Re: [Patch] Pre-/postpend arbitrary LaTeX code to a section

["Juan Manuel Macías" <maciaschain@posteo.net>]

Ihor Radchenko writes:

> It may produce unexpected results if "Section" heading is demoted all
> the way to paragraph.

If Section heading is demoted all the way to paragraph, I assume that
the expected will happen: that in the output to LaTeX a string will be
added before \paragraph and another string after the content of
\paragraph, which is perfectly consistent with the behavior of these two
properties. It is not that I intend to insist on a discussion; I just
don't quite understand what you mean. Note that these properties are for
LaTeX fine-tuning, and the user is expected to know what he/she wants
and where he/she wants it. If a user wants the arbitrary LaTeX code
before a certain header to be exported as a section (because, for
example, he/she has defined a command in LaTeX that changes the style of
the next \section), you would expect to put those properties in a
"\section" heading.

> Also, :presec/:postsec property names are
> confusing --- it is unclear if they are specific to LaTeX. (when about,
> say, Beamer)

Yes, I agree with that, and I had already commented on it in my previous
message, based on what Maxim had pointed out before, that the names I
had chosen were too imprecise. I like part of what you propose below:
`:attr_latex: :prepend'.

>>> However, I do agree that per-heading control over latex export is
>>> currently cumbersome.
>>>
>>> The canonical ox-latex approach to customize headline export is
>>> org-latex-classes variable. This variable defines (among other things)
>>> pre/post commands during headline export:
>>
>> Apologies in advance if I misunderstood what you're suggesting, but
>> isn't the "org-latex-classes" property supposed to affect the structure
>> of the entire document? What I'm proposing here is rather something
>> specific to particular headings (and its entire content), like the
>> ":ALT_TITLE:" property. If I understand correctly, what you are
>> suggesting is that org-latex-classes can have "local values" for
>> specific headings, if such headings are 'marked' with some property?
>
> Yes, org-latex-classes is controlling the entire document. What I am
> proposing (as an alternative) is subtree-level equivalent of
> org-latex-classes that is also close to org-latex-classes semantics.
>
> More concretely, I mean something like
>
> * Section
>   :PROPERTIES:
>   :attr_latex: :prepend "section" \setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
>   :attr_latex+: :prepend "section" \addtocontents{toc}{\protect\setcounter{tocdepth}{0}\ignorespaces}
>   :attr_latex+: :append "section" \setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}
>   :attr_latex+: :append "section" \addtocontents{toc}{\protect\setcounter{tocdepth}{2}\ignorespaces}
>   :END:
>
> I suggest to use more canonical attr_latex that explicitly limits the
> export backend.

I see. But in any case, something like `:prepend "section"' would be
unnecessary (and even counterproductive) for what I'm proposing, but I'm
afraid I didn't explain myself well in the first message. One of the
benefits of approaching this issue with a few minor modifications to
org-latex-headline is that the result is regardless of the section level
at which the property is applied. We may want to prefix the section with
a specific LaTeX code only for \section (or \paragraph or whatever) and
we may want to introduce a more general LaTeX code, level-agnostic.
Explicitly put "section", "subsection", etc, IMHO unnecessarily
complicates things. But I also insist (as I said at the beginning) that
I don't know if this use case can also be extended to other users.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

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Juan Manuel Macías 

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