Re: Title page in latex export

[Sebastian Hofer <sebhofer@gmail.com>]

At Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:45:08 -0500,
Nick Dokos wrote:
> 
> Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I am trying to write my thesis as per my university style. It requires
> > I use the \title{Thesis title} command before the
> > 
> > \begin{document}
> > ...
> > \end{document}
> > 
> > Is there any way to do that? Thanks for any thoughts.
> > 
> 
> This is really a bug in your university's style. Lamport (p.21 of the
> second edition) says:
> 
>   The \maketitle command comes after the \begin{document}, usually
>   before any other text. The \title, \author, and \date commands can
>   come *anywhere* before the \maketitle.
> 
> [Emphasis added] \title etc. does not have to be in the
> preamble. However, there are many styles out there that restrict the
> placement of these macros to the preamble, just as your university's
> style does (they probably cribbed from each other :-) ), so applying
> Lawrence's patch is probably the best long term solution for org.
> 
> Nick

Hi all,

I hate to bring this up again, but this problem is still not sufficiently
fixed. As Nick pointed out, different packages give error
messages depending on where the \title, \author,... tags are located
in the document. Luck has it, that the revtex4-1 package (which is
used as the default style for the American Physical Society's
journals) chokes when these tags are _outside_ the document body (i.e.
in the preamble). This is actually why the OP experienced problems in
the first place, as I submitted a patch to move them there a couple of
months ago (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/34208). I just
noticed yesterday that the patch has been undone.

As this will not be the last time this issue comes up (especially due
to the increasing popularity of org-mode), I think it would be
worthwhile to do it right and introduce the possibility to customize
the placement of the title tags. Two possibilities came to my mind:

- customization on a per class basis

This would be the most logical step, but I think that the way
configuration of latex classes is handled in org speaks against that
(as org-export-latex-classes only concerns the preamble, but not the document body)

- customization on a per file basis by setting options

I think this would be a feasible alternative from the usability point
of view. At the same time I have to admit that I have no clue if it is a
complicated matter to introduce new options in org, a quick look
through the code didn't give me any inside.

What do you all think?

Cheers,
Sebastian