Latex Tufte class in org-mode

Edward Tufte is known for graphical excellence in his famous books. Some enthusiasts combined his design principles into LaTeX and you have the tufte-book and tufte-handout classes for excellence in typesetting. This has support for sidenotes, margin figures, full width figures etc.
Now, since I have shifted to org-mode on Emacs for most of my writing work including that of LaTeX, it was but natural to take this in org-mode output.
For this a small addition to your .emacs file and you are done. Of course after installing the dependencies. I also came to know about another nice package nicefrac for using in the documents.
For Fedora #yum install texlive-tufte-latex should do the job. Also some font problems may arise which can be solved by running updmap and enabling the needed font.

 ;; tufte-book class for writing classy books
(require 'org-latex)
(add-to-list 'org-export-latex-classes
'("tuftebook"
"\\documentclass{tufte-book}\n
\\usepackage{color}
\\usepackage{amssymb}
\\usepackage{gensymb}
\\usepackage{nicefrac}
\\usepackage{units}"
("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}")
("\\subsection{%s}" . "\\subsection*{%s}")
("\\paragraph{%s}" . "\\paragraph*{%s}")
("\\subparagraph{%s}" . "\\subparagraph*{%s}")))
 ;; tufte-handout class for writing classy handouts and papers
(require 'org-latex)
(add-to-list 'org-export-latex-classes
'("tuftehandout"
"\\documentclass{tufte-handout}
\\usepackage{color}
\\usepackage{amssymb}
\\usepackage{amsmath}
\\usepackage{gensymb}
\\usepackage{nicefrac}
\\usepackage{units}"
("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}")
("\\subsection{%s}" . "\\subsection*{%s}")
("\\paragraph{%s}" . "\\paragraph*{%s}")
("\\subparagraph{%s}" . "\\subparagraph*{%s}")))

Once you have added these to .emacs, in the org-mode you have to define #LaTeX_CLASS: tuftehandout or #LaTeX_CLASS: tuftebook to invoke this style in the tex output.
Enjoy the Tuftesque typesetting in your own work! Some snippets from my work in progress, no figures so far.
tufte-latex-book

Title Page

tufte-latex-book-2Table of contents

tufte-latex-book-3Main text

3 thoughts on “Latex Tufte class in org-mode

  1. Hi,
    Which version of org-mode are you using ?
    With the current version, I use “(require ‘org-latex)” and “(add-to-list ‘org-latex-classes”

  2. Hey D.,
    here’s a lost graduate-to-be who’s struggling big-time with the tufte+org-mode combination.
    While I’ve become a real happy org-mode user for general task-management, presentations and day-to-day-writing, I haven’t been able get the ox-tufte-pipeline to work with citations.
    Is there any chance I could ask you for a minimal-working-example of a tufte-org-file that contains citations?
    Looking back I must admit that with my background in (civil)engineering and as an Emacs and Latex newbie it was maybe too optimistic to think that I can learn what it takes to use Emacs, org-mode and the Tufte-LaTeX besides writing my thesis… And as there’s not too much online with this very specific combination contacting you is my last resort before aborting this endeavour.
    Thanks a million in advance
    R.

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