[AUCTeX] integrating feynmf (was: [Bug-AUCTeX] rel-0-9-1; Two speed issues)

[Ralf Stubner]

[IMO this no longer belongs to bug-auctex, so I simply subscribed to the 
normal AUCTeX list]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Ralf Stubner <address@hidden> writes:
>
>
> > David Kastrup wrote:
> >
> > > Ralf Stubner <address@hidden> writes:
> > >
> > >
> > > > I haven't found a possibility yet to have those play nicely
> > > > together with preview-latex.
> > >
> > > Where is the problem?  Just use one empfile (?) environment per
> > > graphic.
> >
> > That works fine for emp.sty, where I have only a few graphs. The
> > problem ist feynmp.sty, where I currently have ~80 graphs within
> > something like 30 or 40 displayed equations (still increasing). At
> > least at the moment I find it more practical to have one 'fmffile'
> > per file in a multi-file document and make occasional preview-latex
> > runs on the whole buffer.
>
> Well, one possible remedy would be to place the fmffile stuff _around_
> \begin{document}...\end{document}.  Then it should be active on each
> run.  No idea whether this will do more harm than good though, and
> you'd quite probably need to use METAPOST on every run if you hope to
> achieve anything close to consistency (not sure how the "counters"
> option might interact here.  If you use that, you probably should
> _not_ run METAPOST when regenerating regions).

Unfortunately having only one fmffile in a multi-part document using 
\includeonly is asking for trouble. At the LaTeX level a counter is used 
to number all the different diagrams. This counter can have wrong values 
 if say the first and the third part but not the second part a 
processed after changes have been made to the first part. :-(

> There are also regular expressions to tell AUCTeX what to include in
> every region compilation, and those expressions usually take
> everything outside of \begin{document} and \end{document}.
>
> Those are in TeX-header-end and TeX-trailer-start.  You could adjust
> them to include the file writing code from feynmp.

Thanks, I will look into this. Currently I am giving your first 
suggestion of using a separate fmffile environment a try. IMO the main 
problem is the naming of all these files, which I tried to automatize 
with a LaTeX counter:

\newcounter{fmfeq}
\newenvironment{fmfeq}{%
  \begin{equation}
  \stepcounter{fmfeq}
  \begin{fmffile}{fmf-\arabic{fmfeq}}
}{\end{fmffile}
  \immediate\write18{mpost -tex=latex fmf-\arabic{fmfeq}.mp}
  \end{equation}}

This works quite well in principle (I only have to find out how to 
register this new environment with RefTeX or leave out the equation 
environment from the definition). With two LaTeX runs, where at least 
the first one uses -shell-escape, I get consistency. Unfortunately, this 
still doesn't integrate well with preview-latex, since I can't get 
preview-latex to call latex with -shell-escape (see below). So if I call 
preview-latex for some fmfeq environment, I get the graphs from the 
first fmfeq environment, since the fmfeq counter is 1 during the 
preview-latex run. Maybe it would be best to use the label of the 
equation environment instead of a counter...

> > > > BTW, is it possible to call latex with -shell-escape' on a case by
> > > > case basis from within AUCTeX, similar to source specials or PDF
> > > > mode?
> > >
> > > % Local Variables:
> > > % LaTeX-command: "latex -shell-escape"
> >
> > Thanks, that helps. Really nice would be a possibility to switch
> > between enabeling '-shell-escape' or not, since I don't want
> > MetaPost to process the files, even if nothing has changed.
>
>
> Well, choose a keyboard binding and write a toggle for it.  About 5
> lines of Lisp code, something like
>
> (defun TeX-toggle-escape nil (interactive)
>   (if (string= LaTeX-command "latex") "latex -shell-escape" "latex"))
>
> (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
>   (lambda nil
>     (define-key LaTeX-mode-map "\C-c\C-t\C-x" 'TeX-toggle-escape)))

Thanks, I am now using:

(defun TeX-toggle-escape nil (interactive)
  (setq LaTeX-command
        (if (string= LaTeX-command "latex")
            "latex -shell-escape" "latex")))

This works really well with AUCTeX. However, preview-latex does not seem 
to honour this change LaTeX-command. It seems to get which command to 
run from LaTeX-command-style. But I have no idea how that one works. :-(

cheerio
ralf