I've discussed the wonderful org-mode
here a number of times already. It has
become a pretty important part of my overall workflow. One thing I am using
org-mode
for, is to produce all kinds of PDF-documents that I can share with
other people.
org-mode & LaTeX
In the past, I often used straight LaTeX for such things; I wrote my thesis with it, but also many other documents. There are many things I like about LaTeX, one of them being that I can use emacs for writing. Still, there are also a few things I do not particularly like. First, I think LaTeX is quite heavy with formatting directives, which hinder my writing flow (e.g., when I want to include an image, a table or a source code snippet). Another thing is that I find the default LaTeX styles a bit boring. Nothing wrong with it, but there just too many documents with the exact same lay-out.
Now, back to org-mode
. One way to use org-mode
is as a friendly way to
generate LaTeX (and, consequently, PDFs). This is a big improvement! Much
more than LaTeX itself, org-mode
allows to focus on the contents of the
document, rather than instructing LaTeX what to do. This comes at the price
of small bit of flexibility, but, if needed org-mode
allows you include
straight LaTeX when needed – so while keeping easy things easy, hard things
are still possible. The latter does require a bit of experience with LaTeX a
though.
setting up XeTeX
Now, for the second issue, the way documents look, there are other
solutions, and they live on the LaTeX side of things. I'm sure many have seen
The Beauty of LaTeX. Using the XeTeX implementation of LaTeX and the
fontspec
package, you can create LaTeX documents with a bit 'refreshed'
look.
So, the steps to get this working with org-mode
:
- install the
texlive-xetex
packages on Ubuntu and Debian (this installs a huge set of packages) - install the SIL fonts (I'm using
ttf-sil-gentium
andttf-sil-charis
, but there are more) - I'm also using DejaVu Mono (
ttf-dejavu
)
teaching org-mode about the new XeTeX stuff
We now need to define some LaTeX document class for org-mode
that uses
XeTeX and some of these new fonts. Let's call the document class
djcb-org-article
(as I often use the djcb-
prefix for my own stuff), it
could be something like the following (add to your org
-setup – e.g., in
your .emacs
, make sure there is a (require 'org)
before this:
;; 'djcb-org-article' for export org documents to the LaTex 'article', using ;; XeTeX and some fancy fonts; requires XeTeX (see org-latex-to-pdf-process) (add-to-list 'org-export-latex-classes '("djcb-org-article" "\\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article} \\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \\usepackage{fontspec} \\usepackage{graphicx} \\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text} \\setromanfont{Gentium} \\setromanfont [BoldFont={Gentium Basic Bold}, ItalicFont={Gentium Basic Italic}]{Gentium Basic} \\setsansfont{Charis SIL} \\setmonofont[Scale=0.8]{DejaVu Sans Mono} \\usepackage{geometry} \\geometry{a4paper, textwidth=6.5in, textheight=10in, marginparsep=7pt, marginparwidth=.6in} \\pagestyle{empty} \\title{} [NO-DEFAULT-PACKAGES] [NO-PACKAGES]" ("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}") ("\\subsection{%s}" . "\\subsection*{%s}") ("\\subsubsection{%s}" . "\\subsubsection*{%s}") ("\\paragraph{%s}" . "\\paragraph*{%s}") ("\\subparagraph{%s}" . "\\subparagraph*{%s}")))
Of course, this can be customized to your own preference; e.g., North-Americans may not be using A4-paper.
org-mode
takes care of the export from its own format to LaTeX, but we need
to tell it to use xelatex
to process the LaTeX to PDF:
(setq org-latex-to-pdf-process '("xelatex -interaction nonstopmode %f" "xelatex -interaction nonstopmode %f")) ;; for multiple passes
That's all that's needed on the setup-side.
creating a document
Now, let's create a little test document, test.org
, to show how it works:
#+LaTeX_CLASS: djcb-org-article #+TITLE: My little document * Introduction This is my document. There are many like it, but this is mine. It's easy to write without *too* _many_ /distractions/. ** Normal distribution Probability density of the normal distribution, using familiar TeX notation for formulae: $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi\sigma^2}}e^{ -\frac{(x-\mu)^2}{2\sigma^2} }$$ ** Some table | *Greek God* | *Roman God* | *Element* | |-------------+-------------+----------------| | Zeus | Jupiter | Sky and clouds | | Hera | Juno | Family | | Poseidon | Neptune | Sea | | Hades | Pluto | Underworld |
We can export this to a PDF using C-c C-e p
(or C-c C-e d
to
automatically open the PDF in a PDF-viewer). This should all work nicely; if
it doesn't, note that when exporting, say, test.org
, org-mode
will create
a file called test.tex
, and visit in a buffer. There's also a buffer with
the output from various commands, but sometimes it can be useful to run LaTeX
(xelatex
in this case) on the file by hand, to find any problems. The
wonderful org
-documentation about exporting to LaTeX has more information.
I think the result is pretty nice – it stays true to the class LaTeX article class, but freshens it up a bit with some news font. If you can make something better – which is not unlikely – you are of course invited to contribute your own!
Concluding
org-mode
is a pretty convenient way to write nice-looking PDFs. Combined
with xelatex
, they don't have to look too plain :). However, I'm aware of
my limitations when it comes to the coolness/aesthetic aspects, but I hope
others can show the way here.
Maybe org-mode
could ship with a number of ready-made templates to make
it easy to make nice-looking documents, resumes, reference cards, reports,
meeting notes and so on.
21 comments:
Awesome advice, thank you.
The linux libertine produce the best looking pdfs from LaTex that I've seen so far.
Thanks for this advice! On Ubuntu I've had to install ttf-sil-gentium-basic in addition to ttf-sil-gentium. Otherwise the resulting document was empty except for the formula.
The Linux Libertine is a very, very nice font indeed! However, I find Minion Pro (which can be borrowed from the Adobe Reader distribution) a lot nicer, especially with the package "microtype" using pdftex.
I think the math mode part of the example document is still using Computer Modern, which is butt ugly.
Thanks for good article. I managed to get it working after upgrading the org-mode package on Ubuntu to 7.4 (default is 6.63 and not everything works out of the box).
Might be a version mismatch with org mode: I had to
(require 'org-latex)
before the org-export-latex-classes variables was known.
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-export.html
Great fu anyway. Thanks!
Thanks a ton!
This is so so so timely for me. Thank you!
Isn't this just re-inventing the wheel? You've not convinced me that emacs+org+latex=pdf is any better than emacs+latex=pdf.
@Anonymous: well, it's about balancing ease of editing with flexibility. I find typing org much more convenient than typeing LaTeX. But if I hadn't work with LaTex before, maybe it would feel a bit too 'magic'.
@tom111 Great point. I also had to include (require 'org-latex) instead of (require 'org). Otherwise, Emacs was giving a warning that org-export-latex-classes is a void variable.
Thanks for this gem man, your blog is so freaking useful, keep up the good work!
You know you could just write your own documentclass file? Then all you'll need is begin your document with \documentclass{yourclass}, and you can also have customisations to it, like the \author and \maketitle in the article-class.
Great blog and nice tutorial.
One issue is that the PDF would not compile for me due to a missing font. I googled around and found out I needed the following package as well (I'm a LaTeX neophyte). Hope this helps:
apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended
Thank you! I used your setup, and everything works nicely, except that the first page of the resulting PDF is blank except for: "pdfkeywords=, pdfsubject=, pdfcreator=Emacs Org-mode version 7.8.03"
Any thoughts?
@Peter Hyperref is missing add
\usepackage{hyerref}
to the djcb-org-article class
Thanks for the code.
Nice post! Unfortunately I keep getting the error "PDF file was not produced". Here is the contents of my texput.log, any ideas?
This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-0.9998 (TeX Live 2012/Debian) (format=xelatex 2012.10.23) 18 FEB 2013 11:28
entering extended mode
restricted \write18 enabled.
%&-line parsing enabled.
**%f
! Emergency stop.
<*> %f
*** (job aborted, no legal \end found)
I am having the same error as John J. Camilleri. Previously I've been using this to format my pdfs for schoolwork, and it really makes beautiful pdfs. I haven't updated my system just to insure this continued to work. Recently I had to install a fresh version of Linux Mint 15.
What should be done to fix this error? I would really love to have this working again.
Thanks a lot for this article.
Funnily, just as I managed to integrate your config, it seems to have stopped working, along with Emacs 24.4 ?
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