Adding some padding for LaTeX fragments in Org mode

Question

When writing in Org mode, I have a minor pet peeve where the Org document becomes too "cramped", and so I like to add newlines separating the equations from the text, like this:

* Very comfortable to read
This document has separation between the text and the equations, making it very comfortable to read, with the equation

\begin{align*}
\frac{1}{2} \left( \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \right)
\end{align*}

being separated from the text.

However, when exporting to LaTeX, the newlines are treated as new paragraphs, and so the equation is indented. To avoid this behavior, I have to write my document like this:

* Too compact for my tastes
The text is too compact for me to read when I have LaTeX equations involved, such as
\begin{align*}
\frac{1}{2} \left( \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \right)
\end{align*}
but this is the proper way to write the document when exporting to LaTeX, as adding
newlines would treat the equation as a new paragraph, making the equation & the
line after it, indented. Also, this causes the LaTeX fragments to sit too closely to
the preceding & proceeding text.

Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? I want to be able to write my document with newlines separating the equations from the text, but I also want to be able to export to LaTeX without the equations being indented. Either some LaTeX/Org mode export option which would ignore newlines, or some piece of ELisp which would add "fake" newlines via

(put-text-property (point-at-eol) (1+ (point-at-eol)) 'line-spacing 10)

before and after the equation blocks, which would give it the appearance of extra newlines, but not actually be newlines. I am wondering what is the best way to tackle this issue.

Answer 1

I came up with the following solution, which may not be ideal, but does exactly what I want:

(defun org-latex-clear-newlines-around-equations (backend)
  (when (org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'latex)
    (let ((case-fold-search nil))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward "\n\n\\\\begin{" nil t)
        (replace-match "\n\\\\begin{"))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward "\\\\end{\\(.*\\)}\n\n" nil t)
        (replace-match (concat "\\\\end{" (match-string 1) "}\n"))))))

(add-hook 'org-export-before-parsing-hook 'org-latex-clear-newlines-around-equations)

EDIT: A better answer where instead of removing the spaces before export, we just modify the vertical spacing in the editor, can be found here.