Re: org-mode markup vs rst for general content

[Alan L Tyree <alantyree@gmail.com>]

On 10/03/17 09:03, Saša Janiška wrote:
> John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>
>> Could you be more specific about what kind of richness you are looking
>> for?
> In a general sense…iow, it’s a fact that rst markup is richer than
> e.g. Markdown. Probably, Asciidoc(tor) also provides more semantic
> richness and make it suitable markup for longer docs/books, so I wonder
> where one can put org-mode’s markup on this scale?
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Gour
>
I write legal textbooks (up to 600 printed pages) using org-mode. They 
are structurally simple (no sidebars, no illustrations, no computer 
code). On the other hand, they have lots of citations and internal cross 
references.  Org-mode is the best for this kind of work because of the 
flexible outline structure, not just collapsing and expanding, but the 
"hoisting" facility that allows me to focus on smaller sections. The 
org-ref module does its work, and the internal cross referencing is the 
best.

I recently assisted a friend to put together a memoir that he wanted to 
publish as ePub and print. It had lots of pictures. He had originally 
typed it in Word and it was a nightmare. Images would not stay put, even 
the typeface would change. The on-line publishers like Lulu rejected it. 
We reformatted in in Pandoc Markdown and produced a very nice result. I 
would have preferred org-mode, but he had never been near Emacs. We got 
good ePub, xhtml and print from a single manuscript.

I have also written in rst: it is a slightly richer language out of the 
box with provisions for sidebars, cautions, etc, but unless you really 
need those things, I would stick with org-mode. I find the syntax of rst 
to be very fiddly. Most of the special effects can be obtained with css 
in any case.

The only problem that I have had is converting org-mode to Word files as 
required by my publisher. The ODT export module is fiddly and often 
chokes on my longer documents. When it does choke, it is hard to trace 
the problems. Markdown + Pandoc seems much better in this regard, but 
the outlining features in Emacs do not seem to be as good for the 
Markdown mode. To get a decent export in my latest manuscript I had to 
export to LaTeX then use ht4tex. Not a pretty workflow.

I would say Markdown if you are collaborating with someone not familiar 
with Emacs. The Pandoc version will do a surprising amount.  Org-mode 
for nearly everything else, but if you need more, go on to LaTeX.

This may be more than you wanted to know :-).

Regards,
Alan


-- 
Alan L Tyree                    http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206              sip:typhoon@iptel.org