Re: Enforcing newlines in plain text export

[Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>]

Kaushal <kaushal.modi@gmail.com> writes:

> Interesting thing is that `\\` work fine at the end of the lines.

Yes, this is the behavior documented in the manual.

> I need to force line breaks in cases like these
>
> -----
> For example, to execute the =example_1= test and run in the {{{NEWLINE}}}
>
> =/some/long/path/that/wouldn't/fit/along/with/the/above/line/in/the/same/line=
> directory,
> do the following..
> -----
>
> In the above example, org-export will not wrap the text between the
> verbatim formatting characters "=".
> To ensure that the exported formats (html/pdf/ascii) look clean, I have to
> force a newline character just before that long string.
>
> Now using "\\" here instead of {{{NEWLINE}}} works but then I have to
> ensure that I place the "\\" character at the very end. If they are placed
> mid-line then they will be interpreted as newline by latex but simply "\\"
> character by html exporter.

As you say, "\\" at the end of the line works fine in this case.  So it
seems you do not have a need for another solution.

> For consistency, the {{{NEWLINE}}} approach looks better; hoping that
> org-mode will support a special newline character for ascii exports at some
> time:
>
> -----
> #+MACRO: NEWLINE @@latex:\\@@ @@html:<br>@@ @@ascii:NEWLINE_CHARACTERS_
> FOR_ASCII_EXPORT@@
> -----

This would really not be a great solution, and I don't think you should
expect Org mode to support it.  If you really need something like this,
you could write an export filter for yourself (e.g., one that replaces
the string "ASCII_NEWLINE_CHARACTER" with "\n" in the exported buffer).
See the "Advanced configuration" section of the Exporting chapter in the
manual.

A better and more general solution, I think, would be to allow "\\" to
be used in other contexts, such as in headlines, title/author/date
declarations, etc.  But that is a change to the currently documented
syntax, and it is probably a fair amount of work to implement, so it
probably isn't going to happen unless a variety of users really need it
and the maintainers think it would be an improvement to Org.
 
Best,
Richard