Re: Several points of interest WRT AUC TeX and preview-latex

Kai> I've said before that IMHO, work on an Emacs package system Kai> should start with support for Autoconf. *chortle* First, get XEmacs to work with Autoconf 2.5x. But autoconf is such an ugly hack to start with. Yes, it's necessary to handle the brain-damage in system libraries and so on, and it's hard to imagine how it could be made "pretty". But searching $PATH and similar command UI-level operations can just as easily be done in Lisp as in m4/autoconf. Kai> What about gnuserv? How is gnuserv handled in XEmacs? Built in core. Kai> Maybe this mechanism could be used for Preview-LaTeX, as Kai> well. Nope. David won't even maintain an XEmacs package, he surely would be unwilling to suffer the restrictions that putting preview-latex in core would entail. Not to mention that it would surely be vetoed. Kai> Hexl-mode? Kai> Movemail? Movemail, certainly, and hexl, AFAIK, are built in core. They share configure with XEmacs. I don't know about the others you mention. But they have nothing to do with David's use of autoconf, if his comment accurately describes the total use of autoconf. According to David's description, preview-latex uses autoconf for quite trivial PATH-chasing and checking for whether options are present that could just as easily be done in Lisp. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.