Re: An Org-mode LaTeX class?

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Hi Marcin,

Thanks for sharing your ideas.

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:

> Imagine someone wrote a dedicated Org-mode LaTeX class, and the LaTeX
> exporter got an option to export to this class.  The class modifies
> LaTeX so that it supports all Org's elements and objects, and things
> like tags, timestamps, checkboxes etc.

Honestly, a patch or an exact bug report would be great.  If something
is not right it should be fixed across all backends.  That being said,
at least cheackboxes are pretty pretty these days

(checkbox (case (org-element-property :checkbox item)
		     (on "$\\boxtimes$ ")
		     (off "$\\square$ ")
		     (trans "$\\boxminus$ ")))

It would be nice to format all timestamps using strftime-like syntax.

> Moreover, the look of these elements is configurable on the LaTeX
> end, and further by means of Org options.  This way, we drop the
> "generic LaTeX" thing (which is nice for people sending articles to
> journals etc. – so my dream should not replace the current LaTeX
> exporter, only constitute a variant!), but instead we gain a
> beautiful, configurable pdf rendering of Org buffers.

Thomas S. Dye tried it back in the days.  It was called org-article¹.
I'm sure he will share his experience here eventually.

In general, if you want to pursuit this, I would advice you to look
into derived classes, ox and ox-latex.  In ox-latex search for
org-export-define-backend and note how each element is "translated"
using a functinon.  From the sound of your project you will want to
tune some of them, and change the default class (for the latter point
see ox-koma-letter).

I think you will have a easier time today than Thomas' had, since ox
and org-element is so modual and easy to work with.

Two good examples of ox-latex derived backends are ox-beamer.el and
ox-koma-letter.el.

Hope it helps.

—Rasmus

Footnotes: 
¹   http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/examples/article-class.html

-- 
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