Separation between paragraphs when exporting to PDF from org-mode

Question

I use org-mode basically for handling TODO lists and taking notes. Some time ago, I wrote some documentation using markdown-mode and exported to PDF using pandoc.

Now I am trying to export to PDF from org-mode. I basically write the org-mode file and use org-latex-export-to-pdf function.

I have this org-mode file:

When I export it I get something like this:

How can I get more separation space between paragraphs?

Answer 1

The most common way to quickly add spaces between paragraphs in LaTeX is to use the parskip package . You can tell org-mode to include that in the LaTeX header by adding the line

#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage{parskip}

to the document preamble at the top of your org-mode file.

Including the parskip package automatically adds separation between paragraphs and removes indentation. If you want the separation and still want paragraphs to be indented, you can set the parindent length back to the default by also adding the line

#+LATEX_HEADER: \setlength{\parindent}{15pt}

Changing the parskip length directly messes up other things like spacing between list items. See this TeX.SX question for more details.

Answer 2

PDF output is generated by LaTeX, so you need to add the LaTeX code for increasing paragraph spacing. That's controlled by the \parskip variable, which is set in LaTeX like this:

\setlength{\parindent}{1cm}

To add that to your org source file, place the following line at the top of the file:

    #+LATEX_HEADER:\setlength{\parindent}{1cm}

You can use other units too, including in, pt, etc., and you can use decimal values like 1.2in.

Answer 3

Well, I have no idea about LaTeX, but I could found this great Visual LaTeX FAQ, that when clicking in the proper separation paragraph redirect to Zero paragraph indent section. Following those explanations and this blog entry on TeX/LaTeX paragraphs, I could export it as I wanted.

I quoted two lines of LaTeX code. First one:

#+LATEX: \setlength{\parskip}{\baselineskip} \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

to set a bigger space between paragraphs, since it seems that 0pt is the default value. {12pt} also works instead of {\baselineskip}. Moreover, setting \parindent to 0pt, removes the default paragraph indentation.

And

#+LATEX: \setlength{\parskip}{0pt} \setlength{\parindent}{20pt}

to reset it back, so the following paragraphs have no separation in between. And they have indentation again set to 20pt.

Image from org-mode file with quoted LaTeX:

And exported PDF file:

That's it!