[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Accessing TeX-related documentation

[Reiner Steib]

On Fri, Nov 18 2005, Ralf Angeli wrote:

> * Reiner Steib (2005-11-18) writes:
>
>> ;;;###autoload
>> (defun rs-tex-texdoc (package)
>>   "Display TeX documentation for PACKAGE."
>
> Now I am upset.  Why the heck do you keep such gems for yourself? (c;

CVS tells me that it's in my lisp file for a year.  But I forgot about
it until I read your message.  ;-)

Beside the wrong matches in the completing list, my suggestion blocks
the Emacs session while reading the documentation.  It should probably
be run in the background, but I'm not sure if we can catch "not found"
then.

>> For the AUCTeX command, it would be nice to use the word at point as
>> default.  I don't know if my completing list would make sense in
>> AUCTeX because texdoc doesn't find documentation for all listed
>> packages.
>
> Would you like to tackle this?  

Maybe the following is useful for better filtering.  I use it for the
bash completion (IIRC it's based on a suggestion from David in dctt):

$ complete|grep texdoc
complete -C _texdoc texdoc
$ type _texdoc
_texdoc is a function
_texdoc () 
{ 
    kpsewhich -expand-path='$TEXDOCS' | tr : ' ' | xargs ls -U1 | \
      sed -ne "s;^\($2.*\)\.\(dvi\|pdf\|html\|ps\)$;\1;p"
}

> If you don't have time, I can try it as well.

Please do.

| Maybe this could be expanded later to include command references like
| <URL:http://www.miwie.org/tex-refs/>

[I didn't look at this page yet.]  Maybe an index search in
`latex.info'[1] from AUCTeX would be useful.  `ltx-help.el'[2] from
Peter Galbraith and others is/was supposed to do this.  It seemed to
have been part of AUCTeX previously[3].  [`latex.info' and
`ltx-help.el' are both included in SuSE 9.2.]

Maybe two separate commands are in order for packages (-> texdoc) and
macros (-> info, references).

Bye, Reiner.

[1]
,----[ (info "(latex)Top") ]
|    LaTeX2e is a document preparation system implemented as a macro
| package for Donald E. Knuth's TeX typesetting program.
| 
|    LaTeX was originally conceived by Leslie Lamport.
| 
|    This is edition 1.6 of the LaTeX2e documentation.
| 
| * Menu:
| 
| * Overview::           What is LaTeX?
| * Commands::           Commands within a LaTeX document.
| * Parameters::         The command line.
| * Command Index::             An alphabetical list of LaTeX commands.
| * Concept Index::             An alphabetical list of concepts.
`----

[2]
,----[ ltx-help.el ]
| ;;; ltx-help.el --- Lookup latex commands in info pages.
| 
| ;; Author: Peter Galbraith <address@hidden> or <address@hidden>
| ;;    Christian Lynbech <address@hidden>
| ;;    Martin Sjolin <address@hidden>
| ;;    Boris Goldowsky <address@hidden> 
| ;; Maintainer: Torsten Martinsen <address@hidden>
| ;; Updated: 22 Apr 1996
| ;; Keywords: help, latex, info
`----

[3]
,----[ auctex/ChangeLog ]
| 1997-01-29  Per Abrahamsen  <address@hidden>
| 
|         * Makefile (AUCSRC): Removed `ltx-help.el'.
`----
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/