Re: Resume: Squeezing lines tighter in LaTeX output?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-04-18, at 19:27, John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:
>>
>> On 2015-04-17, at 20:13, John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Everything you'll do in Org will simply involve passing the right
>>> parameters to LaTeX via Org. In other words, you should start by
>>
>> Personally, I prefer configuring on the LaTeX side, but this is because
>> I find it much easier.
>
> Could you clarify "on the LaTeX side" (as in, post-Org, or LaTeX
> altogether)? Or what you find easier? I think I'm probably on the same
> page, but just wanted to hear your take. For me it comes down more to
> the command/"micro-formatting" side. As in, for my resume, I went raw
> LaTeX as it would have been ridiculous to try and do what I wanted
> from Org (aka, I'd have just had #+begin/end_latex everywhere and thus
> Org would literally just be a middle man). But if I'm using Org at
> all, I prefer to figure out how to do the LaTeX stuff from Org;
> otherwise when I inevitably miss something (typo, syntax, format
> tweak) I have to re-export, then re-apply all my custom LaTeX tweaks
> to the resultant .tex file.
>
> For most reports and such, I don't adjust things that finely, and so
> ~5-10 #+latex_header lines seems completely worth it to have access to
> markup vs. writing all that raw LaTeX. Plus it just looks nicer :)

1. Instead of lots of #+latex_header lines, I sometimes prefer
a customized, one-shot LaTeX package and one
#+latex_header \usepackage{...}
line.  But this is minor.

2. Sometimes I use Org for the first draft, and then work on the
exported LaTeX file.  And quite often, I don't use Org for authoring at
all, and use LaTeX exclusively.  Also, I hate the Org's long preamble (I
like my preambles to be clean, including /only/ what is /really/ needed
in this particular document).  Also, things like timestamps, todo
keywords etc. look ugly in the default LaTeX export.  (Some day, I'll
try to address some of these concerns with my own LaTeX exporter -
I mentioned the idea on this list several weeks ago.)

That said, I have about two decades of experience using both (low-level)
plain TeX, and then LaTeX, including hacking on classes and packages.
(For some 6 years or so, I'm in charge of a quite large (1500+ lines)
LaTeX class file for a journal, which has some non-trivial parts, too.)
OTOH, I'm a relative newbie with Org-mode: less than 5 years of
experience, and even that more of being a user than hacking.

Also, Org is really constraining sometimes.  Granted, it covers the most
common 95% cases, but...  For instance, there is /no (clean) way/ of
getting Org to typeset some Emacs keybindings (!), like =M-,= (which
won't work w/o dirty tricks like redefining some Org internal variables
or using a zero-width space, which OTOH breaks LaTeX unless you use
XeLaTeX, which I don't).  Also, using tikz in Org is a PITA.

And AUCTeX makes things so smooth, with auto-insertion of environments
and such.  There is no such thing in Org.  (Well, there are the "easy
templates" - but they are far inferior to AUCTeX's C-c C-e (with its C-u
variant, which is great).  Also, AUCTeX's C-c C-f (again, with its C-u
counterpart) speeds things a lot.  (Not to mention that I have some
personal small hacks on top of AUCTeX, too - like having TAB move past
the closing brace or \end{...}, a bit like in YASnippet, see
http://mbork.pl/2013-06-02_Making_TAB_jump_out_of_the_group_%28en%29 -
but this I even don't count).

So for me, Org is a great PIM and outliner, but LaTeX w/AUCTeX is *the*
authoring tool.

>>> finding out how to do what you want to do in LaTeX; for example google
>>> "how to change line spacing latex" and peruse the top result:
>>> - http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Paragraph_Formatting
>>
>> Be cautious, though: the LaTeX wikibook has some parts which are very
>> outdated (at least this was the situation when I looked at it some time
>> ago).  I'd rather recommend searching CTAN and searching/asking at
>> TeX.StackExchange.
>>
>
> Good to know! I wasn't aware of that and tend to just go for the first
> google hit, which can sometimes be wikibook, but absolutely is often a
> tex.SE Q/A.

Maybe it has changed, I have no idea.  But TeX.SE is in general a good
place to start searching.  (CTAN, too.)

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University