[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Interface of kpathsea file search

[Ralf Angeli]

* David Kastrup (2005-11-23) writes:

> Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Usually `TeX-search-files-kpathsea' is called through
>> `TeX-search-files' and `TeX-search-files' accepts only a list of
>> extensions, not some abstraction of it.
>
> I am afraid I don't get your point.  What "abstraction" are you
> talking about?

Something like a format specifier as used for the first element of the
items of `TeX-kpathsea-format-alist'.

>> So the _intention_ of `TeX-kpathsea-format-alist' is a mapping of
>> something like a format specifier
>
> There is no such thing "like a format specifier".

>From the doc string of `TeX-kpathsea-format-alist':

    "Formats to search for expansion using kpathsea.
  The key of the alist represents the name of the format.  The

> `TeX-kpathsea-format-alist' just takes the first element of the
> extension list as a heuristic what to look for.

Hm, I find it confusing that a list of extensions is supplied to the
function where only the first one is used for mapping to some other
extensions.

>> to a file type and a set of extensions but the actual usage differs.
>
> The one thing that seems somewhat odd is that
> `TeX-kpathsea-format-alist' also provides an extension list again.  I
> am not sure that the original extension list would not be sufficient
> for that purpose.

Maybe `TeX-search-files-kpathsea' should accept both a format
specifier and a list of extensions.  The format specifier can be used
to reduce the number of directories to be searched.  It would be nice
if it used the terms of kpathsea tools.

-- 
Ralf