Re: New exporter, beamer confusion

[James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com>]

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On Feb 7, 2013 3:57 AM, "Nicolas Goaziou" <n.goaziou@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Btw, *who* preferred \alert? (Orwell, Politics and the English Language:
> > "Never use the passive [voice] where you can use the active.")
>
> Obviously, me, as the author of the back-end. Org offers only one slot
> for "strong emphasis". I had to choose between bold and alert, and so
> I did.

Ok, and as long as I can configure it, no problem.

Aside Re: Orwell, and now veering well off-topic, his point about passive
voice is that it hides human agency and, in the worst cases, suggests that
something simply "is objectively so" rather than "one or more people made
it so, for reasons that may be subjective," or deflects responsibility à la
"mistakes were made." Although the relationship to the present topic is
only tangential, Orwell's caution is at least as relevant today as it was
when he wrote it in 1946. I find for myself that following his advice [6 or
7 rules of thumb at the end of his essay] sounds a little alarm bell when
my thinking is getting sloppy -- so I think it bears repeating. (Apologies
to the scientific authors here, who "are trained" [oops!] to erase
themselves from reports on their experimental procedures by using passive
voice consistently...)

In fact, it wasn't obvious to me whether it was simply your preference, or
if an expert or authority on slideshow style recommends \alert over
\textbf. In the latter case, I would want to know who and why, so I could
read and then make up my own mind.

> > "Reasonably" for me would mean tweaking some configuration options and
> > perhaps changing a few minor details of the markup. If you have to
change
> > the org document's structure (e.g., converting headlines to lists), it
> > isn't backward compatible.
>
> Then, by this definition, it isn't, indeed.

Sure, and that's ok. My frustration stemmed from expecting more
compatibility than there actually is. After adjusting my expectations, I
can figure out how to make it work for me.

hjh

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