From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com>
Subject: Frontmatter / Text before first headline
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:11:42 +0530
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Cc: Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com>


> that is every element between the beginning of the parsed area and its
> first headline.

I have trouble understanding what the real purpose of the "text before
the first headline" is. It looks to me more like a placeholder for
capturing the "Frontmatter" [1]. 

I have also trouble understanding what the rightful position for it is:

Should it be like:
(a) Title, Initial Text, TOC, Chapters
	Or like
(b) Title, TOC, Initial Text, Chapters

Currently org-latex does a (b). 

But if I look at an organization of a typical document, I am inclined to
think that it should be (a). It is also my contention that Table Of
Contents is relocatable only as a means to achieve (b).

I am wondering if you would be interested in formalizing frontmatter in
Org documents. Backends will then be obligated to render the front
matter headings as "centered text".

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
<<document meta data contributes to Titlepage>>
* FRONTMATTER Abstract
  This is the document abstract

* FRONTMATTER Contents
<<toc>>

* Chapter1
* Chapter2
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Footnotes: 

[1] I see that documents - books as wells as theses - are roughly
ordered as follows:
	Title Page, Frontmatter, Chapters

TOC and other listings are considered as part of Frontmatter but act as
fences between the Chapter and preceding text.

- Title Page
,---- Frontmatter
| - Copyright notice
| - Abstract
| - Preface
| - Acknowledgements
| - Dedication
| - Table Of Contents
| - List of Tables, Figures and Illustrations etc
`----
- Chapter Texts
- References

--