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I am testing out the Babel feature in org-mode, with this small block.

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :results verbatim :exports both                                                     
banner -w 35 e                                                                                                                  
#+END_SRC                                                                                                                          

#+RESULTS:                                                                                                                         
:              #####                                                                                                               
:            #########                                                                                                             
:          ####  #   ###                                                                                                           
:          #     #     ##                                                                                                          
:         ##     #      #                                                                                                          
:          #     #     ##                                                                                                          
:          #     #   ###                                                                                                           
:            #   #####

(The banner command writes an ASCII art heading. So in this example I'm just printing out an e, sideways. The leading whitespace characters are all spaces.)

I try to export this to TeX, and in the TeX file I see that some of the leading spaces have been replaced with tabs; namely any group of 8 spaces gets replaced with a tab. Therefore the lines don't show up properly when the TeX is exported to PDF. I had a look at the source code of org and I found that it might be org-trim causing this. There's also the option org-src-preserve-indentation, but that doesn't seem to act on the output of the source code, only the source itself. Can I stop org from converting the whitespaces to tabs?

EDIT: Just tried sed 's/<tab-character>/ /g' on the TeX file to replace each tab with 8 spaces, and the problem is fixed immediately. So org must be changing them somewhere, I just need to know where...

EDIT #2: Apparently there is some normalizing going on that might be the issue. Listing here for reference.

Charles
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2 Answers2

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This usually fixes for me so LaTeX comes out fine:

(setq org-src-preserve-indentation nil 
      org-edit-src-content-indentation 0)

Also, you could use this instead of sed:

M-x untabify
Emacs User
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  • Thanks for the tip on `untabify`. I set the variables at the top of the .org file with `# -*- org-src-preserve-indentation: nil; org-edit-src-content: 0; -*-` and reloaded the buffer, but this doesn't seem to change the exported TeX. – Charles Jun 30 '16 at 06:16
  • @Charles, I usually set those types of variables in my init file and load them before org is loaded. I do not know if that makes any difference in your case. – Emacs User Jun 30 '16 at 16:55
  • Hold on, shouldn't `org-src-preserve-indentation` in your answer be set to `t`? The manual says, `By default, the value is nil, which means that when code blocks are evaluated during export or tangled, they are re-inserted into the code block, which may replace sequences of spaces with tab characters. ***When non-nil, whitespace in code blocks will be preserved during export or tangling, exactly as it appears.***` – Charles Jun 30 '16 at 17:05
  • `0` is `non-nil`. – Emacs User Jun 30 '16 at 17:36
  • I'm talking about `org-src-preserve-indentation`, which, in your answer, you recommended to set as nil. It turns out that setting it to `t` fixes the TeX output! Now it's just that TeX "normalizes" the whitespace by deleting it in rectangular vertical chunks. But I think I have almost solved it. – Charles Jun 30 '16 at 23:10
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Doing the simple

(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)

fixed it for me...

Org mode doesn't really like tabs anyway, it seems, so this works just fine.

EDIT: Nope nope nope I'm an idiot. But this worked for me, at least (I use two space tabs, change that as necessary):

(setq org-latex-pdf-process '("sed -ie 's/  /  /g' %f"
                        "pdflatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"
                        "pdflatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"
                        "pdflatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"))
Alex Shroyer
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Sauyon Lee
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    What are you doing with this code? Are you `setq`ing a variable, or calling the function? You can just delete your currently-commented-out text if it's not an answer. – zck Feb 20 '17 at 01:37