Hello, Jambunathan K <kjambunat...@gmail.com> writes:
> 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]. If you're talking about the first section in the parse tree, the e-ascii back-end makes use of it: even if that part of the document, links may have to be collected and displayed before the first headline. Also, "Frontmatter" probably only makes sense for large documents. I sometimes write documents that doesn't even have an headline. Should they be considered as one big frontmatter? Where would be the matter, then? > 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). Honestly, (b) is easier to achieve than (a), since TOC can be stuffed in preamble (that is before reading the parse tree). Also, as it's configurable, I don't think we should bother too much here. > 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". What about using special blocks? --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- #+begin_abstract This is the document abstract. #+end_abstract --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- You can even use a drawer and define its export behaviour in `org-export-format-drawer-function' (current exporter) or an equivalent. Anyway, if it happens that tools to build complex documents are missing[1], I agree that we should provide them, as long as they aren't imposed to the user. Regards, [1] But, first, let's make sure that it's impossible, or at least very difficult, with current ones. -- Nicolas Goaziou
