Next: Display, Previous: Introduction, Up: top [Contents][Index]
The most commonly used commands/macros of AUCTeX are those which simply insert templates for often used TeX, LaTeX, or ConTeXt constructs, like font changes, handling of environments, etc. These features are very simple, and easy to learn, and help you avoid mistakes like mismatched braces, or ‘\begin{}’-‘\end{}’ pairs.
Apart from that this chapter contains a description of some features for entering more specialized sorts of text, for formatting the source by indenting and filling and for navigating through the document.
| • Quotes | Inserting quotes, dollars, and braces | |
| • Font Specifiers | Inserting Font Specifiers | |
| • Sectioning | Inserting chapters, sections, etc. | |
| • Environments | Inserting Environment Templates | |
| • Mathematics | Entering Mathematics | |
| • Completion | Completion of macros | |
| • Marking | Marking Environments, Sections, or Texinfo Nodes | |
| • Commenting | Commenting text | |
| • Indenting | Reflecting syntactic constructs with whitespace | |
| • Filling | Automatic and manual line breaking |
Next: Font Specifiers, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
In TeX, literal double quotes ‘"like this"’ are seldom used, instead two single quotes are used ‘``like this''’. To help you insert these efficiently, AUCTeX allows you to continue to press " to insert two single quotes. To get a literal double quote, press " twice.
(") Insert the appropriate quote marks for TeX.
Inserts the value of TeX-open-quote (normally ‘``’) or
TeX-close-quote (normally ‘''’) depending on the context.
With prefix argument, always inserts ‘"’ characters.
String inserted by typing " to open a quotation. (See European, for language-specific quotation mark insertion.)
String inserted by typing " to close a quotation. (See European, for language-specific quotation mark insertion.)
Determines the behavior of ". If it is non-nil, typing "
will insert a literal double quote. The respective values of
TeX-open-quote and TeX-close-quote will be inserted
after typing " once again.
The ‘babel’ package provides special support for the requirements of typesetting quotation marks in many different languages. If you use this package, either directly or by loading a language-specific style file, you should also use the special commands for quote insertion instead of the standard quotes shown above. AUCTeX is able to recognize several of these languages and will change quote insertion accordingly. See European, for details about this feature and how to control it.
In case you are using the ‘csquotes’ package, you should customize
LaTeX-csquotes-open-quote, LaTeX-csquotes-close-quote and
LaTeX-csquotes-quote-after-quote. The quotation characters will
only be used if both variables—LaTeX-csquotes-open-quote and
LaTeX-csquotes-close-quote—are non-empty strings. But then the
‘csquotes’-related values will take precedence over the
language-specific ones.
In AUCTeX, dollar signs should match like they do in TeX. This has been partially implemented, we assume dollar signs always match within a paragraph. By default, the first ‘$’ you insert in a paragraph will do nothing special. The second ‘$’ will match the first. This will be indicated by moving the cursor temporarily over the first dollar sign.
($) Insert dollar sign.
Show matching dollar sign if this dollar sign end the TeX math mode.
With optional arg, insert that many dollar signs.
TeX and LaTeX users often look for a way to insert inline
equations like ‘$...$’ or ‘\(...\)’ simply typing $.
AUCTeX helps them through the customizable variable
TeX-electric-math.
If the variable is non-nil and you type $ outside math mode,
AUCTeX will automatically insert the opening and closing symbols for
an inline equation and put the point between them. The opening symbol
will blink when blink-matching-paren is non-nil. If
TeX-electric-math is nil, typing $ simply inserts ‘$’
at point, this is the default.
Besides nil, possible values for this variable are (cons
"$" "$") for TeX inline equations ‘$...$’, and (cons
"\\(" "\\)") for LaTeX inline equations ‘\(...\)’.
If the variable is non-nil and point is inside math mode right between a
couple of single dollars, pressing $ will insert another pair of
dollar signs and leave the point between them. Thus, if
TeX-electric-math is set to (cons "$" "$") you can easily
obtain a TeX display equation ‘$$...$$’ by pressing $
twice in a row. (Note that you should not use double dollar signs in
LaTeX because this practice can lead to wrong spacing in typeset
documents.)
In addition, when the variable is non-nil and there is an active region outside math mode, typing $ will put around the active region symbols for opening and closing inline equation and keep the region active, leaving point after the closing symbol. By pressing repeatedly $ while the region is active you can toggle between an inline equation, a display equation, and no equation. To be precise, ‘$...$’ is replaced by ‘$$...$$’, whereas ‘\(...\)’ is replaced by ‘\[...\]’.
If you want to automatically insert ‘$...$’ in plain TeX files, and ‘\(...\)’ in LaTeX files by pressing $, add the following to your init file
(add-hook 'plain-TeX-mode-hook
(lambda () (set (make-local-variable 'TeX-electric-math)
(cons "$" "$"))))
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
(lambda () (set (make-local-variable 'TeX-electric-math)
(cons "\\(" "\\)"))))
To avoid unbalanced braces, it is useful to insert them pairwise. You can do this by typing C-c {.
(C-c {) Make a pair of braces and position the cursor to type inside of them. If there is an active region, put braces around it and leave point after the closing brace.
When writing complex math formulas in LaTeX documents, you
sometimes need to adjust the size of braces with pairs of macros like
‘\left’-‘\right’, ‘\bigl’-‘\bigr’ and so on. You
can avoid unbalanced pairs with the help of TeX-insert-macro,
bound to C-c C-m or C-c RET (see Completion).
If you insert left size adjusting macros such as ‘\left’,
‘\bigl’ etc. with TeX-insert-macro, it asks for left brace
to use and supplies automatically right size adjusting macros such as
‘\right’, ‘\bigr’ etc. and corresponding right brace in
addtion to the intended left macro and left brace.
The completion by TeX-insert-macro also applies when entering
macros such as ‘\langle’, ‘\lfloor’ and ‘\lceil’, which
produce the left part of the paired braces. For example, inserting
‘\lfloor’ by C-c C-m is immediately followed by the
insertion of ‘\rfloor’. In addition, if the point was located
just after ‘\left’ or its friends, the corresponding
‘\right’ etc. will be inserted in front of ‘\rfloor’.
In both cases, active region is honored.
As a side effect, when LaTeX-math-mode (see Mathematics) is
on, just typing `( inserts not only ‘\langle’, but also
‘\rangle’.
If you do not like such auto completion at all, it can be disabled by a user option.
If this option is turned off, the automatic supply of the right macros and braces is suppressed.
When you edit LaTeX documents, you can enable automatic brace pairing when typing (, { and [.
If this option is on, just typing (, { or [ immediately adds the corresponding right brace ‘)’, ‘}’ or ‘]’. The point is left after the opening brace. If there is an active region, braces are put around it.
They recognize the preceding backslash or size adjusting macros such as ‘\left’, ‘\bigl’ etc., so the following completions will occur:
This auto completion feature may be a bit annoying when editing an already existing LaTeX document. In that case, use C-u 1 or C-q before typing (, { or [. Then no completion is done and just a single left brace is inserted. In fact, with optional prefix arg, just that many open braces are inserted without any completion.
Next: Sectioning, Previous: Quotes, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
Perhaps the most used keyboard commands of AUCTeX are the short-cuts available for easy insertion of font changing macros.
If you give an argument (that is, type C-u) to the font command,
the innermost font will be replaced, i.e. the font in the TeX group
around point will be changed. The following table shows the available
commands, with ∗ indicating the position where the text
will be inserted.
Insert bold face ‘\textbf{∗}’ text.
Insert italics ‘\textit{∗}’ text.
Insert emphasized ‘\emph{∗}’ text.
Insert slanted ‘\textsl{∗}’ text.
Insert roman \textrm{∗} text.
Insert sans serif ‘\textsf{∗}’ text.
Insert typewriter ‘\texttt{∗}’ text.
Insert SMALL CAPS ‘\textsc{∗}’ text.
Delete the innermost font specification containing point.
(C-c C-f) Insert template for font change command.
If replace is not nil, replace current font. what
determines the font to use, as specified by TeX-font-list.
List of fonts used by TeX-font.
Each entry is a list with three elements. The first element is the key to activate the font. The second element is the string to insert before point, and the third element is the string to insert after point. An optional fourth element means always replace if not nil.
List of fonts used by TeX-font in LaTeX mode. It has the same
structure as TeX-font-list.
Next: Environments, Previous: Font Specifiers, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
Insertion of sectioning macros, that is ‘\chapter’, ‘\section’, ‘\subsection’, etc. and accompanying ‘\label’’s may be eased by using C-c C-s. This command is highly customizable, the following describes the default behavior.
When invoking you will be asked for a section macro to insert. An appropriate default is automatically selected by AUCTeX, that is either: at the top of the document; the top level sectioning for that document style, and any other place: The same as the last occurring sectioning command.
Next, you will be asked for the actual name of that section, and last
you will be asked for a label to be associated with that section. The
label will be prefixed by the value specified in
LaTeX-section-hook.
(C-c C-s) Insert a sectioning command.
Determine the type of section to be inserted, by the argument arg.
The following variables can be set to customize the function.
LaTeX-section-hook
Hooks to be run when inserting a section.
LaTeX-section-label
Prefix to all section references.
The precise behavior of LaTeX-section is defined by the contents
of LaTeX-section-hook.
List of hooks to run when a new section is inserted.
The following variables are set before the hooks are run
Numeric section level, default set by prefix arg to
LaTeX-section.
Name of the sectioning command, derived from level.
The title of the section, default to an empty string.
Entry for the table of contents list, default nil.
Position of point afterwards, default nil meaning after the inserted text.
A number of hooks are already defined. Most likely, you will be able to get the desired functionality by choosing from these hooks.
LaTeX-section-heading
Query the user about the name of the sectioning command. Modifies level and name.
LaTeX-section-title
Query the user about the title of the section. Modifies title.
LaTeX-section-toc
Query the user for the toc entry. Modifies toc.
LaTeX-section-section
Insert LaTeX section command according to name, title, and toc. If toc is nil, no toc entry is inserted. If toc or title are empty strings, done-mark will be placed at the point they should be inserted.
LaTeX-section-label
Insert a label after the section command. Controlled by the variable
LaTeX-section-label.
To get a full featured LaTeX-section command, insert
(setq LaTeX-section-hook
'(LaTeX-section-heading
LaTeX-section-title
LaTeX-section-toc
LaTeX-section-section
LaTeX-section-label))
in your .emacs file.
The behavior of LaTeX-section-label is determined by the
variable LaTeX-section-label.
Default prefix when asking for a label.
If it is a string, it is used unchanged for all kinds of sections. If it is nil, no label is inserted. If it is a list, the list is searched for a member whose car is equal to the name of the sectioning command being inserted. The cdr is then used as the prefix. If the name is not found, or if the cdr is nil, no label is inserted.
By default, chapters have a prefix of ‘cha:’ while sections and subsections have a prefix of ‘sec:’. Labels are not automatically inserted for other types of sections.
Next: Mathematics, Previous: Sectioning, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
A large apparatus is available that supports insertions of environments, that is ‘\begin{}’ — ‘\end{}’ pairs.
AUCTeX is aware of most of the actual environments available in a specific document. This is achieved by examining your ‘\documentclass’ command, and consulting a precompiled list of environments available in a large number of styles.
Most of these are described further in the following sections, and you may easily specify more. See Customizing Environments.
You insert an environment with C-c C-e, and select an environment type. Depending on the environment, AUCTeX may ask more questions about the optional parts of the selected environment type. With C-u C-c C-e you will change the current environment.
(C-c C-e) AUCTeX will prompt you for an environment to insert. At this prompt, you may press TAB or SPC to complete a partially written name, and/or to get a list of available environments. After selection of a specific environment AUCTeX may prompt you for further specifications.
If the optional argument arg is not-nil (i.e. you have given a prefix argument), the current environment is modified and no new environment is inserted.
AUCTeX helps you adding labels to environments which use them, such
as ‘equation’, ‘figure’, ‘table’, etc… When you
insert one of the supported environments with C-c C-e, you will be
automatically prompted for a label. You can select the prefix to be
used for such environments with the LaTeX-label-alist variable.
List the prefixes to be used for the label of each supported environment.
This is an alist whose car is the environment name, and the cdr either the prefix or a symbol referring to one.
If the name is not found, or if the cdr is nil, no label is automatically inserted for that environment.
If you want to automatically insert a label for a environment but with
an empty prefix, use the empty string "" as the cdr of the
corresponding entry.
As a default selection, AUCTeX will suggest the environment last
inserted or, as the first choice the value of the variable
LaTeX-default-environment.
Default environment to insert when invoking ‘LaTeX-environment’
first time. When the current environment is ‘document’, it is
overriden by LaTeX-default-document-environment.
Default environment when invoking ‘LaTeX-environment’ and the
current environment is ‘document’. It is intended to be used in
LaTeX class style files. For example, in beamer.el it is set
to frame, in letter.el to letter, and in
slides.el to slide.
If the document is empty, or the cursor is placed at the top of the document, AUCTeX will default to insert a ‘document’ environment prompting also for the insertion of ‘\documentclass’ and ‘\usepackage’ macros. You will be prompted for a new package until you enter nothing. If you do not want to insert any ‘\usepackage’ at all, just press RET at the first ‘Packages’ prompt.
AUCTeX distinguishes normal and expert environments. By default, it
will offer completion only for normal environments. This behavior is
controlled by the user option TeX-complete-expert-commands.
Complete macros and environments marked as expert commands.
Possible values are nil, t, or a list of style names.
Don’t complete expert commands (default).
Always complete expert commands.
Only complete expert commands of STYLES.
| • Equations | Equations | |
| • Floats | Floats | |
| • Itemize-like | Itemize-like Environments | |
| • Tabular-like | Tabular-like Environments | |
| • Customizing Environments | Customizing Environments |
You can close the current environment with C-c ], but we suggest that you use C-c C-e to insert complete environments instead.
(C-c ]) Insert an ‘\end’ that matches the current environment.
AUCTeX offers keyboard shortcuts for moving point to the beginning and to the end of the current environment.
(C-M-a) Move point to the ‘\begin’ of the current environment.
If this command is called inside a comment and
LaTeX-syntactic-comments is enabled, try to find the environment
in commented regions with the same comment prefix.
(C-M-e) Move point to the ‘\end’ of the current environment.
If this command is called inside a comment and
LaTeX-syntactic-comments is enabled, try to find the environment
in commented regions with the same comment prefix.
Next: Floats, Up: Environments [Contents][Index]
When inserting equation-like environments, the ‘\label’ will have a default prefix, which is controlled by the following variables:
Prefix to use for ‘equation’ labels.
Prefix to use for ‘eqnarray’ labels.
Prefix to use for amsmath equation labels. Amsmath equations include ‘align’, ‘alignat’, ‘xalignat’, ‘aligned’, ‘flalign’ and ‘gather’.
Next: Itemize-like, Previous: Equations, Up: Environments [Contents][Index]
Figures and tables (i.e., floats) may also be inserted using AUCTeX. After choosing either ‘figure’ or ‘table’ in the environment list described above, you will be prompted for a number of additional things.
This is the optional argument of float environments that controls how
they are placed in the final document. In LaTeX this is a sequence
of the letters ‘htbp’ as described in the LaTeX manual. The
value will default to the value of LaTeX-float.
This is the caption of the float. The default is to insert the caption
at the bottom of the float. You can specify floats where the caption
should be placed at the top with LaTeX-top-caption-list.
If the specified caption is greater than a specific length, then a short
caption is prompted for and it is inserted as an optional argument to
the ‘\caption’ macro. The length that a caption needs to be before
prompting for a short version is controlled by
LaTeX-short-caption-prompt-length.
The label of this float. The label will have a default prefix, which is
controlled by the variables LaTeX-figure-label and
LaTeX-table-label.
Moreover, you will be asked if you want the contents of the float environment to be horizontally centered. Upon a positive answer a ‘\centering’ macro will be inserted at the beginning of the float environment.
Default placement for floats.
Prefix to use for figure labels.
Prefix to use for table labels.
List of float environments with top caption.
Number of chars a caption should be before prompting for a short caption.
Next: Tabular-like, Previous: Floats, Up: Environments [Contents][Index]
In an itemize-like environment, nodes (i.e., ‘\item’s) may be inserted using C-c LFD.
(C-c LFD) Close the current item, move to the next line and insert an appropriate ‘\item’ for the current environment. That is, ‘itemize’ and ‘enumerate’ will have ‘\item ’ inserted, while ‘description’ will have ‘\item[]’ inserted.
If non-nil, you will always be asked for optional label in items. Otherwise, you will be asked only in description environments.
Next: Customizing Environments, Previous: Itemize-like, Up: Environments [Contents][Index]
When inserting Tabular-like environments, that is, ‘tabular’ ‘array’ etc., you will be prompted for a template for that environment. Related variables:
Default format string for array and tabular environments.
Default width for minipage and tabular* environments.
Default position string for array and tabular environments. If nil, act like the empty string is given, but don’t prompt for a position.
AUCTeX calculates the number of columns from the format string and inserts the suitable number of ampersands.
You can use C-c LFD (LaTeX-insert-item) to terminate
rows in these environments. It supplies line break macro ‘\\’ and
inserts the suitable number of ampersands on the next line. AUCTeX
also supports the ‘*{num}{cols}’ notation (which may contain
another ‘*’-expression) in the format string when calculating the
number of ampersands. Please note that ‘num’ and ‘cols’ must
be enclosed in braces; expressions like ‘*2l’ are not recognized
correctly by the algorithm.
(C-c LFD) Close the current row with ‘\\’, move to the next line and insert an appropriate number of ampersands for the current environment.
Similar supports are provided for various amsmath environments such as ‘align’, ‘gather’, ‘alignat’, ‘matrix’ etc. Try typing C-c LFD in these environments. It recognizes the current environment and does the appropriate job depending on the context.
Previous: Tabular-like, Up: Environments [Contents][Index]
See Adding Environments, for how to customize the list of known environments.
Next: Completion, Previous: Environments, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
TeX is written by a mathematician, and has always contained good support for formatting mathematical text. AUCTeX supports this tradition, by offering a special minor mode for entering text with many mathematical symbols. You can enter this mode by typing C-c ~.
(C-c ~) Toggle LaTeX Math mode. This is a minor mode rebinding
the key LaTeX-math-abbrev-prefix to allow easy typing of
mathematical symbols. ` will read a character from the keyboard,
and insert the symbol as specified in LaTeX-math-default and
LaTeX-math-list. If given a prefix argument, the symbol will be
surrounded by dollar signs.
You can use another prefix key (instead of `) by setting the
variable LaTeX-math-abbrev-prefix.
To enable LaTeX Math mode by default, add the following in your .emacs file:
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'LaTeX-math-mode)
A string containing the prefix of LaTeX-math-mode commands; This
value defaults to `.
The string has to be a key or key sequence in a format understood by the
kbd macro. This corresponds to the syntax usually used in the
manuals for Emacs Emacs Lisp.
The variable LaTeX-math-list allows you to add your own mappings.
A list containing user-defined keys and commands to be used in LaTeX Math mode. Each entry should be a list of two to four elements.
First, the key to be used after LaTeX-math-abbrev-prefix for
macro insertion. If it is nil, the symbol has no associated
keystroke (it is available in the menu, though).
Second, a string representing the name of the macro (without a leading backslash.)
Third, a string representing the name of a submenu the command should be added to. Use a list of strings in case of nested menus.
Fourth, the position of a Unicode character to be displayed in the menu alongside the macro name. This is an integer value.
Whether the LaTeX menu should try using Unicode for effect. Your Emacs built must be able to display include Unicode characters in menus for this feature.
AUCTeX’s reference card tex-ref.tex includes a list of all math mode commands.
AUCTeX can help you write subscripts and superscripts in math
constructs by automatically inserting a pair of braces after typing
_ or ^ respectively and putting point between the braces.
In order to enable this feature, set the variable
TeX-electric-sub-and-superscript to a non-nil value.
If non-nil, insert braces after typing ^ and _ in math mode.
You can automatically turn off input methods, used to input non-ascii characters, when you begin to enter math constructs.
Input method matching this regular expression is turned off when $
is typed to begin math mode or a math environment is inserted by
C-c C-e (LaTeX-environment).
Next: Marking, Previous: Mathematics, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
Emacs lisp programmers probably know the lisp-complete-symbol
command which was bound to M-TAB until completion-at-point
became the new standard completion facility (see below). Users of the
wonderful ispell mode know and love the ispell-complete-word
command from that package. Similarly, AUCTeX has a
TeX-complete-symbol command, by default bound to
M-TAB which is equivalent to M-C-i. Using
TeX-complete-symbol makes it easier to type and remember the
names of long LaTeX macros.
In order to use TeX-complete-symbol, you should write a backslash
and the start of the macro. Typing M-TAB will now complete
as much of the macro, as it unambiguously can. For example, if you type
‘‘\renewc’’ and then M-TAB, it will expand to
‘‘\renewcommand’’. But there’s more: if point is just after
‘\begin{’, then TeX-complete-symbol will complete LaTeX
environments, etc. This is controlled by TeX-complete-list.
(M-TAB) Complete TeX symbol before point.
List of ways to complete the preceding text.
Each entry is a list with the following elements:
Or alternatively:
More recent Emacs versions have a new completion mechanism. Modes may
define and register custom completion-at-point functions and when the
user invokes completion-at-point (usually bound to
M-TAB), all such registered functions are consulted for
checking for possible completions. Modern completion UIs like
company-mode support this completion-at-point facility.
AUCTeX’s completion-at-point function which is automatically added to
completion-at-point-functions in TeX and LaTeX buffers.
It offers the same completion candidates as would
TeX-complete-symbol (and is also controlled by
TeX-complete-list) except that it doesn’t fall back on
ispell-complete-word which would be awkward with completion UIs
like company-mode.
A more direct way to insert a macro is with TeX-insert-macro,
bound to C-c C-m which is equivalent to C-c RET. It
has the advantage over completion that it knows about the argument of
most standard LaTeX macros, and will prompt for them. It also knows
about the type of the arguments, so it will for example give completion
for the argument to ‘\include’. Some examples are listed below.
(C-c C-m or C-c RET) Prompt (with completion) for the name of a TeX macro, and if AUCTeX knows the macro, prompt for each argument.
As a default selection, AUCTeX will suggest the macro last inserted
or, as the first choice the value of the variable
TeX-default-macro.
Specifies whether TeX-insert-macro will ask for all optional
arguments.
If set to the symbol show-optional-args, TeX-insert-macro
asks for optional arguments of TeX marcos, unless the previous
optional argument has been rejected. If set to
show-all-optional-args, TeX-insert-macro asks for all
optional arguments. mandatory-args-only, TeX-insert-macro
asks only for mandatory arguments. When TeX-insert-macro is
called with prefix argument (C-u), it’s the other way round.
Note that for some macros, there are special mechanisms, e.g.
LaTeX-includegraphics-options-alist and
TeX-arg-cite-note-p.
Default macro to insert when invoking TeX-insert-macro first time.
A faster alternative is to enable the option
TeX-electric-escape.
If this is non-nil, typing the TeX escape character \ will
invoke the command TeX-electric-macro.
In Texinfo mode, the command is invoked by @ instead.
The difference between TeX-insert-macro and
TeX-electric-macro is that space will complete and exit from the
minibuffer in TeX-electric-macro. Use TAB if you merely
want to complete.
Prompt (with completion) for the name of a TeX macro, and if AUCTeX knows the macro, prompt for each argument. Space will complete and exit.
By default AUCTeX will put an empty set braces ‘{}’ after a
macro with no arguments to stop it from eating the next whitespace.
This is suppressed inside math mode and can be disabled totally by
setting TeX-insert-braces to nil.
If non-nil, append a empty pair of braces after inserting a macro with no arguments.
Control the insertion of a pair of braces after a macro on a per macro basis.
This variable is an alist. Each element is a cons cell, whose car is the macro name, and the cdr is non-nil or nil, depending on whether a pair of braces should be, respectively, appended or not to the macro.
If a macro has an element in this variable, TeX-parse-macro will
use its value to decide what to do, whatever the value of the variable
TeX-insert-braces.
Completions work because AUCTeX can analyze TeX files, and store symbols in Emacs Lisp files for later retrieval. See Automatic, for more information.
AUCTeX distinguishes normal and expert macros. By default, it will
offer completion only for normal commands. This behavior can be
controlled using the user option TeX-complete-expert-commands.
Complete macros and environments marked as expert commands.
Possible values are nil, t, or a list of style names.
Don’t complete expert commands (default).
Always complete expert commands.
Only complete expert commands of STYLES.
AUCTeX will also make completion for many macro arguments, for
example existing labels when you enter a ‘\ref’ macro with
TeX-insert-macro or TeX-electric-macro, and BibTeX
entries when you enter a ‘\cite’ macro. For this kind of
completion to work, parsing must be enabled as described in
see Parsing Files. For ‘\cite’ you must also make sure that
the BibTeX files have been saved at least once after you enabled
automatic parsing on save, and that the basename of the BibTeX file
does not conflict with the basename of one of TeX files.
Next: Commenting, Previous: Completion, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
You can mark the current environment by typing C-c ., or the current section by typing C-c *.
In Texinfo documents you can type M-C-h to mark the current node.
When the region is set, the point is moved to its beginning and the mark to its end.
| • Marking (LaTeX) | LaTeX Commands for Marking Environments and Sections | |
| • Marking (Texinfo) | Texinfo Commands for Marking Environments, Sections, and Nodes |
Next: Marking (Texinfo), Up: Marking [Contents][Index]
(C-c *) Set mark at end of current logical section, and point at top.
With a non-nil prefix argument, mark only the region from the current section start to the next sectioning command. Thereby subsections are not being marked. Otherwise, any included subsections are also marked along with current section.
(C-c .) Set mark to the end of the current environment and point to the matching beginning.
If a prefix argument is given, mark the respective number of enclosing environments. The command will not work properly if there are unbalanced begin-end pairs in comments and verbatim environments.
Previous: Marking (LaTeX), Up: Marking [Contents][Index]
(C-c *) Mark the current section, with inclusion of any containing node.
The current section is detected as starting by any of the structuring
commands matched by the regular expression in the variable
outline-regexp which in turn is a regular expression matching any
element of the variable texinfo-section-list.
With a non-nil prefix argument, mark only the region from the current section start to the next sectioning command. Thereby subsections are not being marked. Otherwise, any included subsections are also marked
Note that when the current section is starting immediately after a node command, then the node command is also marked as part of the section.
(C-c .) Set mark to the end of the current environment and point to the matching beginning.
If a prefix argument is given, mark the respective number of enclosing environments. The command will not work properly if there are unbalanced begin-end pairs in comments and verbatim environments.
(M-C-h) Mark the current node. This is the node in which point is
located. It is starting at the previous occurrence of the keyword
@node and ending at next occurrence of the keywords
@node or @bye.
It is often necessary to comment out temporarily a region of TeX or LaTeX code. This can be done with the commands C-c ; and C-c %. C-c ; will comment out all lines in the current region, while C-c % will comment out the current paragraph. Type C-c ; again to uncomment all lines of a commented region, or C-c % again to uncomment all comment lines around point. These commands will insert or remove a single ‘%’ respectively.
(C-c ;) Add or remove ‘%’ from the beginning of each line
in the current region. Uncommenting works only if the region encloses
solely commented lines. If AUCTeX should not try to guess if the
region should be commented or uncommented the commands
TeX-comment-region and TeX-uncomment-region can be used
to explicitly comment or uncomment the region in concern.
(C-c %) Add or remove ‘%’ from the beginning of each line in the current paragraph. When removing ‘%’ characters the paragraph is considered to consist of all preceding and succeeding lines starting with a ‘%’, until the first non-comment line.
Next: Filling, Previous: Commenting, Up: Editing [Contents][Index]
Indentation means the addition of whitespace at the beginning of lines to reflect special syntactical constructs. This makes it easier to see the structure of the document, and to catch errors such as a missing closing brace. Thus, the indentation is done for precisely the same reasons that you would indent ordinary computer programs.
Indentation is done by LaTeX environments and by TeX groups, that
is the body of an environment is indented by the value of
LaTeX-indent-level (default 2). Also, items of an ‘itemize-like’
environment are indented by the value of LaTeX-item-indent,
default -2. (Items are identified with the help of
LaTeX-item-regexp.) If more environments are nested, they are
indented ‘accumulated’ just like most programming languages usually are
seen indented in nested constructs.
You can explicitely indent single lines, usually by pressing TAB,
or marked regions by calling indent-region on it. If you have
auto-fill-mode enabled and a line is broken while you type it,
Emacs automatically cares about the indentation in the following line.
If you want to have a similar behavior upon typing RET, you can
customize the variable TeX-newline-function and change the
default of newline which does no indentation to
newline-and-indent which indents the new line or
reindent-then-newline-and-indent which indents both the current
and the new line.
There are certain LaTeX environments which should be indented in a
special way, like ‘tabular’ or ‘verbatim’. Those environments
may be specified in the variable LaTeX-indent-environment-list
together with their special indentation functions. Taking the
‘verbatim’ environment as an example you can see that
current-indentation is used as the indentation function. This
will stop AUCTeX from doing any indentation in the environment if you
hit TAB for example.
There are environments in LaTeX-indent-environment-list which do
not bring a special indentation function with them. This is due to the
fact that first the respective functions are not implemented yet and
second that filling will be disabled for the specified environments.
This shall prevent the source code from being messed up by accidently
filling those environments with the standard filling routine. If you
think that providing special filling routines for such environments
would be an appropriate and challenging task for you, you are invited to
contribute. (See Filling, for further information about the filling
functionality)
The check for the indentation function may be enabled or disabled by
customizing the variable LaTeX-indent-environment-check.
As a side note with regard to formatting special environments: Newer
Emacsen include align.el and therefore provide some support for
formatting ‘tabular’ and ‘tabbing’ environments with the
function align-current which will nicely align columns in the
source code.
AUCTeX is able to format commented parts of your code just as any
other part. This means LaTeX environments and TeX groups in
comments will be indented syntactically correct if the variable
LaTeX-syntactic-comments is set to t. If you disable it,
comments will be filled like normal text and no syntactic indentation
will be done.
Following you will find a list of most commands and variables related to indenting with a small summary in each case:
LaTeX-indent-line will indent the current line.
newline-and-indent inserts a new line (much like RET) and
moves the cursor to an appropriate position by the left margin.
Most keyboards nowadays lack a linefeed key and C-j may be tedious
to type. Therefore you can customize AUCTeX to perform indentation
upon typing RET as well. The respective option is called
TeX-newline-function.
Alias for LFD
List of environments with special indentation. The second element in each entry is the function to calculate the indentation level in columns.
The filling code currently cannot handle tabular-like environments which will be completely messed-up if you try to format them. This is why most of these environments are included in this customization option without a special indentation function. This will prevent that they get filled.
Number of spaces to add to the indentation for each ‘\begin’ not matched by a ‘\end’.
Number of spaces to add to the indentation for ‘\item’’s in list environments.
Number of spaces to add to the indentation for each ‘{’ not matched by a ‘}’.
If non-nil comments will be filled and indented according to LaTeX syntax. Otherwise they will be filled like normal text.
Used to specify the function which is called when RET is pressed.
This will normally be newline which simply inserts a new line.
In case you want to have AUCTeX do indentation as well when you press
RET, use the built-in functions newline-and-indent or
reindent-then-newline-and-indent. The former inserts a new line
and indents the following line, i.e. it moves the cursor to the right
position and therefore acts as if you pressed LFD. The latter
function additionally indents the current line. If you choose
‘Other’, you can specify your own fancy function to be called when
RET is pressed.
AUCTeX treats by default ‘\[...\]’ math mode as a regular
environment and indents it accordingly. If you do not like such
behavior you only need to remove \|\[ and \|\] from
LaTeX-begin-regexp and LaTeX-end-regexp variables
respectively.
Filling deals with the insertion of line breaks to prevent lines from
becoming wider than what is specified in fill-column. The
linebreaks will be inserted automatically if auto-fill-mode is
enabled. In this case the source is not only filled but also indented
automatically as you write it.
auto-fill-mode can be enabled for AUCTeX by calling
turn-on-auto-fill in one of the hooks AUCTeX is running.
See Modes and Hooks. As an example, if you want to enable
auto-fill-mode in LaTeX-mode, put the following into your
init file:
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
You can manually fill explicitely marked regions, paragraphs, environments, complete sections, or the whole buffer. (Note that manual filling in AUCTeX will indent the start of the region to be filled in contrast to many other Emacs modes.)
There are some syntactical constructs which are handled specially with regard to filling. These are so-called code comments and paragraph commands.
Code comments are comments preceded by code or text in the same line.
Upon filling a region, code comments themselves will not get filled.
Filling is done from the start of the region to the line with the code
comment and continues after it. In order to prevent overfull lines in
the source code, a linebreak will be inserted before the last
non-comment word by default. This can be changed by customizing
LaTeX-fill-break-before-code-comments. If you have overfull
lines with code comments you can fill those explicitely by calling
LaTeX-fill-paragraph or pressing M-q with the cursor
positioned on them. This will add linebreaks in the comment and indent
subsequent comment lines to the column of the comment in the first line
of the code comment. In this special case M-q only acts on the
current line and not on the whole paragraph.
Lines with ‘\par’ are treated similarly to code comments, i.e. ‘\par’ will be treated as paragraph boundary which should not be followed by other code or text. But it is not treated as a real paragraph boundary like an empty line where filling a paragraph would stop.
Paragraph commands like ‘\section’ or ‘\noindent’ (the list of
commands is defined by LaTeX-paragraph-commands) are often to be
placed in their own line(s). This means they should not be consecuted
with any preceding or following adjacent lines of text. AUCTeX will
prevent this from happening if you do not put any text except another
macro after the end of the last brace of the respective macro. If
there is other text after the macro, AUCTeX regards this as a sign
that the macro is part of the following paragraph.
Here are some examples:
\begin{quote}
text text text text
\begin{quote}\label{foo}
text text text text
If you press M-q on the first line in both examples, nothing will change. But if you write
\begin{quote} text
text text text text
and press M-q, you will get
\begin{quote} text text text text text
Besides code comments and paragraph commands, another speciality of
filling in AUCTeX involves commented lines. You should be aware that
these comments are treated as islands in the rest of the LaTeX code
if syntactic filling is enabled. This means, for example, if you try to
fill an environment with LaTeX-fill-environment and have the
cursor placed on a commented line which does not have a surrounding
environment inside the comment, AUCTeX will report an error.
The relevant commands and variables with regard to filling are:
LaTeX-fill-paragraph will fill and indent the current paragraph.
Alias for C-c C-q C-p
LaTeX-fill-environment will fill and indent the current
environment. This may e.g. be the ‘document’ environment, in which case
the entire document will be formatted.
LaTeX-fill-section will fill and indent the current logical
sectional unit.
LaTeX-fill-region will fill and indent the current region.
List of separators before or after which respectively linebreaks will be inserted if they do not fit into one line. The separators can be curly braces, brackets, switches for inline math (‘$’, ‘\(’, ‘\)’) and switches for display math (‘\[’, ‘\]’). Such formatting can be useful to make macros and math more visible or to prevent overfull lines in the LaTeX source in case a package for displaying formatted TeX output inside the Emacs buffer, like preview-latex, is used.
Code comments are comments preceded by some other text in the same line.
When a paragraph containing such a comment is to be filled, the comment
start will be seen as a border after which no line breaks will be
inserted in the same line. If the option
LaTeX-fill-break-before-code-comments is enabled (which is the
default) and the comment does not fit into the line, a line break will
be inserted before the last non-comment word to minimize the chance that
the line becomes overfull.
A list of macro names (without leading backslash) for whose arguments
filling should be disabled. Typically, you will want to add macros here
which have long, multi-line arguments. An example is
\pgfplotstabletypeset from the pgfplotstable package which is
used as shown in the following listing:
\pgfplotstabletypeset[skip first n=4]{%
XYZ Format,
Version 1.234
Date 2010-09-01
@author Mustermann
A B C
1 2 3
4 5 6
}