bug#31132: AUCTeX, RefTeX and biblatex's multicite commands

[gusbrs]

Hi Arash,

On Tue, 9 Apr 2024 at 09:39, Arash Esbati <arash@gnu.org> wrote:

> Thanks, I installed that change on Emacs master, commit 7236010d2e.

Great, thank you very much! I'm already looking forward to Emacs 30 now. :-)

> > The only other thing of note I observed is that the mcite-like
> > citation commands are not fontified as reference/citation commands
> > (they get only the generic `font-latex-sedate-face'). I had agreed
> > with you that the case is tricky and arguably not worth the trouble on
> > RefTeX's side of things. But fontification for them should be trivial.
> > So, why not?
>
> Ok, I had another look, and biblatex manual says on page 120:
>
>   In contrast to that, a biblatex entry set is an entity in its own
>   right.
>
> So I think the change attached gives sort of support for mcite-like
> macros, incl. fontification.  Do you want to give it a roll?  Please
> ignore the re-indent changes.

Oh, wow! You went far there. I had only thought of a simple
`font-latex-add-keywords` for them when I mentioned.

I did take it for a spin (light, but should be sufficient for this).
And it does more than I'd expect, you are even handling the insertion
of the sets. Fontification is fine too.
For these macros, seldom used, macro insertion on the AUCTeX side with
TeX-insert-macro is more than sufficient. Pretty good, looks good to
me. Thank you!

Sure, the peculiar bibkey notation still defeats
`reftex-view-crossref', but... as previously discussed.

> > Nice, perhaps something useful comes out of it. I'll share the code
> > first and comment later.
>
> Thanks, I will read through it later.  I'd like to address the issues in
> this report and close it before we proceed.
>
> [...]
>
> Yes, this is true: RefTeX hardcodes plenty of stuff.

Use this stuff as you see fit. As I said, just to get some ideas from.
Discuss if you feel like it, but feel free to keep it to yourself too.
I offered without giving it much thought, and it turned out to be
quite a lot.
Take it as an example of what an interested user had to do to add
support to a few non-standard packages to this feature set in RefTeX.
I doubt the general view emerging from it is any news to folks in this
list, but sometimes a concrete example helps building perspective. I
don't expect anything to come out of it, except perhaps be a useful
food for thought to you.

> TBH, I still don't want to touch font-latex.el in order to make
> fontification for cite-lists work, but we have an imperfect solution in
> place which hopefully is enough for you and other users :-)

Fair, and understood. And, granted, this one is actually easy to
handle on the user side (if one can live with a discrete warning face
on the backslash). I just couldn't resist poking you a little bit
about it.  ;-)

> Again, thank you for your support.

I thank _you_!

Best,
gusbrs