Re: [PATCH] latex export - title placement

[Sebastian Hofer <sebhofer@gmail.com>]

At Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:05:28 -0400,
Nick Dokos wrote:
> 
> 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.

To be honest, I didn't try setting empty author and date (which of
course makes sense) I just tried not setting them at all, which gives
default values. The main reason I submitted this patch, however, is
having better control of \maketitle. Personally I would like to be
able to have the title and author at the beginning of the file, just
for the looks, and still be able to produce a customized title. Of
course it is highly debatable if this is a sound reason to introduce
new options (I would argue yes).

> 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.

I agree concerning the author but no title case, this also does not
seem interesting to me.

> > >     
> > > * 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.
> 

I'm using revtex4-1 at the moment. I need a title which looks like
this (within the document environment):

\begin{abstract}
 some blabla
\end{abstract}
\author{First author}
\affiliation{First affiliation}
\affiliation{Second affiliation}
\author{Second author}
\affiliation{Third affiliation}
...
\keywords{optional keywords}
\pacs{optional pacs}
\maketitle

How would you solve this problem?

> > > 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.

Last time this topic came up (because of Suvayu Ali's thesis) I posted
something along these lines (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/41129),
wondering what's the best place to fix this problem. I never got any replies
(maybe also because the thread was already a month old by that time).
Back then I concluded that the class templates are not the best place
to handle this, as they are only concerned with the preamble, but not
with the body of the document. And I still don't see how this should
fit in exactly. I agree of course that it would be the nicest thing to
set this on a per class basis.
 
> > 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
> 

Thanks for the detailed response, I'm hopeful that we can finally find
a solution to this problem. I have some other comments to your later
post about revtex, I will reply to this separately.

Sebastian