Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Re: Anything missing for 0.9.2?

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> The only alternative I could imagine is support for an "uninstalled"
> state:
>
> a) place the style files in the Emacs tree.
> b) manipulate TEXINPUTS to include them in the TeX search path when
> preview gets loaded.
> c) provide a command "preview-install-style-files" that will offer to
> install them permanently at a user-specified place (completion via
> kpathsea might get offered), in which case the TEXINPUTS manipulation
> is switched off.
>
> Something like that would probably be our best bet for XEmacs package
> support, anyway.

Ok, I have been thinking some more over it.  The basic problem I see
is that we would want to have the use of AUCTeX become ubiquitous.
There are increasingly Emacs installation bundles around which already
include AUCTeX, and partly even with tex-site being autoloaded.  This
is a good trend, and I want it to continue and encourage it.  So how
to do this?

a) installation procedures and README have to contain easy
instructions for turning off AUCTeX for either some or all modes.  "We
have users that might prefer tex-mode.el" should have the answer
"well, they can easily change the defaults to not use it".

Maybe something simple like

(autoload 'plain-tex-mode 'tex-mode)
(autoload 'latex-mode 'tex-mode)

could already be sufficient.  Of course, if a setup that used
tex-mode.el for plain TeX and/or ConTeXt and/or Texinfo, but AUCTeX
for LaTeX (or whatever else) was easy to achieve, too, this would be a
boon.  People could then migrate to AUCTeX mode-by-mode...

b) we need at least the possibility for creating an installation that
does not install anywhere except in the Emacs+info tree.  The above
suggestion would mostly accomplish that goal with regard to
preview-latex.

c) we don't want to have people even thinking about not installing
preview-latex.  So --without-preview should not really noticeably
simplify matters.

d) we probably want something like --without-texmf-dir... for the
installation that figures out the stuff at runtime.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum