Re: Collaboration and settings --- was Re: bug in latex export tutorial?

["Thomas S. Dye" <tsd@tsdye.com>]

Aloha Robert,

I think this is an important issue.  I haven't seen it addressed fully.

There was a discussion on the mailing list a while back on how the  
complexity of configuration made org-mode difficult to adopt.  This  
resulted in the short version of the manual, but not much in the way  
of configuration strategies, IIRC.

Something similar came up in the context of using buffer local  
variables to configure export parameters on a per-document basis.  I'm  
not a programmer, but your solution looks similar to me.

Programmers on the list might have a different take on this, but my  
sense is that the complexity of configuration has so far frustrated  
attempts to bring it under firmer control.

All the best,
Tom

On May 1, 2011, at 6:12 AM, Robert Goldman wrote:

> On 4/30/11 Apr 30 -5:14 PM, Eric S Fraga wrote:
>> Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> writes:
>>
>>> On 4/29/11 Apr 29 -1:21 PM, Nick Dokos wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>> amsmath conflicts with wasysym (redefines \iint), so you have to
>>>> redefine your headers to omit wasysym or include amsmath *first*:  
>>>> for
>>>> some reason, if you \usepackage{amsmath} *before* you
>>>> \usepackage{wasysym}, the error does not arise -- presumably,  
>>>> amsmath
>>>> assumes that \iint is not defined beforehand, whereas wasysym  
>>>> does not
>>>> make that assumption.
>>>
>>> The not-very-tasty solution I came up with was to put the  
>>> following into
>>> the local variables list at the foot of my file:
>>>
>>> # org-export-latex-default-packages-alist: (("AUTO" "inputenc" t)  
>>> ("T1"
>>> "fontenc" t) ("" "fixltx2e" nil) ("" "graphicx" t) ("" "longtable"  
>>> nil)
>>> ("" "float" nil) ("" "wrapfig" nil) ("" "soul" t) ("" "t1enc" t) (""
>>> "textcomp" t) ("" "marvosym" t) ("" "amsmath" t) ("" "wasysym" t)  
>>> (""
>>> "latexsym" t) ("" "amssymb" t)
>>> ("colorlinks 
>>> =true,pdfstartview=FitV,linkcolor=blue,citecolor=blue,urlcolor=blue"
>>> "hyperref" nil) "\\tolerance=1000")
>>>
>>> I put this in the file, rather than in my configuration, because  
>>> it is
>>> specific to the formatting of this file, and because I share this
>>> document with others, who need to be able to export from it w/o  
>>> having
>>> to reconfigure their org-mode installations.
>>>
>>> I figure that someone can probably suggest a solution that is  
>>> nicer than
>>> that!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> r
>>
>> From earlier this year on the mailing list, below is a solution
>> which works if you more often than not want amsmath; i.e. it's not a
>> solution for the use case you specify in which you want to share a
>> single file etc.  However, it's worth repeating this solution for  
>> other
>> use cases.
>
> Is there any documentation any where about how people use Org-mode in
> collaborative authoring?  I find myself not on solid ground
> understanding how to ensure that my colleagues have the same
> configuration.  For now, I resort to entries in the local variables
> list, but this may not be the best solution....
>
> One could hijack the directory locals, but that seems like The Wrong
> Thing --- we should leave that to the individual user for his/her
> preferences.  Possibly set up something that would be layered, so that
> there are dir-locals that optionally load user-specific settings / 
> after/
> the dir-locals (i.e., a second layer of dir-locals)?
>
> Is anyone else trying to do stuff like this?
>
> best,
> r
>