> that is every element between the beginning of the parsed area and its
> first headline.
I have trouble understanding what the real purpose of the "text before
the first headline" is. It looks to me more like a placeholder for
capturing the "Frontmatter" [1].
I have also trouble understanding what the rightful position for it is:
Should it be like:
(a) Title, Initial Text, TOC, Chapters
Or like
(b) Title, TOC, Initial Text, Chapters
Currently org-latex does a (b).
But if I look at an organization of a typical document, I am inclined to
think that it should be (a). It is also my contention that Table Of
Contents is relocatable only as a means to achieve (b).
I am wondering if you would be interested in formalizing frontmatter in
Org documents. Backends will then be obligated to render the front
matter headings as "centered text".
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
<<document meta data contributes to Titlepage>>
* FRONTMATTER Abstract
This is the document abstract
* FRONTMATTER Contents
<<toc>>
* Chapter1
* Chapter2
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
Footnotes:
[1] I see that documents - books as wells as theses - are roughly
ordered as follows:
Title Page, Frontmatter, Chapters
TOC and other listings are considered as part of Frontmatter but act as
fences between the Chapter and preceding text.
- Title Page
,---- Frontmatter
| - Copyright notice
| - Abstract
| - Preface
| - Acknowledgements
| - Dedication
| - Table Of Contents
| - List of Tables, Figures and Illustrations etc
`----
- Chapter Texts
- References
--
