Re: Using Emacs, Org-mode and R for Research Writing in Social Sciences

[Vikas Rawal <vikaslists@agrarianresearch.org>]

> 
>> 
>> Thank you Axel for taking the time to test it. I look forward to more comments as you look at it. You comments are very useful.
> 
> I'm new to Emacs, but know LaTeX and Pandoc.
> I have a lot of beginner’s questions.
> (Configuring emacs is quite difficult: should I use
> - custom-set-variable
> - starter-kit
> - raw elisp in .emacs
> )
> 

You could use either. 

I think starter-kit is a good choice. You will be up and running in no time. Just put it in place. 

If you are using the starter kit, you should create a sub-directory inside .emacs.d with your username. Any .org file or .el file you keep inside will be evaluated when you start emacs. 

If you put my config file in that sub-directory, you are good to go as far as my basic set up goes.

In addition, you could have your personal config files for whatever additional you want.

This is not necessarily “optimal”, but it will be quick and clean. As you learn, you can customise to make it optimal to your needs.

> In your document you are using alt instead of meta.
> Not everyone uses alt for meta (especially on the Mac where alt (option) is used to access unusual characters).
> 
>>> I tried to export the .org to Latex and failed because it needed
>>> tabulary and threeparttable.
>>> 
>>> They are used if you use vikas-general.org but as far as i understood the document that is just recommended.
>>> 
>>> I added the line 
>>> #+LaTeX_HEADER: \usepackage{tabulary,threeparttable}
>>> to the document.
>>> 
>> 
>> vikas-general.org (I already dislike my name being on that file)
> 
> How about
> 
> config.org ?
> config-example.org ?
> And ask the user to copy it to $USER.org 
> 

Yes, one of these, I guess. I want to leave $user.org for additional personal configurations that the person may want to do.

>> I removed explicit inclusion of these packages from this document and the instructions, because I wanted to reduce the work in terms of setting things up.
> 
> You achieved the opposite.
> Now a user *has* to enable the config file.
> Otherwise it would be clear that additional packages may be needed which may not be part of a minimal TeX Live installation.
> 

May be I should specify the packages that are being called, so the user can make sure those are installed or modify the config file. But I prefer the basic set of LaTeX packages being called by default rather than being added in every file.

Vikas