Re: Professional PDF LaTeX templates?

['Mash <mashdot@toshine.net>]

Quoting Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>:
>
>>> 2011/3/14 Thomas Herbert <mashdot@toshine.net>
>>>>
>>
>>>> Afternoon,
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if anyone had any good examples of org-mode LaTeX templates with
>>>> which to export professional looking PDFs?
>>>>
>>>> It is my big issue with org-mode at the moment, and I have tried reading
>>>> what I can on LaTeX styling but it is getting to the point that I am
>>>> spending way to much time trying to learn enough LaTeX only to  
>>>> find I can't
>>>> translate it into anything that looks the quality of using MS  
>>>> Word and Adobe
>>>> Flashpaper.
>
> Not intending to start a flame war but my experience is that latex, even
> with everything at default settings, beats a typical MS Word document
> hands down!  At least in academic circles, many publishers use latex for
> the final typesetting stage even if the original article was submitted
> in MS Word.
>
> The negative aspect, for some, about latex is that everything is
> customisable (as you have alluded to) given that it is but a set of
> macros built on top of the TeX typesetting system (thank you Donald
> Knuth!).  Because the underlying system is both robust and
> comprehensive, anything is possible!  The power of TeX comes partly from
> the basis being both page and paragraph formatting, as opposed to line
> by line formatting which tools like MS Word use.
>
> Therefore, I am curious as to what you wish to achieve:
>
> John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> writes:
>> Instead... could you provide something you think is professional to
>> set the bar and those on the list can either match it or point you in
>> the direction of something they've seen or already created to fit into
>> your genre of "professional"?
>
> This would indeed be very useful.

Sorry yes my question was fairly vague. Also I actually had trouble  
trying to find an example of what I mean. But let me clarify.

I suppose by "professional" I really meant "polished", and so it is  
LaTeX styling I have having trouble with, it may also be laziness on  
my part. I have tried searching for LaTeX styling which I can  
translate into a few org-mode header declarations but still can't work  
out what is or is not compatible with org-mode (LaTeX classes) or how  
to implement styling correctly.

I think what it is that I have been using CSS for so long that I am  
getting frustrated in not being able to produce the level of results I  
want in LaTeX. Also I feel like a complete numpty not being able to  
clearly understand how to build and define external LaTeX classes I  
can call to output my simple .org file to a "polished" .pdf. I.e.  
margins, line-heights, different block element font styling, common  
graphical page headers or footers.

There are a huge amount of LaTeX examples on the web, but they are  
full documents with inline elements, I wanted to know if anyone has  
already setup classes that work, with notes on LaTeX dependencies (and  
how and where to download them from) which they use day to day to  
produce reports, articles, contracts or client proposals from simple  
.org files?

Is that any clearer?