[O] [ANN] ELPA package for ODT and JabRef exporters

[Jambunathan K]

I have prepared an ELPA package

    org-odt-*.tar

for easy distribution of bug fixes from private git repository [fn:1].

The package contains both ODT exporter and JabRef exporter.  You need to
make sure that you are using

1. org > 8.0
2. Emacs > 24.3.50

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Steps for installing ODT + JabRef ELPA package
=============================================

1. Clear out your .emacs.  (Not needed, if you know what you are doing)

2. Visit http://repo.or.cz/w/org-mode/org-kjn.git/tree/master and
   download the a tar file named org-odt-YYYYMMDD.tar.  (Click on the
   "raw" link)

   As of now, the file is available at:
   
   
http://repo.or.cz/w/org-mode/org-kjn.git/blob_plain/master:/org-odt-20140123.tar

3. M-x package-install-file RET <path-to-org-odt-*.tar> RET

4. Goto start of .emacs and add the following line.  (It should be the
   first line in your .emacs)

       (setq org-odt-data-dir nil)

5. Check the ODT option under

        M-x customize-variable RET org-export-backends RET

6. Restart Emacs

7. Make sure that the following commands point to the ELPA directory

       M-x locate-library RET ox-odt RET
       M-x locate-library RET ox-jabref RET
       C-h v org-odt-styles-dir
       C-h v org-odt-schema-dir

8. Visit test.org and export it. Enjoy.

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Some existing gotchas and bugs
=============================

(4) above is needed to work around a bug in Emacs snapshot and Org build
system.


Wrt (2) and (3), I would have expected that the following

    (custom-set-variables
     '(package-archives
       (quote
        (("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/";)
         ("org-odt"
          . "http://repo.or.cz/w/org-mode/org-kjn.git/blob_plain/master:/";)))))

would suffice to do install via

      M-x list-packages.

Unfortunately for some reasons package.el refuses to download the
"archive-contents" located at
http://repo.or.cz/w/org-mode/org-kjn.git/blob_plain/master:/archive-contents.
Any one interested in investigating this and if necessary file a bug
report against Emacs.

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How to host the above files on your own ELPA server
==================================================

If someone wants to distribute the above files, please put the following
files in your web-server.

1. Copy org-odt-YYYYMMDD.tar
2. Copy archive-contents

See directory structure of http://orgmode.org/elpa/

1. Various tar files are under that directory.
2. archive-contents points to the very latest tar file.

   http://orgmode.org/elpa/archive-contents

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ODT exporter and Copyright Issues and a Note to the Users
=========================================================

[fn:1] http://repo.or.cz/w/org-mode/org-kjn.git

The above repo. contains many bug-fixes and enhancements that are NOT
available with Emacs-24.4 or Orgmode git repo.

For some reasons, emacs-devel, org developers and I don't meet eye to
eye. See
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-12/msg00509.html.  So
the above fixes are unlikely to be avaible with Emacs or Org git repo.

To the people who rely on ODT exporter for their day to day use and want
it as part of Emacs

1. Find someone with Copyright Assignment to fix the critical issue(s).

2. Write to Gnu/Linux distributors - Debian, Gentoo etc - and persuade
   them to apply patches from my private repo before building the
   org-mode or Emacs deb packages.

Note to Org developers
======================

If anyone comes this far, let me note that Bastien's latest change to
ox-odt.el resembles very much fix on my Org private repo.  I would argue
that this fix borrows "very liberally" from my un-assigned changes.  So
<fill-in-the-blanks>.