Re: Latex export: Differing behavior for symbols in headlines

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

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Dear Orgsters,
> 
> I am seeing differing behavior for how special symbols that appear in a
> headline are exported to LaTeX, depending on whether I export an entire
> Org document or just the current subtree.
> 
> I have, for example, a file that looks like this:
> 
> * Headline 1
> ** Headline 2, concerning $\alpha$ and $\beta$
> 
> If I export the whole document, the $'s around \alpha and \beta are
> properly interpreted as math-mode delimiters, and Headline 2 becomes a
> section title that looks exactly as I would expect.
> 
> If I export just Headline 2, however, the $'s are escaped, and show up
> as literal '$' characters in the title of the exported document.
> 
> (I can't remove the $'s, because I am actually using some custom LaTeX
> commands, not special symbols like \alpha and \beta that Org would
> recognize as needing to be put in math mode.)
> 
> So, two questions:
> 
> 1) Is this difference between whole-document vs. current-subtree export
> the expected behavior?
> 
Looks like a bug to me. I can reproduce it too.

> 2) If so, what's the right way to work around it?  If not, where should
> I look to try and fix it?
> 

I tried using \( and \) as the inline math delimiters but that did not
work either: I got $ signs *inserted* and then latex complains about that:

foo.org:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
* Headline 1
** Headline 2, concerning \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

foo.tex (elided):
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
...
\title{Headline 2, concerning \($\alpha$\) and \($\beta$\)}
...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Nick