trying to write a guidebook for students using org , need help with formating

[Xebar Saram <zeltakc@gmail.com>]

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Hi all

i decided to dive into the deep water and get rid of M$ word once and for
all. I'm still an org novice but since i love org i choose org for the task.

I'm trying to write a simple guidebook for my students in a GIS course.
Everything works great apart for the life of me i cant get the hang of
formatting and specifically how to insert (automatically?) line breaks so
that its discrete lines and not a paragraph. i think one can use '\\' to
indicate a line break but since its a guidebook "form" there are almost no
paragraphs and most line are 1 liners, so it seems to me crazy to go over
hundred lines of text and attach a \\ at the end. What am i missing here?

i hope i made sense :) any help or documentation links would be really
appreciated!

I'm attaching a short example of my org file, note that where i want single
lines i add a empty space between lines but still in the exporter it
creates a paragraph out of these lines

thx alot

Z.

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#+AUTHOR: Dr. Itai Kloog
#+TITLE:  Lesson 1
#+DATE:  
#+EMAIL:  ikloog@bgu.ac.il
#+OPTIONS: H:4
# latex options
#+LATEX_HEADER: \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{phv} % Arial
#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage{hyperref}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \hypersetup{
#+LATEX_HEADER:     colorlinks,%
#+LATEX_HEADER:     citecolor=black,%
#+LATEX_HEADER:     filecolor=black,%
#+LATEX_HEADER:     linkcolor=blue,%
#+LATEX_HEADER:     urlcolor=black
#+LATEX_HEADER: }


* Quick basics refresh 
** Import XY data 

-In this exercise you will learn how to map features (e.g. met stations) using their X and Y coordinates.\\

Open a new project

add a the New-England map from:

PATH/NEMIA

Select the met XY table from:

PATH/metfullgrid.dbf

and import by using "Add Data" icon

(Note: Two basic formats are recognized by ArcMap - *.txt and *.dbf, but regular excel files also work).\\
If a file you want to import is created in MS Excel, you will need to export it to one of the above formats. In doing so, you will have to redefine column headings in Excel as "Text" and any other rows as either text (e.g. towns' names) or numbers; note that no empty rows before column headings are allowed. If you cannot find any suitable table with X,Y coordinates to import – create such a table yourself in Excel);\\

Right click on the table name in the TOC panel – "Table of Contents" and then chose "Display XY data";
Define the X,Y coordinate and data (Z) fields;
Click "Edit" to define the coordinate system (use WGS84);
Click "OK";
Right click on the "event" layer newly created, go to "data"->"export data", specify a location and give the layer a name [remember: events are a temporary layer, unless you save it as a shape file, it will disappear and you will not be able to use it next time]; add it a s new layer to your project, when asked.

** Adding distances to features by using spatial joins
Open a new project and add two layers to it (one point and one polygon) 
you can find layers under the ArcTutor folder or use the previous point data (met) and a hydrology layer:

PATH/hydro

Right-click the point layer, point to "Joins and Relates," and click "Join" then select "Join data from another layer based on spatial location";
Choose the hydro as the layer you want to join attribute to;
Choose the second join option (“each point will be given…);
Type the name of the output file;
Click "OK";
Open the attribute table of the newly created file and see the distance column added;
Repeat this exercise using different layers, to practice.