Re: [patch][ox-latex] context-aware subscript

[Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com>]

Hello,

Thanks for the patch. Here are some comments about it.

Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:

> Currently one can't write something like \beta_t and get a nice result
> in org when exporting to LaTeX (where nice result := $\beta_t$).  This
> patch tries to fix it.

Translating \beta_t into $\beta$$_\text{t}$ and \beta_bar into
$\beta$$ \text{bar}$ is intended.

Unless you explicitly ask for math mode, Org defaults to text mode. The
fact that it needs to go through math mode to insert some entities is
not relevant. IOW, there's a difference between \beta_{$t$} and \beta_t.

Also, merging consecutive subscript and superscript is fragile (and the
code in `org-latex--script-size' could be improved in that area), as it
also depends on user's filters. Here is a contrived example:

Let's assume I have a filter which removes any subscript with the letter
"a" in it. With the following code:

  \beta_a

Trying to merge both the entity and the subscript will return

  $\beta

which is wrong.

> As is evident from the pdf output
>
>   $\alpha$$\beta$$_{\text{t}}$ ≠ $\alpha$$\beta$$_{{t}}$ ≠ $\alpha\beta_{t}$
>
> There seems to be no difference between $\alpha$$\beta$ and
> $\alpha\beta$ in the pdf, but the latter is more aesthetically
> pleasing in the source.

Beautifying LaTeX code is fine, unless it means adding yet another
variable, and making some assumptions about user's configuration. If it
ain't broken, don't fix it.


Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou