Re: [PATCH] latex export - title placement

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Thomas S. Dye <tsd@tsdye.com> wrote:

> Sebastian Hofer <sebhofer@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > This patch addresses the problem of ambiguous conventions for the
> > placement of the title related macros (\author, \date,...) with
> > respect to the main document body in different latex classes. It
> > introduces the following changes:
> >
> > * org-exp.el:
> >     - added the following options:
> >       - title-position (tpos)
> >       - with-title (wtitle)
> >       - with-author (wauth)

[This is mostly addressed to Sebastian even though I'm replying to Tom's
reply.]

An empty

#+AUTHOR:

disables the insertion of author (assuming that TITLE is not empty -
see below.)


> >       - with-date (wdate)

An empty

#+DATE:

disables the insertion of date (same assumption.)

> >       - with-maketitle (wmtitle)

An empty

#+TITLE:

disables the insertion of \maketitle.

So if TITLE is not empty, you can get what you want with existing
machinery. I could not find a way to make the title empty  and still
have author and/or date fields.

Given all this, I think the only things you need is title-position and
with-title, the latter in the unlikely event that you want a title page
with author or date but without a title. Personally, I'd consider this
last one unimportant and not worry about it, but you may disagree.

> >     
> > * org-latex.el:
> >     - implemented handling of new options (see above):
> >       - title-position controls placement of \title, \author, \date;
> >         possible values are "b" = before \begin{document},
> >         any other values default to after \begin{document}
> >       - with-* controls if the corresponding macro is exported at all
> >         this can be convenient for more complex titles (e.g. several
> >         authors including affiliations,...)
> >
> > The patch seems to work for me so far. What do you all think? IMO it
> > would be useful to integrate this, as it gives slightly more control
> > over the export process. Of course one might want to think about
> > better option names. The diff is done against commit
> > bc161ded3693f752616dcd247fc9d638789025ee.
> >
> > Let me briefly describe my current use case:
> > I disable all commands except \title, use babel to created a title.tex
> > file (including several authors and affiliations) by tangling latex
> > code and then include the file (into the main body of the document,
> > not the preamble). That's the only decent way I've found to do this,
> > if anyone knows an easier way (I have the feeling that I might be
> > overlooking an obvious solution) please let me know!
> >

I'm not sure what problem you are trying to solve here: can you explain?
It seems to me that all this can be done in standard ways.

> > Cheers
> > Sebastian
> >
> >
> Aloha Sebastian,
> 
> Your patch should prove useful in the situation where one has to use a
> particular class file that requires \title and friends to be declared in
> the body of the document rather than the preamble.  That functionality
> is a welcome addition to the LaTeX exporter, IMO.
> 

IIUC, the only remaining thing is the position of the \title etc macros
in the preamble or the body (or both).

There are three categories of LaTeX classes: the ones that implement
Lamport's dictum that \title etc can come anywhere before \maketitle,
the ones like RevTeX that insist on having them in the body and the ones
like the thesis document class at Suvayu's university, that insist on
having them in the preamble. I consider both of the latter two as buggy:
has anybody submitted a bug report on them?

Has anybody researched the prevalence of these bugs? Are there lots of
classes in one or the other of the buggy categories?

Be that as it may, it seems that org needs a patch to work around these
bugs.  Personally, since it is a class problem, I'd rather have this
kind of information in the class template.  You set it once for each
class that needs it and you forget about it. Assuming the maintainers
agree, any chance of reworking the patch along these lines? Maybe make
it extensible as well: a property list that can accumulate all the junk
in one place perhaps. That way the RevTeX class can be configured
appropriately and the rest of the world can live in blissful ignorance
of the problem. You might detect a bias here: I prefer these things in
the preamble by default.

> Another way to achieve your current use case, IIUC, which might or might
> not seem easier, is to redefine \maketitle along the lines suggested by
> Nick Dokos (see
> http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-export.html#sec-11_2).
> 

As I mentioned, I'm not really sure what Sebastian is looking for, so I
can't really say whether the above would help, but if it can be done
this way, I think it would be preferable to introducing new user options
for the exlusive use of the org latex exporter. There are legitimate uses
for user options but working around bugs in downstream packages is
not one of them. IMO, of course.

Nick