006, at 15:54, Michael Olson wrote:

> Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
>
>> My interest in exporting Org-mode to more formats is quite limited.
>> I am not using Org-mode to write books.  And if I want to produce a
>> book, moving away from the fantastic toolset for LaTeX available
>> under Emacs to something that limits my possibilities to a subset of
>> LaTeX is a loss, not a gain.
>
> That may be true for those who have LaTeX experience.  For those who
> don't, *any* decent attempt at making it easier to generate LaTeX
> documents from Org files would be a gain.

Yes, this is certainly true.  ascii-to-xxx converters can certainly 
help you to write your first LaTeX document.  However, they don't 
encourage to grow into that language at all, so to some extend they are 
a dead end.

- Carsten

Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Michael Olson]

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Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:

> Yes, this is certainly true.  ascii-to-xxx converters can certainly
> help you to write your first LaTeX document.  However, they don't
> encourage to grow into that language at all, so to some extend they
> are a dead end.

I disagree.  It would give people an excellent foundation that they
can build upon, since they can examine the output from that publishing
routine to learn LaTeX.  When they come across limitations of the
current LaTeX publishing implementation, they will search for
supplemental information.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not proposing that anyone actually implement
this for Org, I'm just defending the hypothetical existence of such a
publisher.

-- 
Michael Olson -- FSF Associate Member #652 -- http://www.mwolson.org/
Interests: Emacs Lisp, text markup, protocols -- Jabber: mwolson_at_hcoop.net
  /` |\ | | | IRC: mwolson on freenode.net: #hcoop, #muse, #PurdueLUG
 |_] | \| |_| Project involvement: Emacs, Muse, Planner, ERC, EMMS

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Fwd: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Chris wallace]

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Apologies, sent this just to Michael and not the whole list:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris wallace <crassshed@gmail.com>
Date: 06-Jun-2006 17:01
Subject: Re: [Emacs-orgmode] Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future
?
To: Michael Olson <mwolson@gnu.org>

On 06/06/06, Michael Olson <mwolson@gnu.org> wrote:

> Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
>
> > Yes, this is certainly true.  ascii-to-xxx converters can certainly
> > help you to write your first LaTeX document.  However, they don't
> > encourage to grow into that language at all, so to some extend they
> > are a dead end.
>
> I disagree.  It would give people an excellent foundation that they
> can build upon, since they can examine the output from that publishing
> routine to learn LaTeX.  When they come across limitations of the
> current LaTeX publishing implementation, they will search for
> supplemental information.


If it's really needed, why not just add a faq:
Q: how do I generate laTeX from org?
A: use org-export-to-html and then call html2latex on the result (see
http://html2latex.sourceforge.net/)

?

Chris.

PS.  On the subject of org-publish (sort of), one of the things I like most
about org-mode is that I can have Readme.org files scattered over a number
of directories and have them all included in the agenda.  However,
org-publish assumes all org files for a single project reside in a single
directory.  I wonder if I am the only one who has several directories per
project?

I have hacked org-publish.el (badly) to allow me to supply a list of org
files instead of a directory.  If this would be useful for anyone else, I'm
happy to have a go a cleaning it up and offer a patch.

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Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Jun 6, 2006, at 18:02, Chris wallace wrote:

>
> PS.  On the subject of org-publish (sort of), one of the things I like 
> most about org-mode is that I can have Readme.org files scattered over 
> a number of directories and have them all included in the agenda.  
> However, org-publish assumes all org files for a single project reside 
> in a single directory.  I wonder if I am the only one who has several 
> directories per project?

I think you can already use the :include parameter to do this - at 
least I hope that you can give absolute path names there.  If not, i 
would consider this a bug.

- Carsten

Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Chris wallace]

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On 07/06/06, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2006, at 18:02, Chris wallace wrote:
>
> >
> > PS. On the subject of org-publish (sort of), one of the things I like
> > most about org-mode is that I can have Readme.org files scattered over
> > a number of directories and have them all included in the agenda.
> > However, org-publish assumes all org files for a single project reside
> > in a single directory. I wonder if I am the only one who has several
> > directories per project?
>
> I think you can already use the :include parameter to do this - at
> least I hope that you can give absolute path names there.  If not, i
> would consider this a bug.


So either this is a bug or I'm mis-using the :include parameter.  I have
org-publish-project-alist set as follows:

org-publish-project-alist is a variable defined in `org-publish.el'.
Its value is
(("bright" :base-directory "~/bright"
  :base-extension "org"
  :include ("/home/chris/bright/chr5/cng/Readme.org"
"/home/chris/bright/chr5/phase2/Readme.org")
  :publishing-directory "~/public_html/org"
  :with-section-numbers nil
  :table-of-contents t
  :style "<link rel=stylesheet href=\"/~chris/styles/wiki-style.css\"
type=\"text/css\">"))

When I do M-x org-publish bright the *.org files in ~/bright are published,
but the included files are not.  I also tried with filenames relative to
~/public/org; same result.  How should I be setting :include?

This is with org v. 4.36, org-publish v. 1.70, emacs v. 22.0.50.2

Chris.



- Carsten
>
>

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Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[David O'Toole]

I will look into this and get back to you. 

"Chris wallace" <crassshed@gmail.com> writes:

> On 07/06/06, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Jun 6, 2006, at 18:02, Chris wallace wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > PS. On the subject of org-publish (sort of), one of the things I like
>> > most about org-mode is that I can have Readme.org files scattered over
>> > a number of directories and have them all included in the agenda.
>> > However, org-publish assumes all org files for a single project reside
>> > in a single directory. I wonder if I am the only one who has several
>> > directories per project?
>>
>> I think you can already use the :include parameter to do this - at
>> least I hope that you can give absolute path names there.  If not, i
>> would consider this a bug.
>
>
> So either this is a bug or I'm mis-using the :include parameter.  I have
> org-publish-project-alist set as follows:
>
> org-publish-project-alist is a variable defined in `org-publish.el'.
> Its value is
> (("bright" :base-directory "~/bright"
>  :base-extension "org"
>  :include ("/home/chris/bright/chr5/cng/Readme.org"
> "/home/chris/bright/chr5/phase2/Readme.org")
>  :publishing-directory "~/public_html/org"
>  :with-section-numbers nil
>  :table-of-contents t
>  :style "<link rel=stylesheet href=\"/~chris/styles/wiki-style.css\"
> type=\"text/css\">"))
>
> When I do M-x org-publish bright the *.org files in ~/bright are published,
> but the included files are not.  I also tried with filenames relative to
> ~/public/org; same result.  How should I be setting :include?
>
> This is with org v. 4.36, org-publish v. 1.70, emacs v. 22.0.50.2
>
> Chris.
>
>
>
> - Carsten
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

-- 
David O'Toole -- Independent Consultant
dto@gnu.org

Re: Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Bastien]

Michael Olson <mwolson@gnu.org> writes:

> Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
>
>> Yes, this is certainly true.  ascii-to-xxx converters can certainly
>> help you to write your first LaTeX document.  However, they don't
>> encourage to grow into that language at all, so to some extend they
>> are a dead end.
>
> I disagree.  It would give people an excellent foundation that they
> can build upon, since they can examine the output from that publishing
> routine to learn LaTeX.  When they come across limitations of the
> current LaTeX publishing implementation, they will search for
> supplemental information.
>
> Don't get me wrong: I'm not proposing that anyone actually implement
> this for Org, I'm just defending the hypothetical existence of such a
> publisher.

I also think ascii-to-xxx converter can be useful as long as they stay
as simple as ascii and provided they don't require anything new to
learn.  Otherwise there is no point in learning a new ascii syntax
instead of directly learning LaTeX.

Regards,

-- 
Bastien

Re: [David O'Toole] Fwd: Re: org-publish future ?

[Christian Schlauer]

David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org> writes:

> 2. More project planning support. I would like to be able to do Gantt
>    charts in HTML. 

It isn't org-mode, but it does Gantt charts in Emacs (and exports them
to LaTeX):
<URL:http://members.chello.at/rene.weichselbaum/etask.html>. Maybe a
starting point?
-- 
Christian Schlauer