Re: [Docutils-users] handling of literal block in LaTeX (esp in slides)

[Alan G I. <ai...@am...>]

> On 2011-02-21, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>>  Why are literal blocks put in a quote environment?


On 2/28/2011 5:05 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:
> Because this shows up in the PDF similar to the way they are presented
> in HTML (indented and with vertical separation).


This seems to justify an unfortunate LaTeX display by
referencing an unfortunate HTML display, which in turn
is (I think?) just a reflection of unfortunate decisions
early on in various browsers.  (I don't think it reflects
a W3C recommendation.)

In any case, two comments on LaTeX output.

1. Can we agree this is undesirable in *slides* at least?
Code I need to display gets cutoff *because of* this
quote environment.

2. Given (1), then we should allow easy styling, and
nesting in a quote environment does not (because it
abuses the quote environment).  So how about styling
the verbatim environment in the preamble
(using e.g. Victor's final solution here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2143687/latexs-verbatim-how-to-indent-every-instance)
and leaving all other environments (e.g., lstlisting) alone,
since they are already optimized for code display.

This gets rid of the undesirable quote environment
but keeps the indentation of the verbatim environment
for those who want it, while allowing the latter to
be easily restyled.

Alan Isaac

PS Possibly related to this ... could it be better to submit the
reST style for distribution with LaTeX distros rather than
repeating it in the header of every written LaTeX file?
(Not sure how this would interact with writer options;
maybe it's impossible?)