Re: [AUCTeX] Re: running xelatex instead of pdflatex

[Ralf Angeli]

* Patrick Gundlach (2005-12-18) writes:

>> Then something like
>>
>> (add-to-list 'LaTeX-command-style
>>           '("\\`fontspec\\'" "xe%(PDF)latex %S%(PDFout)"))
>>
>> should work.
>
> It does, thanks a lot!
>
> JFTR:
>
> (add-to-list 'LaTeX-command-style
>            '("\\`fontspec\\'" "xelatex %S%(PDFout)"))

Does xelatex produce DVI output if you pass \pdfoutput=0 to it?  If it
doesn't, then the %(PDFout) should be removed.  Does it have a switch
like -src-specials for activating the inclusion of source specials in
the output file?  If it doesn't, then the %S should be removed.

>> I don't know if there is something like `xepdflatex' and if it is, if
>> it can be used in PDF or DVI mode, so you will have to figure this out
>> yourself.
>
> No there isn't. there is only one 'xe' engine: xetex and only one
> output: pdf. (There is a user-invisible intermediate output and xetex
> converts this output to pdf at the end of the xetex run). Perhaps it
> would make sense to add this to AUCTeX?

If we do, we might include support for frlatex as well.  But as you
can see from my remarks above, all of this is rather clunky.  It seems
that stuff like `TeX-PDF-mode' or `TeX-source-specials-mode' lose
their "globalness" once other processors are taken into account.  That
means if the expanders mentioned above are removed from the call to
the processor, you can toggle PDF mode or source specials mode as
often as you want, but despite them being indicated in the modeline
for example, they won't have any effect.

Also, we might consider providing a more generic way of switching
processors.  We currently have a special minor mode for Omega.  If we
are to include support for more processors this approach seems too
specialized.  Maybe we should have an alist of processors where the
cdr holds information about which features (like DVI/PDF output or
source specials) are supported and how to activate them.  The alist
could then be used to switch processors manually and maybe
automatically like we know do with `LaTeX-command-style'.

-- 
Ralf