mentally over the next couple of days, but I can assure you
that it will be many organizers in the background also
working. You'll probably get to see us later on. But for now,
without further ado, I want to say hi to Vincent. Hi,
Vincent. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, and thanks for
coming and thanks for presenting. I mean, you didn't decide
to go first. It's mostly the time zone for you which decided
for you because I believe you are in Japan, correctly. Yeah,
exactly. So I'm living there now and it's very late. It's
really funny to see everyone saying good morning in the
chat. It's always the same for me. So personally, I'm in
France. So for me, it's only 3 p.m. For you, it's probably 9 or
10 p.m. if I'm correct. Already 11 here, yeah. It's already
11, so thank you for staying up so late for us. And how about we
just get started with the questions because you've just
presented something that is very dear to my heart, which is
writing academic paper with Org Mode, which is, for the
record, how I got started with Org Roam and stuff like this.
So, unless you've got anything else to add on top of your
presentation that wasn't able to fit in, I suggest we just
start taking questions. All right. So yeah, right now I'm
reading the question from IRC and also from the pad. So I
guess I'm gonna take what's already written there. So the
first one say asking, I'd be interested in how to start this
journey to write academic paper in org-roam when not having
used Emacs org mode yet. So I saw this one before and I guess it
would be possible to do that, like to use org documents only
as the way that you are writing papers. Like maybe you can
just use that as a template that you're going to export. And
if you are familiar with LaTeX, it's going to be more useful,
I guess, and maybe more convenient to work with inside of
Emacs. But then I'm not 100% sure if that's... How do you say
that? Maybe the, in my opinion, the benefits of using
org-roam in that setup is that you can link the things. For
me, I'm using the search function for org-roam to just
navigate between the files. So that's really some, a good
advantage, but like, yeah, that could be, like Leo said in
the presentation, that's some, maybe that's something you
can start using org-mode with to write papers. So yeah.
some second questions. So how about connecting Emacs or Roam
to Zotero? Is that something that you have experience with?
Not at all. Actually, I used briefly Zotero in the past and I
really didn't like it or didn't really get into that. I don't
know. But right now,
I don't connect that at all. The question after, out of
curiosity, how do you manage your bibliography? Do you do it
from inside Emacs or using a separate program, ex: Zotero?
Because personally, I have struggled to do it from Emacs,
though I have wanted to for some time. So the way I manage that
is I just have a couple of .bib files that I edit by hand, where
I put the reference when I find them.
And yeah, I just showed very briefly in the presentation,
but the way.
One of the great thing with the org reference system is that
if you have your bibliographic files that are connected to
that system, you can just like, you can put the link, the
reference to the paper, like click on it from your org note,
and then you can open the PDF. You can open the DOI link to open
the whatever publisher page.
So no, I don't use Zotero and I just edit bib or bib files by
hand in Emacs.
I was just going to add something because you know
org-roam-bibtex is actually one of the packages that I
developed and I got it working with Zotero because for me it
was convenient. I was studying humanities and for me it was
very easy to connect reference taken in my browser with
Zotero and just post-processing them a little bit but it is
possible to make org-roam, org-roam-bibtex and Zotero
work together. But it's a little bit of an involved process to
get everything working in Emacs.
Yeah, for sure. And
yeah, I guess the way I'm doing it, I understand the appeal
for having it integrated in the browser. Maybe
that's something I should look up, actually, because right
now I just like doing it very much by hand, like going on the
publisher page and copying the bibtex block and
just using putting that in my file. Yes, it can be not a very
efficient workflow on that side. But after that, you're
having to the PDF. It's and having it inside the notice.
Yeah, it's great. Yeah. To some extent, it kind of depends on
the reference system that is used by the field in which you
are or the university in which you're publishing. Because
sometimes, you know, you're going to have some basic BibTeX
file and sometimes you're going to have better BibTeX
files. And those are very different metadata that you need
to reconcile. And depending on which LaTeX compiler you're
using, be it zLaTeX[??], be it regular LaTeX, lualatex, it's
going to be all different. So it's a whole can of worms that
I'm not sure we want to be opening now. But if you are
interested and if you're not too attached about getting
everything right, it's really easy to get started with
stuff like org-roam-bip-tech. It's supposed to get you
most of the way down to a working setup. And if you need to get
everything working down to the comma based on your
reference system, that's going to be a little harder. But
it's possible. I managed to do it and many people actually
managed to do it. Okay, anyway, so let's move on to the next
question. All right, so the next question asking how do you
start a new document? There are a lot of headers you have to
set up. Do you use a template? I'm curious if you use your
snippets to deal with all of these LaTeX org metacommands.
So I don't use a snippets template of any kind for that.
Probably I should. That's actually a good idea. I'm
probably going to look into that. No, the way I do actually is
I just reuse some previous documents. I copy it, delete all
the contents and adjust it until it works the way I like.
The main issue in general after that step is to make it work
with the template I receive and Let's say if I have some
template that needs to work with another LaTeX compiler,
I'm probably going to try to copy an existing file that I have
that uses the same compiler to save me some work. But yeah,
no, I don't use any snippet or something. Probably I should,
but I'm just doing it the quick and dirty way to just copy some
existing thing.
Then what do you think of citar with org-roam-bibtex? It seems
that bibtex completion is tied to org-roam-bibtex. I don't
know. I never really looked into citar that much. I
don't know about that. I don't know either, so I'm not going
to be able to help on this one.
Because yeah, the bibtex completion is tied to the overall
bibtex. I guess so. So what I'm interpreting, because I do,
so BibTeX completion is the single motor that drives helm
BibTeX and Ivy BibTeX. Perhaps there's another
alternative now that is using the Vertico stack for
completion. But org-roam-bibtex was interfacing with BibTeX
completion to retrieve all the references from a bib file.
and I assume citar would be something very similar in a way
that it interfaces with a bib file, but I couldn't tell you
more. I need to explore a little more and sadly I haven't
touched any of this stack in like three years, so I'm a little
out of touch. I guess this is what comes with leaving
academia to go work as a corporate developer. I'm no longer
so interested in the publishing process, even though I'm
obviously very appreciative of people who still do, and
especially people who use
Yeah, same here. I definitely going to look into the citar
package to see what's possible. Maybe can be using in some
way that is useful for me. Yeah.
And if I go to the next question, so most academic journal
insist that paper are formatted in their own custom LaTeX
document class. Does org-roam make it easy to do that? The
answer is no. That's mostly what I was presenting in the
slide.
Actually, that's also why I made the presentation, because
if someone has a solution, I would gladly take it. No, the way
I do it is that I have to add a I don't have that on top of my head.
plus. Yeah, exactly. So I just make a custom class with the
name of the latex template. In general, I think people use
that to redefine like stuff like section and subsection,
but for me, I just, it shows in the slide where I just map the
section to the same section. I just changed the name of the
class. And this way it allows to import the, the CLS and then
the rest is just like putting the tech template that is
provided either in headers, in LaTeX headers at the top or
Yeah, or just on a LaTeX block in the body of the document if
that's needed, for example, for the acknowledgement.
Sometimes they need some different formatting, but no,
it's not really easy because it needs to modify some
configuration in Unix to do that. Then after that, a little
bit like manually adapt the templates into your org notes.
So that's a little bit some upfront work to do. But once it's
done, your notes are going to be exported exactly like the
template and you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, it's an
interesting topic because the thing about, on one side, you
know, you want to have, when you're using LaTeX, it kind of
translates into you caring a lot about the document that you
produce. Either you care about how quickly you can turn a
plain text document into a very nicely formatted PDF at the
end, or, you know, you just care about the output of your
documents, making sure that everything is properly
formatted. We were talking about references just before,
you know, the formatting rule for references are highly
dependent upon the manual that you're using and, you know,
some people really care about this. And what I found in my
particular experience, my own personal experience
writing for academia, was that I was more in the latter crowd
that really cared about the output format and making sure
everything was correct and it's really a struggle to get
everything working especially when you're transpiling
from Org Mode documents straight into LaTeX. You're
obviously going to be resorting to a number of hacks to get
everything working like Vincent just mentioned with the
class or you're going to end up with many imported files just
to get everything working, but really you're fighting
against the tide if you want to get something a little
different from what is shipping with Walmart. Maybe
everything has gotten better since I was writing my papers,
but generally... Kindly disagree. Yeah, go on. I kindly
disagree. I actually, I'm surprised that a lot of template
is so complex that you don't just change the document class,
but also need to do something else. I'd say it's rather
uncommon. I guess it depends on the area of your search.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's it. It just needs CLS and
that's all. Yeah, but it really depends on, as you said, on
the field in which you're publishing. Some fields are a
little more lax with their rules. And just the fact that you
can introduce mathematic formulas kind of makes LaTeX the
de facto for publishing math documents. But when you're
doing humanities, they're more attached to other kinds of
formatting. So I think things are much better, anyway,
since I started five years ago. Oh, yeah. I have heard from
humanities people Microsoft Word. Yes. Sadly, that's the
format we're fighting against. Yeah. As for document,
yeah, for LaTeX classes, it is a customization and it is the
right way to customize this thing, that's all. I'm not sure
why it's a hack. It's not a hack. It's an actual user
customization. Right. So, we've got about four more
minutes of question. Vincent, we've got a couple of Yeah. So
I've got a little voice talking in my ear telling me that
exactly the same thing. So we've got about two more
questions. Vincent, do you want to field them? Sure. So, are
you using Zotra (sending some link) or org-ref? No, I don't.
I've never heard of Zotra, actually. Looking that very
briefly. That's something I'm going to have to look into.
Apparently, the short for Zotero translator, so that might
be something useful for me since I'm not using Zotero yet,
maybe trying to combine. But no, I've never really tried
these, but I will. Then the last question, how much of this is
tied to Org-roam specifically? Not a lot. Actually apart
from the org-roam-bibtex, I think.
Maybe I'm mixing up stuff there. But no, not a lot actually.
It's just the fact that I'm using that as a in my org-roam
system. But apart from that, most of, I mean, actually all of
the exports can be done from a normal org-note or any other
knowledge management system that you do with org-notes. So
no, it's not specifically tied to org-roam, just that
that's the way I'm using it. And I'm showing it this way, but
yeah, actually the export process can be, can be done with,
Yes, specifically tight work room. Yeah, just confirming
this, the only way Org Roam intervenes into this process is
just referencing
bibliography elements. It just kind of intercedes a little
bit between what Org Roam usually does. But when it comes to
the exports to LaTeX and PDF eventually, that's completely
deferring to org exports. So, ox-latex and all of this. So,
we are not intervening in any way into this transpiling
format. One comment. Yeah, I don't know if I imagine it is,
but it looked from the slides that it was our graph was it.
Sorry, that it was? org-ref, org-ref.
Yes. Because it is a link system for citations. Built-in
citations, which is, there is a built-in citation system in
art mode. It uses, it doesn't use links. It has a special way
to cite things. Yeah, because I believe, yeah, go on please,
Vincent. No, I just wanted to say, in that case, I'm using the
link with the cite command. I'm not using the org-roam link
for the reference. I didn't really show that very
carefully. But then, yeah, it's a site element that is
exported. So the roam part is just like, you can access the
org notes that you have attached to a reference paper. But
that's it. Okay, because I was confused by why the
bibliography is a link, why style is a link, because it is the
approach org-ref uses.
Ah, right. Okay, I see. Yeah, the thing is, actually I don't
know why, but In my experience, using the org-roam,
org-roam-bibtex links doesn't export or doesn't export
properly. So like adding them with the org-ref-cite worked
better. So that's, that's why I'm using these. If I may
interject. If you're using org-ref-cite, you're using
org-ref-for-export, which is slightly different. I'm
going to interject very quickly because sadly we are a
little pressed for time because we are heading into the next
discussion. So just very quickly, if you want to continue
the discussion, the BBB room is available at
emacsconf-org. You can go to the talk and get the link to join
the BBB. And the stream will be moving on to the next stream in
about 5 to 10 seconds. So I'll see you on the other side. And
thank you, Vincent. Thank you. All right, sorry for cutting
a little abruptly. It's because we use crontabs to move to
the next talk. And sadly, I don't have any leeway on this. So
feel free to continue the discussion. I'll be moving on to
make sure everything is working. So enjoy the discussion.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.