Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Why AUCTeX passes file via \input?

[David Kastrup]

Ryszard Kubiak <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to ask if there are any serious reasons why AUCTeX passes
> a file to TeX using the \input command, as in
>
>   pdflatex "\input{file.tex}"
>
> and not simply with
>
>   pdflatex file.tex   ?

Because there are times when TeX code has to get passed on the command
line, and we have no special case logic for detecting the corner cases
where this is not necessary.

> I am asking the question because the "\input{file.tex}" phrase becomes
> the first line that TeX receives which precludes it to react to the
> parameters contained in the first line of the bare document, such as
> this one:
>
>   %& --translate-file=cp1250pl.tcx
>   \documentclass[12pt]{article}
>   [...]
>
> The %& comments belong to TeX standards these days; they were
> introduced a few years ago. Given this I consider not passing
> them to TeX engine a buggy behaviour of AUCTeX.

It would break anyway when using C-c C-r or C-c C-b.  Those lines would
require parsing and transferring to the TeX-region file to make that
work.  So it would be a _lot_ of hassle to get this work reasonably in
all cases.  Nobody had had much inclination to do that work, and nobody
from the very few persons bothered by it has volunteered to do this.

> Of course, one can reconfigure TeX-command-list, still -- believe me
> -- unexperienced users need hours to discover why TeX, as they know
> it, works differently when they call it under AUCTeX and when they
> issue a "pdflatex file.tex" command.

I never understood the Polish preoccupation with translation files.  The
rest of the world uses the inputenc package which also happens to work
with verbatim environments.  If we were talking about plain TeX, this
would be somewhat different.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum