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* Using Org for a dissertation
@ 2012-05-12 18:23 Richard Lawrence
  2012-05-12 16:49 ` Eric Schulte
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Richard Lawrence @ 2012-05-12 18:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

Hi all,

I am a graduate student in philosophy, and I am about to begin writing
my dissertation.  I am wondering about whether I should write it in Org,
or stick to plain LaTeX.

This question has been asked before:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/22756

But that was two years ago; Org has changed a fair bit, and I'm
wondering if there are any updates to the advice given there.  Moreover,
I'm wondering if anyone has written a dissertation or other long
documents in Org in the meantime, and what their experiences have been.
(Henri-Paul, do you still read this list?)

I have used Org to write most of the shorter papers I have so far
written as a graduate student, and been very happy with the results.  I
prefer most of Org's editing features and conventions to bare LaTeX.  I
haven't previously had much of a need to mix TODO items and writing, but
imagine I will with a dissertation.  I *have* been relying on Org's
to-do list features for my reading: I enter new readings as TODO items
via capture, and include the bibliographic fields that make them
suitable to export via org-bibtex when it comes time to reference them.
None of the writing I've done so far has had strict formatting
requirements, however, and I have run into enough small formatting
issues in the past that I want to avoid having them grow into large
issues in the context of a dissertation.

Since I am not in the sciences, I doubt that I will have many figures or
complex tables, which I know can lead to headaches.  Here are a few of
the things I *am* worried about.  I'm sure most of them can be dealt
with; I am guessing that most of these issues reflect my ignorance or
outdated knowledge of Org features.  I'd be grateful for pointers or
workarounds for them:

1) Section labels and other in-document references.  It's nice that Org
generates these on export, but I need to be able to assign and use
labels that will not change if the document is reordered.  I know I can
simply add such labels via a \label command, but I am worried that using
them in addition to Org's autogenerated labels might cause numbering
problems in LaTeX.

2) Escaping/unrecognized commands.  I have occassionally run into
annoyances where Org escapes characters or commands that I intend to be
exported literally ("~" and "$" are perennial offenders).  Export also
tends to break when fill-paragraph breaks a LaTeX command across a line,
like:

some preceding text up to the end of the line \cite{SomeAuthorReference,
AnotherReference}.

3) Indentation around #+BEGIN_*/#+END_* environments. (I most often use
QUOTE.)  I usually have to explicitly control indentation in a way that
I wouldn't have to in LaTeX, because Org inserts blank lines around them
during export.

4) Inline footnotes.  I usually prefer to use inline footnotes, but I
think I have found in the past that Org's syntax for inline footnotes
([fn:: ...]) interacts badly with LaTeX commands, especially anything
requiring a "]" in the footnote text.

5) Bibtex and bibliographies.  I love keeping my reading list as Org
TODO entries, but would like a more automated way to export (just) the
entries I need for a particular document to a .bib file.  I would also
like to have more control over the bibliography as a section of my
document.  The \bibliography command must live under some Org heading or
other, and as far I as know it can't live under its own without
generating an extraneous heading, so I have to be careful that it ends
up at the end of the last section.

Are there other issues that people have run into when using Org to write
a longer document with strict formatting requirements?  Again, any and
all advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Richard

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2012-06-14 17:28 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2012-05-12 18:23 Using Org for a dissertation Richard Lawrence
2012-05-12 16:49 ` Eric Schulte
2012-05-15  5:02   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-06-14 12:39   ` Rasmus
2012-06-14 16:13     ` Eric S Fraga
2012-05-12 19:27 ` Thomas S. Dye
2012-05-15  5:16   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-15 17:08     ` Nicolas Goaziou
2012-05-16  0:38       ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-21  3:56       ` New exporter [was: Re: Using Org for a dissertation] François Pinard
2012-05-21 17:54         ` Nicolas Goaziou
2012-05-21 19:10           ` François Pinard
2012-05-23  0:35             ` François Pinard
2012-05-12 20:29 ` Using Org for a dissertation Peter Münster
2012-05-15 12:26 ` suvayu ali
2012-05-16  1:15   ` Richard Lawrence
2012-05-17  2:37     ` org-export-preprocess-hook and the new exporter (was Re: Using Org for a dissertation) Eric S Fraga
2012-05-18  6:49       ` Bastien
2012-05-18 10:08       ` Nicolas Goaziou
2012-05-20  6:12         ` Eric Fraga
2012-05-20  8:03           ` Nicolas Goaziou
2012-05-28 22:44         ` org-export-preprocess-hook and the new exporter Thomas S. Dye
2012-05-29  1:37           ` Eric S Fraga
2012-05-29  3:20             ` Thomas S. Dye
2012-05-21 13:21 ` Using Org for a dissertation Matt Lundin

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