Re: Output to directory patch

[Al Haji-Ali]

Hello Ikumi,

Thank you very much for testing and for the links below.

On 05/02/2021, Ikumi Keita wrote:
> I noticed another problem. AUCTeX usually detects that the output file
> (pdf or dvi) is ready to view when the user typed C-c C-c sufficient
> times repeatedly. However, after your patch is applied, that feature no
> longer works when TeX-output-dir is non-nil. How many times the user
> types C-c C-c in a buffer without intermediate editing, AUCTeX always
> suggests "LaTeX" as default command and never suggests "View" as
> default. This makes C-c C-a useless.
>
Oh, I didn't notice this. It is likely related to the first set of issues I 
mentioned in tex-buf.el where the outputs extensions ("(TeX-output-extension)", 
".ind", ".idx" and ".bbl") are appended to an argument `name` or similar to get 
a filename. When those outputs are in the build directory, the current code 
considers them missing and thinks the tex file needs to built again.

As I said, these should be changed to use TeX-active-master or similar instead 
but this would require me changing the interfaces of existing functions (so 
that they don't accept a "name" argument and instead rely on TeX-active-master) 
which I am hesitant to do before I get confirmation that it would be OK or 
someone suggests a better alternative.

> Generally speaking, it seems that this kind of task (=keeping the
> document directory clean) should be taken care of by external tool
> dedicated for that purpose. I came across blog posts discussing
> this issue[1] and summarizing such tools[2]. (Note that these posts are
> written in Japanese.) Actually I was made aware of subdiretory issue of
> \include from the post[1]. The author of these posts claims that
> "--output-directory" is too deficient and actually created one of the
> tools mentioned above, ClutTeX[3].
Interesting articles! I auto-translated the articles and found an English 
description of the package here [1].

[1] 
https://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors/CTAN/support/cluttex/doc/cluttex.pdf

> Taking into the difficulties to make it compatible with preview-latex,
> I'd recommend to consider that you don't aim for a comprehensive tool
> but rather a tool with limited range of application, i.e., for users who
> don't need preview-latex and \include+subdirectory.

I completely agree with this. I think supporting \include and any external 
shell packages would be too difficult (though I don't think impossible) since 
the `--output-directory` implementation in tex seems incomplete; I think one of 
the reasons it is this way is because most people don't really mind the 
file-clutter.

Regarding preview-latex, I don't think it would be as difficult to make it 
support TeX-output-dir, including generating the preview tex files in said 
directory. It will just take me (or others) time to figure out the preview code 
and make the necessary changes. This could be done at a later stage once the 
core functionality of TeX-output-dir is implemented correctly.

Best regards,
Al