Re: About exporting

[autofrettage <autofrettage@protonmail.ch>]

Hi Ypo and the rest of you all,

> After some years of using orgmode, and exporting using its defaults, I would like to take a quality leap and find a way of exporting for life. My options: LaTeX, ODT, HTML.
/.../
> How do you think I should spend some hundreds (or thousands) of hours to achieve maestry exporting my documents?

I have some odd thoughts about this.

About 30 years ago I worked for a start-up company. As a young engineer, freshly hooked on LaTeX, I tried to convince my colleagues we should produce the users' manuals for our product with LaTeX. Since persuasive speech is not one of my strengths, they opted for Word 5.

For various reasons I stayed for only a few years. Recently I visited them, and heard that the users' manuals had been ported hither and thither between various wysiwyg DTP programs. They are now back in Word, and my former colleagues didn't even remember the documents had started their journey there!

If they only had listened to me in the beginning!

The moral seems to be that whatever time and effort you plow into learning LaTeX, will not be wasted. Chances are that LaTeX will be there in thirty years' time, working roughly the same as now.


Roughly. At a fine grain level, LaTeX -- not to speak about Org Mode -- is a moving target. How on earth can you hope for attaining mastery at exporting documents? Many individuals are continuously refining these tools, so the mere mortals among us will always fight a losing battle keeping up.


Late adoption is a great trick for making life a bit easier. Postpone teaching yourself the latest tricks, until other friendly internet citizens have had time to write streamlined explanations ;-)


Last but not least, think like Bruce Lee:

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”*

So, teach yourself whatever you need now (where "now" includes a foreseeable future).

Cheers
Rasmus

* LaTeX = ninjutsu, ODT = boxing, HTML = kick in the groin?