Auctex pkg: summary and state of art

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Sep 08 2004, Ralf Angeli wrote:

> * Reiner Steib (2004-09-07) writes:
>> On Tue, Sep 07 2004, Uwe Brauer wrote:
>>> Don't you want to add them to tex-site.el or better tex-site.el.in
>>> in case that configure does not find the correct path
>>
>> IIRC, configure will complain when it doesn't find the path.  Then the
>> user has to specify "--with-tex-input-dirs=DIRS".  I don't think that
>> including such a fallback in the standard AUCTeX distribution makes
>> sense.
>
> `configure' will fall back to '("/usr/share/texmf/tex/"
> "/usr/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/") 

Ah, sure.  I should have read the aclocal.m4 code I have cited. ;-)

> if it cannot find a path via `kpsewhich'.  We could return nil if we
> use the y-or-n-p check you proposed.

Actually I didn't _propose_ to add this to AUCTeX.  It was just a
suggestion for the "if all else fails"-case for the XEmacs package.

When we merge `preview-latex', we will probably need a valid TeX path
for the style files anyhow.  So I don't think such a change makes much
sense now.

>>>> Again you leave Windows out.
>>
>> If you want good defaults for all systems, you would probably need
>> something like configure.  As it is just a fallback if the admin/user
>> didn't set `TeX-macro-global', I think it is okay.
>
> It is a pity that the lack of support for something like `configure'
> makes users of a packaged AUCTeX in XEmacs third class AUCTeX users.
> And this will become worse the more variables will be included in
> tex-site.el which are determined by `configure'.

Well, upto now, the cases where we really rely on `TeX-macro-global'
are rare[1] and don't make the users "third class"[2].

Maybe our Windows users could report if the Kpathsea auto-detection
works.  I.e. what is the value of `TeX-kpathsea-path-delimiter' after
using `C-c C-m \usepackage RET TAB'?  Does the completion list[3] look
sane?

Bye, Reiner.

[1]
,----[ <news:v9isaqdzr4.fsf at marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de> ]
| If the value is not correct (i.e. if the TeX directories are missing)
| _and_ Kpathsea is not available or disabled (see the variable
| `TeX-kpathsea-path-delimiter') the user will not get the nice
| completion when using some commands (see below), but AUCTeX will
| basically work nevertheless.
| 
| Some examples where `TeX-macro-global' is used:
| 
| (1) File name completion (if Kpathsea is not available or disabled):
| 
|     C-c C-m \input RET TAB
|     C-c C-m \usepackage RET TAB
|     C-c C-m \includegraphics RET RET TAB
| 
|     AFAICS, the availability of Kpathsea is detected automatically.
|     If Kpathsea is available, `TeX-macro-global' isn't used.  But I
|     didn't check it carefully, so there might be other AUCTeX
|     functions that rely on `TeX-macro-global'.
| 
| (2) M-x TeX-auto-generate-global RET won't find the LaTeX files and thus
|     the resulting files (in auto/) are incomplete.
`----

[2] Some people even prefer a crippled completion for \includegraphics
    instead of the correct one.  SCNR.

[3] I'd suggest to add `TeX-delete-dups' here so that the completion
    list is not cluttered with duplicates.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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