At Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:59:20 +0100,
Carsten Dominik wrote:

[...]

> 
> Hmm, I think one would still like to be able to make text
> bold and italic as well?  So I don't think one should use * or /.
> How about the exclamation mark?
> 
> I guess the easiest would be to add to the two variables org-emphasis- 
> alist
> and org-export-emphasis-alist.
> 
> To the former your could add (maybe use other HTML tags)
> 
>    ("!" org-warning "<b>" "</b>")
> 
> and to the latter
> 
>    ("!" "\\alert{%s}" nil)
> 
> You might have to restart Emacs before these work.

I've tried this (with org up to date as of an hour or so ago [Org-mode
version 6.33trans (release_6.33f.29.g5064)] and emacs 23.1.1) and it
doesn't work for me, having tried "!", ":" and "@" as possible markers
(and I'm leaning to the latter as the best choice to avoid confusion
with ends of sentences and because I don't have a lot of email
addresses in my slides... ;-).  

The display doesn't reflect the face to be used and the text goes
straight through upon export.  I have customised both variables
indicated and have looked at the code in org.el that handles this but
cannot figure out what is wrong.  Any suggestions?  Attached is my
beamer org test file.

My settings are:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
org-emphasis-alist is a variable defined in `org.el'.
Its value is shown below.

Documentation:
Special syntax for emphasized text.
Text starting and ending with a special character will be emphasized, for
example *bold*, _underlined_ and /italic/.  This variable sets the marker
characters, the face to be used by font-lock for highlighting in Org-mode
Emacs buffers, and the HTML tags to be used for this.
For LaTeX export, see the variable `org-export-latex-emphasis-alist'.
Use customize to modify this, or restart Emacs after changing it.

You can customize this variable.

Value: 
(("*" bold "<b>" "</b>")
 ("/" italic "<i>" "</i>")
 ("_" underline "<span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">" "</span>")
 ("=" org-code "<code>" "</code>" verbatim)
 ("~" org-verbatim "<code>" "</code>" verbatim)
 ("+"
  (:strike-through t)
  "<del>" "</del>")
 ("@" bold "<b>" "</b>"))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
org-export-latex-emphasis-alist is a variable defined in `org-latex.el'.
Its value is 
(("*" "\\textbf{%s}" nil)
 ("/" "\\emph{%s}" nil)
 ("_" "\\underline{%s}" nil)
 ("+" "\\texttt{%s}" nil)
 ("=" "\\verb=%s=" nil)
 ("~" "\\verb~%s~" t)
 ("@" "\\alert{%s}" nil))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


By the way, the second variable, org-export-latex-emphasis-alist, does
not appear in the possible variables to get help on (with C-h v)
unless I have given it a value.  It does, of course, appear in the
org-latex customisation group.  However, note the difference in the
output from C-h v for these two variables.  Maybe this gives some hint
of what may be wrong?  Dunno...

Thanks,
eric