Re: Problem with org-entities-user

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

On 19 sep. 2012, at 15:15, Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> tsd@tsdye.com (Thomas S. Dye) writes:
> 
>> I'm not sure about support for \hfill{}, etc.  The new latex and html
>> exporters pass \hfill{} through unchanged, which might be what the latex
>> author wants, or what the html author writing about latex commands
>> wants.
> 
> It would not change anything for the HTML author, since \hfill{} would
> be exported as-is in any exporter. Though, it would be a less convenient
> for the LaTeX author, who would have to type @@latex:\hfill{}@@.
> 
> On the other hand, I see at lest 3 reasons to remove support for such
> constructs:
> 
> - consistency :: it's not possible to write raw HTML in an Org buffer,
>                 nor raw Texinfo. LaTeX shouldn't be treated
>                 differently.
> 
> - clarity :: Recently, an user expected the \cite{} command to work in
>             a backend different from LaTeX.
> 
> - ecumenism :: Removing LaTeXisms will make Org documents easier to
>               export to various back-ends.

These are all valid arguments.  However, I did design
Org-mode to be LaTeX-near to make sure that it becomes
easy and fast to type as a notes environment.  In my mind, a user
expecting \cite{...} to work in other backends is not necessarily
a wrong expectation, and if we introduce a syntax for doing citations
in HTML, why not using the LaTeX syntax for it?

So actually, it seems I do not fully agree with your *consistency*
argument.  While you are right that it is the logical and clean thing
if you view Org as a markup language created for export, it is not
necessarily the right solution for a convenience point of view.

Just my 5c, of course...


- Carsten