Re: About the Org documentation for minted

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

François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

> In org-latex.el, function org-export-as-pdf is said to "automatically
> add -shell-escape when needed", and apparently it does.
>

Well, that's what it says, but the "when needed" part is not true:
org-export-as-pdf only deals with minted, but there are other packages
that need the shell escape option to be added to the pdflatex
command. If you \usepackage{auto-pst-pdf} e.g., you'd need the shell
escape but org-export-as-pdf would not automatically add it.
 
> The org-export-latex-listings variable says: "In addition, it is
> necessary to install pygments (http://pygments.org), and to configure
> the variable `org-latex-to-pdf-process' so that the -shell-escape option
> is passed to pdflatex."
> 

Maybe it should be fixed to say that if you use minted, then org will add
the shell escape option automatically.

> The last part of this statement is likely superfluous because of
> org-export-as-pdf, isn't it?  If yes, let me suggest it is removed, so
> we are relieved from configuring the edition of org-latex-to-pdf-process
> in our ~/.emacs files.
> 
> If I remove that edition and leave org-latex-to-pdf-process in ~/.emacs,
> command "C-c C-e d" still gives a fontified, colored source code in the
> genrated PDF.
> 

Personally, I'd rather have it in my face that I'm doing something that
could be a security problem, than have org do it behind my back: if I
choose to override the default, it should be my decision (and the
consequences would then be my responsibility). So I'd advocate getting
rid of the automatic shell-escape and beef up the documentation
instead. But I'm probably in a tiny minority here.

Nick

PS. The relevant commit is 3ed5915f01ac5647db5f2204dc695519653b1190
and there is probably discussion on the ML about it, but I haven't gone
back to review it.