[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Plea for help - anomalous AUCTeX behavior

[David Kastrup]

Robert Knighten <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup writes:
>
>  > The above line is _not_ correct.  If that does not _immediately_ break
>  > AUCTeX, it is likely that you have an old tex-site.el from a previous
>  > installation in your path.  Please use
>  > 
>  > M-x list-load-path-shadows RET
>  > 
>  > to make sure that this is not the case.
>
> That did not indicate an old tex-site.el as the problem, but in
> looking at my setup it was sufficiently untidy that I simply removed
> all of the AUCTeX code and reinstalled.  That appears to have solved
> the problem so I expect I had an old version masquerading as the
> current version.

Ah, ok.

> Thank you very much for your help.
>
>  > > I am not using preview-latex.
>  > 
>  > Incidentally, preview-latex does not affect editing performance
>  > at all since it does not require processor power between explicit
>  > invocations by key or menu.  If you are creating a mathematics
>  > text book, you should really give it a whirl.  That's pretty much
>  > the application it has been created for.
>
> That was my understanding and I'm glad to hear it verified.  I tried
> preview-latex once long ago and found it unsatisfying for reasons I
> cannot even remember.  So I settled into a satisfactory mode and
> simply haven't tried it since.  I will try it again.

There probably have been quite a few improvements since "long ago",
mostly in the performance area, but it also can now deal with PDFLaTeX
and make judicious use of dvipng if available (mostly a performance
thing).  We also made a number of changes to AUCTeX's filling code
that tend to keep linebreaks out of preview material: this leads to
considerable improvements in the resulting buffer display in
particular with inline math.

Apart from that, I don't think the user interface changed much,
though.  Still, trying it does not require any commitment (like
working with LyX would): you can use it on any document or parts
without any net change on the document itself.

> This somehow reminds me of another niggling question I have.  Is there any
> convenience function in AUCTex to insert a displaymath abbreviation pair?
> By this I mean
> \[
>
> \]
>
> Right now I have a trivial function that does that, but I would
> really like some of the capability available with LaTeX-environment
> using the displaymath argument.  Most especially I would like to be
> able to use the function on a region and get the brackets
> automatically surrounding the region.

Personally, I don't use those shorthands but the equation* environment
from amsmath instead.

Perhaps we should have the environment insertion commands also accept
matched stuff like \[ \], \left...\right, or revert to C-c C-e-like
behavior for TeX-insert-macro on such matched constructs.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum