[AUCTeX-devel] Re: preview-latex 0.9.1 and AUCTeX 11.whatever

[David Kastrup]

Jan-Åke Larsson <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> I think it would be better to create another aclocal.m4 macro that
>> does this job in a more general way, something like
>> AUCTEX_PATH_PREFIX(prefix1, prefix2, executable) which then sets the
>> prefix1 and prefix2 variables to the path-relative stuff in the
>> manner I outlined previously.
>
> I have checked in a different proposal, which sets $emacsprefix.

Which does nothing for TeX.  The "manner I outlined previously" was to
set prefix1 to an explicitly specified --prefix option, and prefix2 to
a binary derived prefix (by going up, removing a potentially trailing
bin/some-architecture or bin), or, when no explicit prefix was
specified, setting prefix1 to the binary-derived prefix, and prefix2
to the system default prefix (like /usr/local/).

> I thought about it and I think it is better this way since we have
> possibly different prefixes for emacs and tex,...

Well, obviously this macro would be called several times in order to
get different search prefixes for different binaries.

> I have not implemented the explicit list of locations. The current
> code matches ${emacsprefix}/.*/site-lisp which perhaps is good
> enough. I have little experience with people modifying the beginning
> of load-path, is this common? By the way, is there a reason for
> checking site-packages in that AC macro, it is only called for GNU
> Emacs anyway?

Not everybody loves the package system.  For those that want to,
--without-packagedir is an option.

> Anyway, I have looked at the other things in aclocal.m4 and there
> are a few things I do not like, most notably the relative
> directories. IMO it would be better to use the absolute path
> ${lispdir}/preview than this relative stuff.

Nope.  It is vital that we have relative paths for the sake of package
systems and prebundled packages.

> We'd get confusing (-ed) questions about this in auctex-bugs I
> think.

It will always work to use absolute paths.  You don't need relative
ones.

> Another question is if there really is a need for the complicated
> TeX-tree path checking which doesn't work here anyway
> (...reading...)  Oh, I see. Here is the use for our different
> prefixes. Hmmm. I'll solve this too, given some time. The easy way
> is of course to do AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(tex)...no, that won't
> work. This architecture-specific path component won't get
> stripped. Bah. I'll figure something out.

I really think the AUCTEX_PATH_PREFIX proposal would be the easiest.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum