Re: First steps exporting to tex

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> [2021-04-03 20:51]:
> William Denton writes:
> 
> > [...] and it looks like a published book or journal article!
> 
> Something similar I thought, in my student days, when at the early '90 I
> saw a document printed in word perfect, just because it had a book
> typeface (Times Roman), footnotes and many more fancy stuff. It looked
> /almost/ like a book.
> 
> With LaTeX something similar happens for the user who is not trained in
> professional typesetting. TeX as a typographic engine makes an excellent
> work at the 'physical' level, but as we say in Spain, the trees do
> not let us see the forest. A LaTeX document produced from standard way
> will need (likely) a lot of fine tuning, and a solid typographic culture
> acquired by those who check it out.

TeX and LaTeX must be prime chose who need professional typesetting.
Org mode offers limited insight into powers of LaTeX. 

Org offers quick document creation by using LaTeX and LaTeX may be
used to extend Org. It cannot satisfy all people by default. Each
person may need customization. 

Do you have a specific remark on what would be major wrong with the
default LaTeX export from your viewpoint?

For me, I like larger letters and more space on paper. I find it
narrow and not enough legible. But that is not typographically
technical comment.

> On the other hand, I think that if an Org user is going to export often
> to LaTeX, he should know LaTeX reasonably well.

Opposite may be said as well. Exporting to LaTeX may be just a side
effect in order to create a PDF file. Org user may not need nothing
about LaTeX. Even if exporting is often, Org user need not know
nothing about LaTeX. Other converter like `pandoc' also offer
conversion to LaTeX and user need not know nothing about it. That is
the beauty. It does not help the professional though, as professional
must know all the specific details.

> I do not say that he
> become a LaTeXpert, but at least the user should have clear which
> concepts are from Org and which concepts are from LaTeX. The LaTeX
> packages you may need as you want to do more complex things, and how to
> use those packages. Etc. On the Org side there are many and excellent
> resources to control the export process. But in any translation process
> you have to know the source language (Org) and what can be expressed in
> the final language (LaTeX) and how.

What you describe relates to advanced LaTeX users who need good
quality or who have special needs. Average Org user who knows that Org
can export to LaTeX will rather use it as side effect in order to get
PDF file. 

>  And the the same happens if the
> output is HTML, Epub or whatever. I think Org is an excellent tool, full
> of possibilities (maybe a lot of them don't explored yet) and wonderful
> things, but it is not magic, although its logo is an unicorn ;-)

It is not magic. Yet integration provided by developers brought it to
point that simple Org file, text file, can be quickly converted into
nice PDF documents. It does not matter if files are edited remotely on
mobile devices by using any kind of editor, once file is processed by
Emacs and exported it becomes universally accepted.

-- 
Jean

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