Re: Removing rollback from VC mode - request for comment

[Stefan Monnier]

>> completely depends on your particular setup.  Maybe if you post
>> a snapshot showing the symbols chosen by Emacs for the actual characters
>> alongside the symbols displayed by X-Symbol for the corresponding TeX
>> commands, someone will be able to help you get Emacs to choose
>> better symbols.
> Here are two snapshots attached below

Hmm... the sizes are very different, which might be a significant part
of the explanation.  Of course the bad karma of using XEmacs might be
the main reason why things turn out so poorly for you ;-)

It seems that the symbols provided by X-Symbol have wildly varying
sizes, which seems to fit your expectations (since you say you like it),
but can't be matched by a simple font since usually fonts try to stick
to a "governing" font size.

So, to reproduce the X-Symbol size variations, you'd have to use a an
additional set of font-lock rules that change the size of some
characters such as the Σ used in sums.  Of course, in my area, we don't
use sums, so when Σ appears, it is typically just the name of some
environment and shouldn't be any larger than a normal capital letter.

>> That's just a conscious choice of the font-lock settings used in
>> tex-mode.el.  You could easily tweak those settings to additionally hide
>> the _ or ^ characters.
> Can you give me an example. I have never seen such settings would be
> most welcome.

Look at the font-lock rules used for the sub/superscript in tex-mode.el
and adjust them to place an `invisible' property on the ^/_ char.
Search for `tex-fontify-script' which is the boolean variable which
governs whether or not font-lock should raise/lower the super/subscripts
in (la)tex-mode.

>> Indeed.  There's also no input method corresponding to the X-Symbol's
>> symbol menu, nor for its symbol table (which displays the symbols in

> Now I don't understand you. If I use (set-input-method "TeX")  (or
> something like this)
> typing \alpha results in α but the same happens in a LaTeX buffer with
> x-symbol-mode (-minor) turned on. In this sense X-symbol provides a
> input method (otherwise it would be very clumsy to use), or what do I miss?

I didn't say X-Symbol doesn't provide an input method.  I said the
opposite: that there is no non-X-Sybmol input methods that correspond to
X-Symbol's symbol menu nor to X-Symbol's table (both of which are kinds
of input method).


        Stefan