Re: Emacs as word processor

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Hi,

Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> PS: As much as I love to use org-mode to generate ODTs, it's not the
> same thing.  I still get ODTs from people, and I have no way of editing
> those without converting it back... I'd like just a way to collaborate
> there in emacs :)

What if you could import ODT as Org?

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>         [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
>         [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
>         [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.
>
>     > 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word
>     > processing.  That is why we added text properties and variable width
>     > fonts.  However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
>     >
>     > Could people please start working on the features that are needed?
>
>     1. What would you recommend as the backend format?
>
> It would be good to support several, including some use of HTML, ODF, and
> maybe Texinfo.

On the *export side* these are all supported by Org.  There's no
import though. 

Converting from, say, odt to Org might be more effectively implemented
on the Libreoffice side though that would add extra dependencies.

> I don't know how to use Org mode, and don't know what it does (it
> seems to do so many things),

Here's a simple document with *bold* and /italic/.

#+TITLE: Doc-0
#+AUTHOR: Rasmus
* section
  my *first* /document/

which can be exported to html, LaTeX, odt, texinfo, groff, . . ..

> but if it displays through Emacs then
> there are many formatting features that it can't display in a WYSIWYG
> fashion like Libre Office.

It does support tables, images, LaTeX equations, Greek letters,
different faces for headings/bold/.../ etc.

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:


> I use TeX to write a manual, and also when I want to send a nicely formatted
> letter; but I wish I could do the latter WYSIWYG in Emacs.

Personally, I would have a hard time typesetting a letter in
Libreoffice.  How do I get the address in the right spot, and how do I
typeset my own address above and in a smaller type?

This is how you'd typeset a letter in Org using ox-koma-letter.el ¹.
A letter typeset with Groff would be very similar though the tags
(e.g. :from:) are slightly different.

#+DATE: <2013-06-01 Sat>
#+AUTHOR: Rasmus
* this is my SUBJECT
  here's the contents

* FROM					       :from:
  Rasmus
  in Org-mode
  Emacs

* PS						 :ps:
  here's a PS
* ENCL					       :encl:
  these documents are included
  1. doc1
  2. doc2
* CC						 :cc:
  who will be informed
  - Marie
  - Peter

> But there are so many people who don't use Emacs or TeX.  They use
> WYSIWYG word processors only.  I wish we could make Emacs easy for
> them to use, so they could get the benefit of Emacs's other advantages
> while doing their word processing.

This is a valid point and goal.  The reason why my coauthors tolerate
the initial weirdness of Emacs *is* that we work in Org.

–Rasmus

Footnotes: 
¹   http://orgmode.org/cgit.cgi/org-mode.git/tree/contrib/lisp/ox-koma-letter.el