Re: [Bug-AUCTeX] [Ardi] preview-latex not working under Miktex on WinXP with Auctex

[David Kastrup]

Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> writes:

> * David Kastrup (2005-10-10) writes:
>
>> Maybe we should go through all variables on startup that are supposed
>> to be setq-ed only in auctex.el/tex-site.el and complain when they
>> appear to have customized values?
>
> Probably not only customized but bound in general.
>
>> It's not like this is a rare occurence.
>
> I haven't checked if a wrongly set variable contributes to the
> problems Ardi has.  But failing to load preview-latex.el certainly
> does.  And checking if variables are bound won't help in this case.
> Of course if such a variable is found it may indicate problems with
> configuration, but unrelated to a subsystem not being loaded.
>
> An idea would be an interactive configuration/installation routine:
>
>   The following questions will query which parts of AUCTeX should be
>   activated by default.  If you answer yes to any of these questions a
>   site-start.d directory will be created and your site-start.el file
>   will be modified to evaluate files found therein if it is not
>   already set up like this.
>
>   Do you want AUCTeX to be activated by default? [y/N] y
>
>   Do you want preview-latex to be activated by default? [y/N] y
>
>   Shall I install TeX files of preview-latex into the
>     Emacs tree?  (Default is to install into TeX tree.) [y/N]
>
>   ...
>
> Hmmm, we could do the activation stuff with non-interactive
> --force-activate-{auctex,preview} switches for configure as well, I
> think.

I think that we should factor stuff like this out into a special
installation-only Elisp file and then do it with batch style
commands.  In the long run, we'll want to do all the installation
stuff purely in Elisp instead of autoconf: only in that way will we be
able to be reasonably platform-independent.

It would probably help a lot with readability right now if the uglier
Elisp routines were moved from *.{m4,ac} into a separate Lisp file,
where they can get proper formatting and dos strings and comments
(after all, performance is no issue for such a file).

Preinstalled packages (like for GNU/Linux distributions) might
possibly omit those installation-only file, but pure Elisp
distributions (can you mutter "XEmacs package" under your breath?)
would probably come with it.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum