Re: Feature request: simplify usage of special blocks (for beamer)

[Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita@gmail.com>]

> > 1. Allow for special blocks to take an :options argument.
>
> Although I agree that this would be nice, I imagine the difficulty would be that it would be difficult to cater for multiple backends.

It's not really difficult, more on the trivial side. For example, as
an end user I already can install a filter like:

(defun my-special-block-parse-filter (tree backend symbol)
  (when (org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'latex)
    (org-element-map tree 'special-block
      (lambda (element)
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char (org-element-property :begin element))
          (when (looking-at "[ \t]*#\\+BEGIN_\\S-+[ \t]+\\(\\S-+\\)")
            (let ((options (format ":options [%s]"
(match-string-no-properties 1))))
              (org-element-put-property element :attr_latex (list
options)))))))))

And then write:

#+BEGIN_definition Special Block
A block mostly left uninterpreted by core org for the sake of backends
#+END_definition

This is as devoid of boilerplate as possible.

Notice the filter only applies to latex derived backends and won't
take effect if there is an #+ATTR_LATEX clause before the block (this
because it's considered part of the element the regexp won't match
it).

Obviously this can be implemented in a cleaner way by changing
org-latex-special-block in ox-latex.el. Again, the change would be
trivial.

> > 2. Mention the possibility of using special blocks to represent beamer
> > blocks, be it in the manual or in the tutorial.
>
> Given that beamer inherits everything that the LaTeX exporter supports, is the special blocks section in the LaTeX exporter documentation not already enough?

Not much users seem to be aware of the ablity of using special blocks
for beamer. No example, answer, tutorial out there even mentioned the
possibility. Given its convenience, I would say the beamer export
section should explicitly suggest the alternative.

Best regards
--
Carlos