org verse blocks: indentation not preserved on export to odt

Question

the org manual says "To preserve the line breaks, indentation and blank lines in a region, but otherwise use normal formatting" you can use #+begin_verse #+end_verse block.

if i run emacs -Q, open a new file, add this example:

#+BEGIN_VERSE
Great clouds overhead
Tiny black birds rise and fall
Snow covers Emacs

   ---AlexSchroeder
#+END_VERSE 

then export to odt using the dispatch with not alternate odt styles file specified, the output in odt looks like this:

Great clouds overhead
 Tiny black birds rise and fall
 Snow covers Emacs

   ---AlexSchroeder

i.e. a space is inserted at the beginning of every new line except the first.

this problem does not appear if you have #+options: \n:t set, but that using option breaks indentation on export for me too (it reduces all indentations to a single space).

Answer 1

[Not quite an answer, but too long for a comment - plus I can use code blocks to illustrate the problem and a suggested patch to Org mode for it.]

It's not clear (to me at least) what Org mode should be doing differently: it does not produce the extra spaces in LaTeX or HTML output, and it does not produce any extra spaces in the XML file that it produces for ODT output either - here's what you see if you open the ODT archive and look at the contents.xml file inside it:

<text:p text:style-name="OrgVerse">Great clouds overhead<text:line-break/>
Tiny black birds rise and fall<text:line-break/>
Snow covers Emacs<text:line-break/>
<text:line-break/>
 <text:s text:c="2"/>&#x2014;AlexSchroeder<text:line-break/>
</text:p>

Why soffice displays this with spaces at the beginning of the second and subsequent lines is a mystery to me, but there does not seem to be anything that can be done about it on the Org mode side, other than translating it to some different XML: if you know what it should be translating it into, you should probably file a bug report with org-submit-bug-report.

(Later): By trial and error, I discovered that if you open the ODT archive in emacs and edit the contents.xml file to look like this:

<text:p text:style-name="OrgVerse">Great clouds overhead<text:line-break/>Tiny black birds rise and fall<text:line-break/>Snow covers Emacs<text:line-break/><text:line-break/> <text:s text:c="2"/>&#x2014;AlexSchroeder<text:line-break/>
</text:p>

eliminating the explicit newlines, then it is shown without initial spaces.

I would suggest that you try the following patch to Org mode:

diff --git a/lisp/ox-odt.el b/lisp/ox-odt.el
index ef07acfed..658c5949a 100644
--- a/lisp/ox-odt.el
+++ b/lisp/ox-odt.el
@@ -3676,8 +3676,9 @@ contextual information."
       ;; Replace leading tabs and spaces.
       "^[ \t]+" #'org-odt--encode-tabs-and-spaces
       ;; Add line breaks to each line of verse.
-      (replace-regexp-in-string
-       "\\(<text:line-break/>\\)?[ \t]*$" "<text:line-break/>" contents))))
+      (replace-regexp-in-string  "\n" ""
+           (replace-regexp-in-string
+            "\\(<text:line-break/>\\)?[ \t]*$" "<text:line-break/>" contents)))))
 
 
 

It's just a rough approximation at the moment, but it should take care of the initial spaces on the haiku lines, although it mangles the spaces in front of the em-dash.