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AUCTeX
******

This manual may be copied under the conditions spelled out in Copying this Manual.

AUCTeX is an integrated environment for editing LaTeX, ConTeXt, docTeX, Texinfo, and TeX files.

Although AUCTeX contains a large number of features, there are no reasons to despair.  You can continue to write TeX and LaTeX documents the way you are used to, and only start using the multiple features in small steps.  AUCTeX is not monolithic, each feature described in this manual is useful by itself, but together they provide an environment where you will make very few LaTeX errors, and makes it easy to find the errors that may slip through anyway.

It is a good idea to make a printout of AUCTeX's reference card tex-ref.tex or one of its typeset versions.

If you want to make AUCTeX aware of style files and multi-file documents right away, insert the following in your init file (usually ~/.emacs.d/init.el).

     (setq TeX-auto-save t)
     (setq TeX-parse-self t)
     (setq-default TeX-master nil)

Another thing you should enable is RefTeX, a comprehensive solution for managing cross references, bibliographies, indices, document navigation and a few other things.  (see Installation (The RefTeX manual).)

For detailed information about the previewlatex subsystem of AUCTeX, see Introduction (The previewlatex Manual).

There is a mailing list for general discussion about AUCTeX: write a mail with ``subscribe'' in the subject to auctex-request@gnu.org to join it.  Send contributions to auctex@gnu.org.

Bug reports should go to bug-auctex@gnu.org, suggestions for new features, and pleas for help should go to either auctex-devel@gnu.org (the AUCTeX developers), or to auctex@gnu.org if they might have general interest.  Please use the command M-x TeX-submit-bug-report RET to report bugs if possible.  You can subscribe to a low-volume announcement list by sending ``subscribe'' in the subject of a mail to info-auctex-request@gnu.org.

Copying
*******

AUCTeX primarily consists of Lisp files for Emacs, but there are also installation scripts and files and TeX support files. All of those are free; this means that everyone is free to use them and free to redistribute them on a free basis.  The files of AUCTeX are not in the public domain; they are copyrighted and there are restrictions on their distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do.  What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from further sharing any version of these programs that they might get from you.

Specifically, we want to make sure that you have the right to give away copies of the files that constitute AUCTeX, that you receive source code or else can get it if you want it, that you can change these files or use pieces of them in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

To make sure that everyone has such rights, we have to forbid you to deprive anyone else of these rights.  For example, if you distribute copies of parts of AUCTeX, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have.  You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code.  And you must tell them their rights.

Also, for our own protection, we must make certain that everyone finds out that there is no warranty for AUCTeX.  If any parts are modified by someone else and passed on, we want their recipients to know that what they have is not what we distributed, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on our reputation.

The precise conditions of the licenses for the files currently being distributed as part of AUCTeX are found in the General Public Licenses that accompany them.  This manual specifically is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copying this Manual).

Introduction
************

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Editing the Document Source
***************************

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.

Insertion of Quotes, Dollars, and Braces
========================================

Quotation Marks
---------------

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.

 -- Command: TeX-insert-quote COUNT
     (") 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.

 -- User Option: TeX-open-quote
     String inserted by typing " to open a quotation. (see European, for language-specific quotation mark insertion.)

 -- User Option: TeX-close-quote
     String inserted by typing " to close a quotation. (see European, for language-specific quotation mark insertion.)

 -- User Option: TeX-quote-after-quote
     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.

Dollar Signs
------------

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.

 -- Command: TeX-insert-dollar ARG
     ($) 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.

 -- User Option: 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 "\\(" "\\)"))))

Note that Texinfo mode does nothing special for $.  It inserts dollar sign(s) just in the same way as the other normal keys do.

Braces
------

To avoid unbalanced braces, it is useful to insert them pairwise.  You can do this by typing C-c {.

 -- Command: TeX-insert-braces
     (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.

 -- User Option: TeX-arg-right-insert-p
     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 [.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-electric-left-right-brace
     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:

       * (when typing single left brace)

            - ( -> ()

            - { -> {}

            - [ -> []

       * (when typing left brace just after a backslash)

            - \( -> \(\)

            - \{ -> \{\}

            - \[ -> \[\]

       * (when typing just after \left or \bigl)

            - \left( -> \left(\right)

            - \bigl[ -> \bigl[\bigr]

       * (when typing just after \Bigl\)

            - \Bigl\{ -> \Bigl\{\Bigr\}

     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.

Inserting Font Specifiers
=========================

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.

C-c C-f C-b
     Insert bold face \textbf{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-m
     Insert medium face \textmd{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-i
     Insert italics \textit{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-e
     Insert emphasized \emph{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-s
     Insert slanted \textsl{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-r
     Insert roman \textrm{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-f
     Insert sans serif \textsf{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-t
     Insert typewriter \texttt{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-c
     Insert SMALL CAPS \textsc{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-l
     Insert upper lower case \textulc{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-w
     Insert SWASH \textsw{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-n
     Insert normal \textnormal{-!-} text.

C-c C-f C-d
     Delete the innermost font specification containing point.

 -- Command: TeX-font REPLACE WHAT
     (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.

 -- User Option: 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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-font-list
     List of fonts used by TeX-font in LaTeX mode.  It has the same structure as TeX-font-list.

Inserting chapters, sections, etc.
==================================

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.

 -- Command: LaTeX-section ARG
     (C-c C-s) Insert a sectioning command.

     Determine the type of section to be inserted, by the argument ARG.

       * If ARG is nil or missing, use the current level.

       * If ARG is a list (selected by C-u), go downward one level.

       * If ARG is negative, go up that many levels.

       * If ARG is positive or zero, use absolute level:

            + 0 : part

            + 1 : chapter

            + 2 : section

            + 3 : subsection

            + 4 : subsubsection

            + 5 : paragraph

            + 6 : subparagraph

     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-section-hook
     List of hooks to run when a new section is inserted.

     The following variables are set before the hooks are run

     LaTeX-level
          Numeric section level, default set by prefix arg to LaTeX-section.

     LaTeX-name
          Name of the sectioning command, derived from LaTeX-level.

     LaTeX-title
          The title of the section, default to an empty string.

     LaTeX-toc
          Entry for the table of contents list, default nil.

     LaTeX-done-mark
          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 LaTeX-level and LaTeX-name.

     LaTeX-section-title
          Query the user about the title of the section.  Modifies LaTeX-title.

     LaTeX-section-toc
          Query the user for the toc entry.  Modifies LaTeX-toc.

     LaTeX-section-section
          Insert LaTeX section command according to LaTeX-name, LaTeX-title, and LaTeX-toc.  If LaTeX-toc is nil, no toc entry is inserted.  If LaTeX-toc or LaTeX-title are empty strings, LaTeX-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 init file such as init.el or .emacs.

The behavior of LaTeX-section-label is determined by the variable LaTeX-section-label.

 -- User Option: 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.

Inserting Environment Templates
===============================

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.

 -- Command: LaTeX-environment ARG
     (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 non-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.
 -- User Option: LaTeX-label-alist
     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.

 -- User Option: 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.

 -- Variable: 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.

 -- 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.

     nil
          Don't complete expert commands (default).

     t
          Always complete expert commands.

     (STYLES ...)
          Only complete expert commands of STYLES.

You can close the current environment with C-c ], but we suggest that you use C-c C-e to insert complete environments instead.

 -- Command: LaTeX-close-environment
     (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.
 -- Command: LaTeX-find-matching-begin
     (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.

 -- Command: LaTeX-find-matching-end
     (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.

Equations
---------

When inserting equation-like environments, the \label will have a default prefix, which is controlled by the following variables:

 -- User Option: LaTeX-equation-label
     Prefix to use for `equation' labels.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-eqnarray-label
     Prefix to use for `eqnarray' labels.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-amsmath-label
     Prefix to use for amsmath equation labels.  Amsmath equations include align, alignat, xalignat, multline, flalign and gather.

Floats
------

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.

float position
     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.

caption
     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.

short caption
     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.

label
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-float
     Default placement for floats.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-figure-label
     Prefix to use for figure labels.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-table-label
     Prefix to use for table labels.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-top-caption-list
     List of float environments with top caption.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-short-caption-prompt-length
     Number of chars a caption should be before prompting for a short caption.

Itemize-like Environments
-------------------------

In an itemize-like environment, nodes (i.e., \items) may be inserted using C-c LFD.

 -- Command: LaTeX-insert-item
     (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.

 -- User Option: TeX-arg-item-label-p
     If non-nil, you will always be asked for optional label in items. Otherwise, you will be asked only in description environments.

Tabular-like Environments
-------------------------

When inserting Tabular-like environments, that is, `tabular' `array' etc., you will be prompted for a template for that environment. Related variables:

 -- User Option: LaTeX-default-format
     Default format string for array and tabular environments.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-default-width
     Default width for minipage and tabular* environments.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-default-position
     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.

 -- Command: LaTeX-insert-item
     (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.

Customizing Environments
------------------------

See Adding Environments, for how to customize the list of known environments.

Entering Mathematics
====================

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 ~.

 -- Command: LaTeX-math-mode
     (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 init file such as init.el or .emacs:

     (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook #'LaTeX-math-mode)

 -- User Option: LaTeX-math-abbrev-prefix
     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 Lisp.

The variable LaTeX-math-list allows you to add your own mappings.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-math-list
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-math-menu-unicode
     Whether the LaTeX Math 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.

 -- User Option: TeX-electric-sub-and-superscript
     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.

 -- User Option: TeX-math-input-method-off-regexp
     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).

Completion
==========

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 C-M-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.

 -- Command: TeX-complete-symbol
     (M-TAB)  Complete TeX symbol before point.

 -- Variable: TeX-complete-list
     List of ways to complete the preceding text.

     Each entry is a list with the following elements:

      1. Regexp matching the preceding text or a predicate of arity 0 which returns non-nil and sets `match-data' appropriately if it is applicable.

      2. A number indicating the subgroup in the regexp containing the text.

      3. A function returning an alist of possible completions.

      4. Text to append after a succesful completion.

     Or alternatively:

      1. Regexp matching the preceding text.

      2. Function to do the actual completion.

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.

 -- Function: TeX--completion-at-point
     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.

 -- Command: TeX-insert-macro
     (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.

 -- User Option: TeX-default-macro
     Default macro to insert when invoking TeX-insert-macro first time.

 -- User Option: TeX-insert-macro-default-style
     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.

A faster alternative is to enable the option TeX-electric-escape.

 -- User 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 key SPC will complete and exit from the minibuffer in TeX-electric-macro.  Use TAB if you merely want to complete.

 -- Command: TeX-electric-macro
     Prompt (with completion) for the name of a TeX macro, and if AUCTeX knows the macro, prompt for each argument. Space (SPC) 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.

 -- User Option: TeX-insert-braces
     If non-nil, append a empty pair of braces after inserting a macro with no arguments.

 -- User Option: TeX-insert-braces-alist
     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, AUCTeX 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.

 -- 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.

     nil
          Don't complete expert commands (default).

     t
          Always complete expert commands.

     (STYLES ...)
          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 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.

Marking Environments, Sections, or Texinfo Nodes
================================================

You can mark the current environment by typing C-c ., or the current section by typing C-c *.

In Texinfo documents you can type C-M-h to mark the current node.

When the region is set, the point is moved to its beginning and the mark to its end.

LaTeX Commands for Marking Environments and Sections
----------------------------------------------------

 -- Command: LaTeX-mark-section
     (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.

 -- Command: LaTeX-mark-environment
     (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.

Texinfo Commands for Marking Environments and Sections
------------------------------------------------------

 -- Command: Texinfo-mark-section
     (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.

 -- Command: Texinfo-mark-environment
     (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.

 -- Command: Texinfo-mark-node
     (C-M-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.

Commenting
==========

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.

 -- Command: TeX-comment-or-uncomment-region
     (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.

 -- Command: TeX-comment-or-uncomment-paragraph
     (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.

Indenting
=========

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:

TAB
     LaTeX-indent-line will indent the current line.

LFD
C-j
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-indent-environment-list
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-indent-level
     Number of spaces to add to the indentation for each \begin not matched by a \end.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-item-indent
     Number of spaces to add to the indentation for \item's in list environments.

 -- User Option: TeX-brace-indent-level
     Number of spaces to add to the indentation for each { not matched by a }.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-syntactic-comments
     If non-nil comments will be filled and indented according to LaTeX syntax.  Otherwise they will be filled like normal text.

 -- User Option: TeX-newline-function
     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
=======

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:

C-c C-q C-p
     LaTeX-fill-paragraph will fill and indent the current paragraph.

M-q
     Alias for C-c C-q C-p

C-c C-q C-e
     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.

C-c C-q C-s
     LaTeX-fill-section will fill and indent the current logical sectional unit.

C-c C-q C-r
     LaTeX-fill-region will fill and indent the current region.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-fill-break-at-separators
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-fill-break-before-code-comments
     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.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-fill-excluded-macros
     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
     }

Controlling Screen Display
**************************

It is often desirable to get visual help of what markup code in a text actually does without having to decipher it explicitly.  For this purpose Emacs and AUCTeX provide font locking (also known as syntax highlighting) which visually sets off markup code like macros or environments by using different colors or fonts.  For example text to be typeset in italics can be displayed with an italic font in the editor as well, or labels and references get their own distinct color.

While font locking helps you grasp the purpose of markup code and separate markup from content, the markup code can still be distracting. AUCTeX lets you hide those parts and show them again at request with its built-in support for hiding macros and environments which we call folding here.

Besides folding of macros and environments, AUCTeX provides support for Emacs' outline mode which lets you narrow the buffer content to certain sections of your text by hiding the parts not belonging to these sections.

Moreover, you can focus in a specific portion of the code by narrowing the buffer to the desired region.  AUCTeX provides also functions to narrow the buffer to the current group and to LaTeX environments.

AUCTeX also provides some WYSIWYG features.

First, you can customize font-latex-fontify-script to enable special formatting of ^ superscripts and _ subscripts (see Font Locking).

Secondly, AUCTeX with GNU Emacs 25 or later can display certain math macros using Unicode characters, e.g., \alpha as α.  This is called prettification and is lightweight and reasonable robust (see Prettifying).

A more accurate approach is provided by previewlatex, a subsystem of AUCTeX, see Introduction (The previewlatex Manual).  This system uses LaTeX to generate images that are then displayed in your buffer.  It is extremely accurate but can be fragile with some packages (like older pgf versions).

Please note that you can use prettification and previewlatex together.

Font Locking
============

Font locking is supposed to improve readability of the source code by highlighting certain keywords with different colors or fonts.  It thereby lets you recognize the function of markup code to a certain extent without having to read the markup command.  For general information on controlling font locking with Emacs' Font Lock mode, see Font Lock Mode (GNU Emacs Manual).

 -- User Option: TeX-install-font-lock
     Once font locking is enabled globally or for the major modes provided by AUCTeX, the font locking patterns and functionality of fontlatex are activated by default.  You can switch to a different font locking scheme or disable font locking in AUCTeX by customizing the variable TeX-install-font-lock.

     Besides fontlatex AUCTeX ships with a scheme which is derived from Emacs' default LaTeX mode and activated by choosing tex-font-setup.  Be aware that this scheme is not coupled with AUCTeX's style system and not the focus of development.  Therefore and due to fontlatex being much more feature-rich the following explanations will only cover fontlatex.

     In case you want to hook in your own fontification scheme, you can choose other and insert the name of the function which sets up your font locking patterns.  If you want to disable fontification in AUCTeX completely, choose ignore.

fontlatex provides many options for customization which are accessible with M-x customize-group RET font-latex RET.  For this description the various options are explained in conceptional groups.

Fontification of macros
-----------------------

Highlighting of macros can be customized by adapting keyword lists which can be found in the customization group font-latex-keywords.

Three types of macros can be handled differently with respect to fontification:

 1. Commands of the form \foo[bar]{baz} which consist of the macro itself, optional arguments in square brackets and mandatory arguments in curly braces.  For the command itself the face font-lock-keyword-face will be used and for the optional arguments the face font-lock-variable-name-face.  The face applied to the mandatory argument depends on the macro class represented by the respective built-in variables.

 2. Declaration macros of the form {\foo text} which consist of the macro which may be enclosed in a TeX group together with text to be affected by the macro.  In case a TeX group is present, the macro will get the face font-lock-keyword-face and the text will get the face configured for the respective macro class.  If no TeX group is present, the latter face will be applied to the macro itself.

 3. Simple macros of the form \foo which do not have any arguments or groupings.  The respective face will be applied to the macro itself.

Customization variables for \foo[bar]{baz} type macros allow both the macro name and the sequence of arguments to be specified.  The latter is done with a string which can contain the characters

*
     indicating the existence of a starred variant for the macro,

[
     for optional arguments in brackets,

{
     for mandatory arguments in braces,

\
     for mandatory arguments consisting of a single macro and

|
     as a prefix indicating that two alternatives are following.

For example the specifier for \documentclass would be [{ because the macro has one optional followed by one mandatory argument. The specifier for \newcommand would be *|{\[[{ because there is a starred variant, the mandatory argument following the macro name can be a macro or a TeX group which can be followed by two optional arguments and the last token is a mandatory argument in braces.

Customization variables for the {\foo text} and \foo types are simple lists of strings where each entry is a macro name (without the leading backslash).

General macro classes
---------------------

fontlatex provides keyword lists for different macro classes which are described in the following table:

font-latex-match-function-keywords
     Keywords for macros defining or related to functions, like \newcommand.

     Type: \macro[...]{...}

     Face: font-lock-function-name-face

font-latex-match-reference-keywords
     Keywords for macros defining or related to references, like \ref.

     Type: \macro[...]{...}

     Face: font-lock-constant-face

font-latex-match-textual-keywords
     Keywords for macros specifying textual content, like \caption.

     Type: \macro[...]{...}

     Face: font-lock-type-face

font-latex-match-variable-keywords
     Keywords for macros defining or related to variables, like \setlength.

     Type: \macro[...]{...}

     Face: font-lock-variable-name-face

font-latex-match-warning-keywords
     Keywords for important macros, e.g. affecting line or page break, like \clearpage.

     Type: \macro

     Face: font-latex-warning-face

Sectioning commands
-------------------

Sectioning commands are macros like \chapter or \section. For these commands there are two fontification schemes which may be selected by customizing the variable font-latex-fontify-sectioning.

 -- User Option: font-latex-fontify-sectioning
     Per default sectioning commands will be shown in a larger, proportional font, which corresponds to a number for this variable.  The font size varies with the sectioning level, e.g. \part (font-latex-sectioning-0-face) has a larger font than \paragraph (font-latex-sectioning-5-face).  Typically, values from 1.05 to 1.3 for font-latex-fontify-sectioning give best results, depending on your font setup.  If you rather like to use the base font and a different color, set the variable to the symbol color.  In this case the face font-lock-type-face will be used to fontify the argument of the sectioning commands.

You can make fontlatex aware of your own sectioning commands be adding them to the keyword lists: font-latex-match-sectioning-0-keywords (font-latex-sectioning-0-face) ... font-latex-match-sectioning-5-keywords (font-latex-sectioning-5-face).

Related to sectioning there is special support for slide titles which may be fontified with the face font-latex-slide-title-face.  You can add macros which should appear in this face by customizing the variable font-latex-match-slide-title-keywords.

Commands for changing fonts
---------------------------

LaTeX provides various macros for changing fonts or font attributes. For example, you can select an italic font with \textit{...} or bold with \textbf{...}.  An alternative way to specify these fonts is to use special macros in TeX groups, like {\itshape ...} for italics and {\bfseries ...} for bold.  As mentioned above, we call the former variants commands and the latter declarations.

Besides the macros for changing fonts provided by LaTeX there is an infinite number of other macros---either defined by yourself for logical markup or defined by macro packages---which affect the font in the typeset text.  While LaTeX's built-in macros and macros of packages known by AUCTeX are already handled by fontlatex, different keyword lists per type style and macro type are provided for entering your own macros which are listed in the table below.

font-latex-match-bold-command-keywords
     Keywords for commands specifying a bold type style.

     Face: font-latex-bold-face

font-latex-match-italic-command-keywords
     Keywords for commands specifying an italic font.

     Face: font-latex-italic-face

font-latex-match-math-command-keywords
     Keywords for commands specifying a math font.

     Face: font-latex-math-face

font-latex-match-type-command-keywords
     Keywords for commands specifying a typewriter font.

     Face: font-lock-type-face

font-latex-match-bold-declaration-keywords
     Keywords for declarations specifying a bold type style.

     Face: font-latex-bold-face

font-latex-match-italic-declaration-keywords
     Keywords for declarations specifying an italic font.

     Face: font-latex-italic-face

font-latex-match-type-declaration-keywords
     Keywords for declarations specifying a typewriter font.

     Face: font-latex-type-face

Deactivating defaults of built-in keyword classes
-------------------------------------------------

fontlatex ships with predefined lists of keywords for the classes described above.  You can disable these defaults per class by customizing the variable font-latex-deactivated-keyword-classes. This is a list of strings for keyword classes to be deactivated.  Valid entries are "warning", "variable", "biblatexnoarg", "biblatex", "reference", "function" , "sectioning-0", "sectioning-1", "sectioning-2", "sectioning-3", "sectioning-4", "sectioning-5", "slide-title", "textual", "bold-command", "italic-command", "math-command", "type-command", "bold-declaration", "italic-declaration", "type-declaration".

You can also get rid of certain keywords only.  For example if you want to remove highlighting of footnotes as references you can put the following stanza into your init file:

     (eval-after-load "font-latex"
       '(setq-default
         font-latex-match-reference-keywords-local
         (remove (assoc-string "footnote"
                 font-latex-match-reference-keywords-local)
                     font-latex-match-reference-keywords-local)))

But note that this means fiddling with fontlatex's internals and is not guaranteed to work in future versions of fontlatex.

User-defined keyword classes
----------------------------

In case the customization options explained above do not suffice for your needs, you can specify your own keyword classes by customizing the variable font-latex-user-keyword-classes.

 -- User Option: font-latex-user-keyword-classes
     Every keyword class consists of four parts, a name, a list of keywords, a face and a specifier for the type of macros to be highlighted.

     When adding new entries, you have to use unique values for the class names, i.e. they must not clash with names of the built-in keyword classes or other names given by you.  Additionally the names must not contain spaces.

     The list of keywords defines which commands and declarations should be covered by the keyword class.  A keyword can either be a simple command name omitting the leading backslash or a list consisting of the command name and a string specifying the sequence of arguments for the command.

     The face argument can either be an existing face or face attributes made by you.

     There are three alternatives for the type of keywords---``Command with arguments'', ``Declaration inside TeX group'' and ``Command without arguments''---which correspond with the macro types explained above.

Fontification of quotes
-----------------------

Text in quotation marks is displayed with the face font-latex-string-face.  Besides the various forms of opening and closing double and single quotation marks, so-called guillemets (<<, >>) can be used for quoting.  Because there are two styles of using them---French style: << text >>; German style: >>text<<---you can customize the variable font-latex-quotes to tell fontlatex which type you are using if the correct value cannot be derived from document properties.

 -- User Option: font-latex-quotes
     The default value of font-latex-quotes is auto which means that fontlatex will try to derive the correct type of quotation mark matching from document properties like the language option supplied to the babel LaTeX package.

     If the automatic detection fails for you and you mostly use one specific style you can set it to a specific language-dependent value as well. Set the value to german if you are using >>German quotes<< and to french if you are using << French quotes >>.  fontlatex will recognize the different ways these quotes can be given in your source code, i.e. ("<, ">), (<<, >>) and the respective 8-bit variants.

     If you set font-latex-quotes to nil, quoted content will not be fontified.

Fontification of mathematical constructs
----------------------------------------

In LaTeX mathematics can be indicated by a variety of different methods: toggles (like dollar signs), macros and environments.  Math constructs known by fontlatex are displayed with the face font-latex-math-face.  Support for dollar signs and shorthands like \(...\) or \[...\] is built-in and not customizable. Support for other math macros and environments can be adapted by customizing the variables font-latex-match-math-command-keywords and texmathp-tex-commands respectively.  It is no longer recommended to customize font-latex-math-environments.

To convert your customization in font-latex-math-environments into texmathp-tex-commands, please register your own math environments, together with starred variants if any, as entries of env-on type in texmathp-tex-commands, then clear out font-latex-math-environments.  You have to restart Emacs for this new customization to take effect for fontification.

In order to make math constructs more readable, fontlatex displays subscript and superscript parts in a smaller font and raised or lowered respectively.  This fontification feature can be controlled with the variables font-latex-fontify-script and font-latex-script-display.

 -- User Option: font-latex-fontify-script
     If non-nil, fontify subscript and superscript strings.  Concretely, this means that the scripts are raised or lowered.

     Another possiblity is setting this variable to the symbol multi-level.  In this case, in a formula x^{y^z}, y is raised above and smaller than x, and z is raised above and smaller than y.  With many script levels, the text might become too small to be readable.  (See font-latex-fontify-script-max-level below.)

     Lastly, you can set this variable to invisible whose behavior is like multi-level, and in addition the super-/subscript characters ^ and _ are not displayed.

 -- User Option: font-latex-fontify-script-max-level
     Maximum scriptification level for which script faces are applied.

     The faces font-latex-superscript-face and font-latex-subscript-face define custom :height values < 1.0.  Therefore, scripts are displayed with a slightly smaller font than normal math text.  If font-latex-fontify-script is multi-level or invisible, the font size becomes too small to be readable after a few levels.  This option allows to specify the maximum level after which the size of the script text won’t be shrunken anymore.

     For example, in the expression x^{y^{z^a_b}}, x has scriptification level 0, y has level 1, z has level 2, and both a and b have scriptification level 3.

     If font-latex-fontify-script-max-level was 2, then z, a, and b would have the same font size.  If it was 3 or more, then a and b were smaller than z just in the same way as z is smaller than y and y is smaller than x.

The script characters ^ and _ themselves are also fontified with an own face named font-latex-script-char-face.

 -- User Option: font-latex-script-display
     Display specification for subscript and superscript content.  The car is used for subscript, the cdr is used for superscript.  The feature is implemented using so-called display properties.  For information on what exactly to specify for the values, see Other Display Specifications (GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).

Verbatim macros and environments
--------------------------------

Usually it is not desirable to have content to be typeset verbatim highlighted according to LaTeX syntax.  Therefore this content will be fontified uniformly with the face font-latex-verbatim-face.

fontlatex differentiates three different types of verbatim constructs for fontification.  Macros with special characters like | as delimiters, macros with braces, and environments.  Which macros and environments are recognized is controlled by the variables LaTeX-verbatim-macros-with-delims, LaTeX-verbatim-macros-with-braces, and LaTeX-verbatim-environments respectively.

Faces used by fontlatex
-----------------------

In case you want to change the colors and fonts used by fontlatex please refer to the faces mentioned in the explanations above and use M-x customize-face RET <face> RET.  All faces defined by fontlatex are accessible through a customization group by typing M-x customize-group RET font-latex-highlighting-faces RET.

Known fontification problems
----------------------------

In certain cases the fontification machinery fails to interpret buffer contents correctly.  This can lead to color bleed, i.e. large parts of a buffer get fontified with an inappropriate face.  A typical situation for this to happen is the use of a dollar sign ($) in a verbatim macro or environment.  If fontlatex is not aware of the verbatim construct, it assumes the dollar sign to be a toggle for mathematics and fontifies the following buffer content with the respective face until it finds a closing dollar sign or till the end of the buffer.

As a remedy you can make the verbatim construct known to fontlatex (see Verbatim content).  If this is not possible, you can insert a commented dollar sign (%$) at the next suitable end of line as a quick workaround.  In docTeX documents, ^^A$ is also available for similar purpose.

Folding Macros and Environments
===============================

A popular complaint about markup languages like TeX and LaTeX is that there is too much clutter in the source text and that one cannot focus well on the content.  There are macros where you are only interested in the content they are enclosing, like font specifiers where the content might already be fontified in a special way by font locking. Or macros the content of which you only want to see when actually editing it, like footnotes or citations.  Similarly you might find certain environments or comments distracting when trying to concentrate on the body of your document.

With AUCTeX's folding functionality you can collapse those items and replace them by a fixed string, the content of one of their arguments, or a mixture of both.  If you want to make the original text visible again in order to view or edit it, move point sideways onto the placeholder (also called display string) or left-click with the mouse pointer on it.  The macro or environment will unfold automatically, stay open as long as point is inside of it and collapse again once you move point out of it. (Note that folding of environments currently does not work in every AUCTeX mode.)

In order to use this feature, you have to activate TeX-fold-mode which will activate the auto-reveal feature and the necessary commands to hide and show macros and environments.  You can activate the mode in a certain buffer by typing the command M-x TeX-fold-mode RET or using the keyboard shortcut C-c C-o C-f.  If you want to use it every time you edit a LaTeX document, add it to a hook:

     (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda ()
                                  (TeX-fold-mode 1)))

If it should be activated in all AUCTeX modes, use TeX-mode-hook instead of LaTeX-mode-hook.

Once the mode is active there are several commands available to hide and show macros, environments and comments:

 -- Command: TeX-fold-buffer
     (C-c C-o C-b) Hide all foldable items in the current buffer according to the setting of TeX-fold-type-list.

     If you want to have this done automatically every time you open a file, add it to a hook and make sure the function is called after font locking is set up for the buffer.  The following code should accomplish this:

          (add-hook 'find-file-hook #'TeX-fold-buffer t)

     The command can be used any time to refresh the whole buffer and fold any new macros and environments which were inserted after the last invocation of the command.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-type-list
     List of symbols determining the item classes to consider for folding. This can be macros, environments and comments.  Per default only macros and environments are folded.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-force-fontify
     In order for all folded content to get the right faces, the whole buffer has to be fontified before folding is carried out. TeX-fold-buffer therefore will force fontification of unfontified regions.  As this will prolong the time folding takes, you can prevent forced fontification by customizing the variable TeX-fold-force-fontify.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-auto
     By default, a macro inserted with TeX-insert-macro (C-c C-m) will not be folded.  Set this variable to a non-nil value to aumatically fold macros as soon as they are inserted.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-preserve-comments
     By default items found in comments will be folded.  If your comments often contain unfinished code this might lead to problems.  Give this variable a non-nil value and foldable items in your comments will be left alone.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-unfold-around-mark
     When this variable is non-nil and there is an active regione, text around the mark will be kept unfolded.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-region
     (C-c C-o C-r) Hide all configured macros in the marked region.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-paragraph
     (C-c C-o C-p) Hide all configured macros in the paragraph containing point.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-macro
     (C-c C-o C-m) Hide the macro on which point currently is located. If the name of the macro is found in TeX-fold-macro-spec-list, the respective display string will be shown instead.  If it is not found, the name of the macro in sqare brackets or the default string for unspecified macros (TeX-fold-unspec-macro-display-string) will be shown, depending on the value of the variable TeX-fold-unspec-use-name.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-env
     (C-c C-o C-e) Hide the environment on which point currently is located.  The behavior regarding the display string is analogous to TeX-fold-macro and determined by the variables TeX-fold-env-spec-list and TeX-fold-unspec-env-display-string respectively.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-math
     Hide the math macro on which point currently is located.  If the name of the macro is found in TeX-fold-math-spec-list, the respective display string will be shown instead.  If it is not found, the name of the macro in sqare brackets or the default string for unspecified macros (TeX-fold-unspec-macro-display-string) will be shown, depending on the value of the variable TeX-fold-unspec-use-name.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-comment
     (C-c C-o C-c) Hide the comment point is located on.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-clearout-buffer
     (C-c C-o b) Permanently unfold all macros and environments in the current buffer.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-clearout-region
     (C-c C-o r) Permanently unfold all macros and environments in the marked region.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-clearout-paragraph
     (C-c C-o p) Permanently unfold all macros and environments in the paragraph containing point.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-clearout-item
     (C-c C-o i) Permanently show the macro or environment on which point currently is located.  In contrast to temporarily opening the macro when point is moved sideways onto it, the macro will be permanently unfolded and will not collapse again once point is leaving it.

 -- Command: TeX-fold-dwim
     (C-c C-o C-o) Hide or show items according to the current context. If there is folded content, unfold it.  If there is a marked region, fold all configured content in this region.  If there is no folded content but a macro or environment, fold it.

In case you want to use a different prefix than C-c C-o for these commands you can customize the variable TeX-fold-command-prefix. (Note that this will not change the key binding for activating the mode.)

The commands above will only take macros or environments into consideration which are specified in the variables TeX-fold-macro-spec-list or TeX-fold-env-spec-list respectively.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-macro-spec-list
     List of replacement specifiers and macros to fold.  The specifier can be a string, an integer or a function symbol.

     If you specify a string, it will be used as a display replacement for the whole macro.  Numbers in braces, brackets, parens or angle brackets will be replaced by the respective macro argument.  For example {1} will be replaced by the first mandatory argument of the macro.  One can also define alternatives within the specifier which are used if an argument is not found.  Alternatives are separated by ||.  They are most useful with optional arguments.  As an example, the default specifier for \item is [1]:||* which means that if there is an optional argument, its value is shown followed by a colon.  If there is no optional argument, only an asterisk is used as the display string.

     If you specify a number as the first element, the content of the respective mandatory argument of a LaTeX macro will be used as the placeholder.

     If the first element is a function symbol, the function will be called with all mandatory arguments of the macro and the result of the function call will be used as a replacement for the macro.

     The placeholder is made by copying the text from the buffer together with its properties, i.e. its face as well.  If fontification has not happened when this is done (e.g. because of lazy font locking) the intended fontification will not show up.  As a workaround you can leave Emacs idle a few seconds and wait for stealth font locking to finish before you fold the buffer.  Or you just re-fold the buffer with TeX-fold-buffer when you notice a wrong fontification.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-env-spec-list
     List of display strings or argument numbers and environments to fold. Argument numbers refer to the \begin statement.  That means if you have e.g. \begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{XXX} ... \end{tabularx} and specify 3 as the argument number, the resulting display string will be ``XXX''.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-math-spec-list
     List of display strings and math macros to fold.

The variables TeX-fold-macro-spec-list, TeX-fold-env-spec-list, and TeX-fold-math-spec-list apply to any AUCTeX mode.  If you want to make settings which are only applied to LaTeX mode, you can use the mode-specific variables LaTeX-fold-macro-spec-list, LaTeX-fold-env-spec-list, and LaTeX-fold-math-spec-list

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-unspec-macro-display-string
     Default display string for macros which are not specified in TeX-fold-macro-spec-list.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-unspec-env-display-string
     Default display string for environments which are not specified in TeX-fold-env-spec-list.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-unspec-use-name
     If non-nil the name of the macro or environment surrounded by square brackets is used as display string, otherwise the defaults specified in TeX-fold-unspec-macro-display-string or TeX-fold-unspec-env-display-string respectively.

When you hover with the mouse pointer over folded content, its original text will be shown in a tooltip or the echo area depending on Tooltip mode being activate.  In order to avoid exorbitantly big tooltips and to cater for the limited space in the echo area the content will be cropped after a certain amount of characters defined by the variable TeX-fold-help-echo-max-length.

 -- User Option: TeX-fold-help-echo-max-length
     Maximum length of original text displayed in a tooltip or the echo area for folded content.  Set it to zero in order to disable this feature.

Outlining the Document
======================

AUCTeX supports the standard outline minor mode using LaTeX/ConTeXt sectioning commands as header lines.  See Outline Mode (GNU Emacs Manual).

You can add your own headings by setting the variable TeX-outline-extra.

 -- Variable: TeX-outline-extra
     List of extra TeX outline levels.

     Each element is a list with two entries.  The first entry is the regular expression matching a header, and the second is the level of the header. A ^ is automatically prepended to the regular expressions in the list, so they must match text at the beginning of the line.

     See LaTeX-section-list or ConTeXt-INTERFACE-section-list for existing header levels.

The following example add \item and \bibliography headers, with \bibliography at the same outline level as \section, and \item being below \subparagraph.

     (setq TeX-outline-extra
           '(("[ \t]*\\\\\\(bib\\)?item\\b" 7)
             ("\\\\bibliography\\b" 2)))

You may want to check out the unbundled out-xtra package for even better outline support.  It is available from your favorite emacs lisp archive.

Narrowing
=========

Sometimes you want to focus your attention to a limited region of the code.  You can do that by restricting the text addressable by editing commands and hiding the rest of the buffer with the narrowing functions, see Narrowing (GNU Emacs Manual).  In addition, AUCTeX provides a couple of other commands to narrow the buffer to a group, i.e. a region enclosed in a pair of curly braces, and to LaTeX environments.

 -- Command: TeX-narrow-to-group
     (C-x n g) Make text outside current group invisible.

 -- Command: LaTeX-narrow-to-environment COUNT
     (C-x n e) Make text outside current environment invisible.  With optional argument COUNT keep visible that number of enclosing environmens.

Like other standard narrowing functions, the above commands are disabled.  Attempting to use them asks for confirmation and gives you the option of enabling them; if you enable the commands, confirmation will no longer be required for them.

Prettifying
===========

Emacs 25 is able to prettify symbols in programming language buffers, see Misc for Programs (GNU Emacs Manual).  The canonical example is to display (lambda () ...) as (λ () ...) in Lisp buffers.

AUCTeX can use this feature in order to display certain math macros and greek letters using their Unicode representation, too.  For example, the TeX code \alpha \times \beta will be displayed as α × β.  When point is on one of the characters, it'll be unprettified automatically, meaning you see the verbatim text again.  For this behaviour however you need to set prettify-symbols-unprettify-at-point to t or right-edge which will unprettify the symbol when point moves into or near it.

To enable prettification in AUCTeX, simply add prettify-symbols-mode to TeX-mode-hook.  If you enabled prettification globally with global-prettify-symbols-mode, then it's automatically enabled in AUCTeX, too.

You can also add custom symbol unicode-character pairs for prettification by adding to tex--prettify-symbols-alist.  Note that this variable is part of Emacs' stock tex-mode.el and used by that and AUCTeX.

Starting Processors, Viewers and Other Programs
***********************************************

The most powerful features of AUCTeX may be those allowing you to run TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt and other external commands like BibTeX and makeindex from within Emacs, viewing and printing the results, and moreover allowing you to debug your documents.

AUCTeX comes with a special tool bar for TeX and LaTeX which provides buttons for the most important commands.  You can enable or disable it by customizing the options plain-TeX-enable-toolbar and LaTeX-enable-toolbar in the TeX-tool-bar customization group.  You can also customize the buttons by the options TeX-bar-TeX-buttons, TeX-bar-TeX-all-button-alists, TeX-bar-LaTeX-buttons and TeX-bar-LaTeX-button-alist.

Executing Commands
==================

Formatting the document with TeX, LaTeX or ConTeXt, viewing with a previewer, printing the document, running BibTeX, making an index, or checking the document with lacheck or chktex all require running an external command.

Starting a Command on a Document or Region
------------------------------------------

There are two ways to run an external command, you can either run it on the current document with TeX-command-master, or on the current region with TeX-command-region.  A special case of running TeX on a region is TeX-command-buffer which differs from TeX-command-master if the current buffer is not its own master file.

 -- Command: TeX-command-master
     (C-c C-c)  Query the user for a command, and run it on the master file associated with the current buffer.  The name of the master file is controlled by the variable TeX-master.  The available commands are controlled by the variable TeX-command-list.

 -- Command: TeX-command-region
     (C-c C-r) Query the user for a command, and run it on the contents of the selected region.  The region contents are written into the region file, after extracting the header and trailer from the master file.  If mark is inactive (which can happen with Transient Mark mode), use the old region.  See also the command TeX-pin-region about how to fix a region.

     The name of the region file is controlled by the variable TeX-region.  The name of the master file is controlled by the variable TeX-master.  The header is all text up to the line matching the regular expression TeX-header-end.  The trailer is all text from the line matching the regular expression TeX-trailer-start.  The available commands are controlled by the variable TeX-command-list.

 -- Command: TeX-command-buffer
     (C-c C-b) Query the user for a command, and apply it to the contents of the current buffer.  The buffer contents are written into the region file, after extracting the header and trailer from the master file.  The command is then actually run on the region file.  See above for details.

 -- Command: LaTeX-command-section
     (C-c C-z) Query the user for a command, and apply it to the current section (or part, chapter, subsection, paragraph, or subparagraph).  What makes the current section is determined by LaTeX-command-section-level which can be enlarged/shrunken using LaTeX-command-section-change-level (C-c M-z).  The given numeric prefix arg is added to the current value of LaTeX-command-section-level.  By default, LaTeX-command-section-level is initialized with the current document's LaTeX-largest-level.  The buffer contents are written into the region file, after extracting the header and trailer from the master file.  The command is then actually run on the region file.  See TeX-command-region for details.

It is also possible to compile automatically the whole document until it is ready with a single command: TeX-command-run-all.

 -- Command: TeX-command-run-all
     (C-c C-a) Compile the current document until an error occurs or it is finished.  If compilation finishes successfully, run the viewer at the end.

Here are some relevant variables.

 -- User Option: TeX-region
     The name of the file for temporarily storing the text when formatting the current region.

 -- User Option: TeX-header-end
     A regular expression matching the end of the header.  By default, this is \begin{document} in LaTeX mode and %**end of header in plain TeX mode.

 -- User Option: TeX-trailer-start
     A regular expression matching the start of the trailer.  By default, this is \end{document} in LaTeX mode and \bye in plain TeX mode.

If you want to change the values of TeX-header-end and TeX-trailer-start you can do this for all files by setting the variables in a mode hook or per file by specifying them as file variables (see File Variables (The Emacs Editor)).

 -- Command: TeX-pin-region
     (C-c C-t C-r) If you don't have a mode like Transient Mark mode active, where marks get disabled automatically, the region would need to get properly set before each call to TeX-command-region.  If you fix the current region with C-c C-t C-r, then it will get used for more commands even though mark and point may change.  An explicitly activated mark, however, will always define a new region when calling TeX-command-region.

AUCTeX will allow one process for each document, plus one process for the region file to be active at the same time.  Thus, if you are editing N different documents, you can have N plus one processes running at the same time.  If the last process you started was on the region, the commands described in Debugging and Control will work on that process, otherwise they will work on the process associated with the current document.

Selecting and Executing a Command
---------------------------------

Once you started the command selection with C-c C-c, C-c C-r or C-c C-b you will be prompted for the type of command. AUCTeX will try to guess which command is appropriate in the given situation and propose it as default.  Usually this is a processor like TeX or LaTeX if the document was changed or a viewer if the document was just typeset.  Other commands can be selected in the minibuffer with completion support by typing TAB.

The available commands are defined by the variable TeX-command-list.  Per default it includes commands for typesetting the document (e.g. LaTeX), for viewing the output (View), for printing (Print), for generating an index (Index) or for spell checking (Spell) to name but a few. You can also add your own commands by adding entries to TeX-command-list.  Refer to its doc string for information about its syntax.  You might also want to look at TeX-expand-list to learn about the expanders you can use in TeX-command-list.

Note that the default of the variable occasionally changes.  Therefore it is advisable to add to the list rather than overwriting it.  You can do this with a call to add-to-list in your init file.  For example, if you wanted to add a command for running a program called foo on the master or region file, you could do this with the following form.

     (eval-after-load "tex"
       '(add-to-list 'TeX-command-list
                     '("Foo" "foo %s" TeX-run-command t t :help "Run foo") t))

As mentioned before, AUCTeX will try to guess what command you want to invoke.  If you want to use another command than TeX, LaTeX or whatever processor AUCTeX thinks is appropriate for the current mode, set the variable TeX-command-default.  You can do this for all files by setting it in a mode hook or per file by specifying it as a file variable (see File Variables (The Emacs Editor)).

 -- User Option: TeX-command-default
     The default command to run in this buffer.  Must be an entry in TeX-command-list.

In case you use biblatex in a document, when automatic parsing is enabled AUCTeX checks the value of backend option given to biblatex at load time to decide whether to use BibTeX or Biber for bibliography processing.  Should AUCTeX fail to detect the right backend, you can use the file local LaTeX-biblatex-use-Biber variable.
 -- Variable: LaTeX-biblatex-use-Biber
     If this boolean variable is set as file local, it tells to AUCTeX whether to use Biber with biblatex.  In this case, the autodetection of the biblatex backend will be overridden.  You may want to set locally this variable if automatic parsing is not enabled.

After confirming a command to execute, AUCTeX will try to save any buffers related to the document, and check if the document needs to be reformatted.  If the variable TeX-save-query is non-nil, AUCTeX will query before saving each file.  By default AUCTeX will check emacs buffers associated with files in the current directory, in one of the TeX-macro-private directories, and in the TeX-macro-global directories.  You can change this by setting the variable TeX-check-path.

 -- User Option: TeX-check-path
     Directory path to search for dependencies.

     If nil, just check the current file. Used when checking if any files have changed.

When performing spell checking on a document or a region (invoked through AUCTeX's Spell command or M-x ispell RET), you want the spell checking program to skip certain macro arguments and environments, most notably the arguments of referencing macros and the contents of verbatim environments.  The skipped parts are controlled by variable ispell-tex-skip-alists provided by ispell.el. AUCTeX has a library which can be added to this variable depending on the value of TeX-ispell-extend-skip-list which is set to t by default.

 -- User Option: TeX-ispell-extend-skip-list
     This boolean option controls whether AUCTeX activates its extension for skipping certain macro arguments and environments when spell checking.

     When non-nil, AUCTeX loads the file tex-ispell.el and adds its content to ispell-tex-skip-alists.  This library can and will never be complete, but the interface can be used to add selected and private macro names within your init file or on a file local basis.

     ispell-tex-skip-alists has the following structure:

          (defvar ispell-tex-skip-alists
            '((;; First list
               ("\\\\addcontentsline"         ispell-tex-arg-end 2)
               ("\\\\\\([aA]lph\\|arabic\\)"  ispell-tex-arg-end)
               ("\\\\makebox"                 ispell-tex-arg-end 0)
               ("\\\\documentclass" . "\\\\begin{document}"))
              (;; Second list
               ("\\(figure\\|table\\)\\*?"  ispell-tex-arg-end 0)
               ("list"                      ispell-tex-arg-end 2)
               ("verbatim\\*?" . "\\\\end{verbatim\\*?}")))
            "Lists of regions to be skipped in TeX mode.
          First list is used raw.
          Second list has key placed inside \\begin{}.")

     Each item is an alist and the structure of it is described in ispell-skip-region-alist:

          (defvar ispell-skip-region-alist
            '((...))
            "Alist expressing beginning and end of regions not to spell check.
          The alist key must be a regular expression.
          Valid forms include:
            (KEY) - just skip the key.
            (KEY . REGEXP) - skip to the end of REGEXP.
                             REGEXP may be string or symbol.
            (KEY REGEXP) - skip to end of REGEXP.  REGEXP must be a string.
            (KEY FUNCTION ARGS) - FUNCTION called with ARGS
                                  returns end of region.")

     Let's go through the first list of ispell-tex-skip-alists line by line:

          ("\\\\addcontentsline"         ispell-tex-arg-end 2)

     KEY is the string "\\\\addcontentsline", FUNCTION is ispell-tex-arg-end called with ARGS, here 2. ispell-tex-arg-end is a function provided by ispell.el which skips as many subsequent optional arguments in square brackets as it sees and then skips ARGS number of mandatory arguments in braces.  Omitting ARGS means skip 1 mandatory argument. In practice, when you have something like this in your document:

          \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Some text}

     The first two arguments are left out and Some text will be spell checked.  For the next line

          ("\\\\\\([aA]lph\\|arabic\\)"  ispell-tex-arg-end)

     the name of the counter as argument is skipped.  Next line is

          ("\\\\makebox"                 ispell-tex-arg-end 0)

     where only optional arguments are skipped, the first mandatory argument is checked, e.g.

          \makebox[0pt][l]{Some text}

     Finally, the next line

          ("\\\\documentclass" . "\\\\begin{document}"))

     ensures that the entire preamble of a document is discarded.  Second list works the same; it is more convenient for environments since KEY is wrapped inside \begin{}.

     AUCTeX provides two functions to add items to car and cdr of ispell-tex-arg-end, namely TeX-ispell-skip-setcar and TeX-ispell-skip-setcdr.  The argument of these functions is exactly as in ispell-tex-skip-alists.  Additions can be done via init file, e.g.:

          (eval-after-load "tex-ispell"
            '(progn
               (TeX-ispell-skip-setcar
                '(("\\\\mymacro" ispell-tex-arg-end)))
               (TeX-ispell-skip-setcdr
                '(("myverbatim" . "\\\\end{myverbatim}")))))

     Another possibility is to use file local additions at the end of your TeX file, e.g.:

          %%% Local Variables:
          %%% mode: latex
          %%% TeX-master: t
          %%% eval: (TeX-ispell-skip-setcar '(("\\\\mymacro" . "{[-0-9]+}")))
          %%% End:

     Finally, AUCTeX provides a function called TeX-ispell-tex-arg-end which sees more arguments than ispell-tex-arg-end.  Refer to its doc string for more information.

AUCTeX also provides a facility to skip the argument of in-line verbatim macros like \Verb from fancyvrb.sty or \mintinline from minted.sty.  Characters delimiting the verbatim text are stored in TeX-ispell-verb-delimiters.

 -- User Option: TeX-ispell-verb-delimiters
     String with delimiters recognized for in-line verbatim macros.  This variable is initialized to !|#~"*/+^-.  Since this string is used to build a character alternative inside a regular expression, special characters ^ and - should come last.  Other characters like opening brace {, asterisk * or at sign @ should be avoided as they are not recognized by font-latex.el.

Options for TeX Processors
--------------------------

There are some options you can customize affecting which processors are invoked or the way this is done and which output they produce as a result.  These options control if DVI or PDF output should be produced, if TeX should be started in interactive or nonstop mode, if source specials or a SyncTeX file should be produced for making inverse and forward search possible or which TeX engine should be used instead of regular TeX, like PDFTeX, Omega or XeTeX, and the style error messages are printed with.

 -- Command: TeX-PDF-mode
     (C-c C-t C-p) This command toggles the PDF mode of AUCTeX, a buffer-local minor mode which is enabled by default.  You can customize TeX-PDF-mode to give it a different default or set it as a file local variable on a per-document basis.  This option usually results in calling either PDFTeX or ordinary TeX.

 -- User Option: TeX-DVI-via-PDFTeX
     If this is set, DVI will also be produced by calling PDFTeX, setting \pdfoutput=0.  This makes it possible to use PDFTeX features like character protrusion even when producing DVI files.  Contemporary TeX distributions do this anyway, so that you need not enable the option within AUCTeX.

 -- Command: TeX-interactive-mode
     (C-c C-t C-i) This command toggles the interactive mode of AUCTeX, a global minor mode.  You can customize TeX-interactive-mode to give it a different default.  In interactive mode, TeX will pause with an error prompt when errors are encountered and wait for the user to type something.

 -- Command: TeX-source-correlate-mode
     (C-c C-t C-s) Toggles support for forward and inverse search. Forward search refers to jumping to the place in the previewed document corresponding to where point is located in the document source and inverse search to the other way round.  See I/O Correlation.

     You can permanently activate TeX-source-correlate-mode by customizing the variable TeX-source-correlate-mode.  There is a bunch of customization options for the mode, use M-x customize-group RET TeX-view RET to find out more.

     AUCTeX is aware of three different means to do I/O correlation: source specials (only DVI output), the pdfsync LaTeX package (only PDF output) and SyncTeX.  The choice between source specials and SyncTeX can be controlled with the variable TeX-source-correlate-method.

     Should you use source specials it has to be stressed very strongly however, that source specials can cause differences in page breaks and spacing, can seriously interfere with various packages and should thus never be used for the final version of a document. In particular, fine-tuning the page breaks should be done with source specials switched off.

Sometimes you are requested, by journal rules or packages, to compile the document into DVI output.  Thus, if you want a PDF document in the end you can either use XeTeX engine, see below for information about how to set engines, or compile the document with tex and then convert to PDF with dvips--ps2pdf before viewing it.  In addition, current Japanese TeX engines cannot generate PDF directly so they rely on DVI-to-PDF converters.  Usually dvipdfmx command is used for this purpose.  You can use the TeX-PDF-from-DVI variable to let AUCTeX know you want to generate the final PDF by converting a DVI file.

 -- User Option: TeX-PDF-from-DVI
     This option controls if and how to produce a PDF file by converting a DVI file.

     When TeX-PDF-mode is non-nil, if TeX-PDF-from-DVI is non-nil too the document is compiled to DVI instead of PDF.  When the document is ready, C-c C-c will suggest to run the converter to PDF or an intermediate format.

     If non-nil, TeX-PDF-from-DVI should be the name of the command in TeX-command-list, as a string, used to convert the DVI file to PDF or to an intermediate format.  Values currently supported are:

       * "Dvips": the DVI file is converted to PS with dvips.  After successfully running it, ps2pdf will be the default command to convert the PS file to PDF.

       * "Dvipdfmx": the DVI file is converted to PDF with dvipdfmx.

     (case is significant; note the uppercase D in both strings) When the PDF file is finally ready, the next suggested command will be View to open the viewer.

     This option can also be set as a file local variable, in order to use this conversion on a per-document basis.

     Recall the whole sequence of C-c C-c commands can be replaced by the single C-c C-a.

AUCTeX also allows you to easily select different TeX engines for processing, either by using the entries in the TeXing Options submenu below the Command menu or by calling the function TeX-engine-set.  These eventually set the variable TeX-engine which you can also modify directly.

 -- User Option: TeX-engine
     This variable allows you to choose which TeX engine should be used for typesetting the document, i.e. the executables which will be used when you invoke the TeX or LaTeX commands.  The value should be one of the symbols defined in TeX-engine-alist-builtin or TeX-engine-alist.  The symbols default, xetex, luatex and omega are available from the built-in list.

Note that TeX-engine is buffer-local, so setting the variable directly or via the above mentioned menu or function will not take effect in other buffers.  If you want to activate an engine for all AUCTeX modes, set TeX-engine in your init file, e.g. by using M-x customize-option RET.  If you want to activate it for a certain AUCTeX mode only, set the variable in the respective mode hook.  If you want to activate it for certain files, set it through file variables (see File Variables (The Emacs Editor)).

Should you need to change the executable names related to the different engine settings, there are some variables you can tweak.  Those are TeX-command, LaTeX-command, TeX-Omega-command, LaTeX-Omega-command, ConTeXt-engine and ConTeXt-Omega-engine.  The rest of the executables is defined directly in TeX-engine-alist-builtin.  If you want to override an entry from that, add an entry to TeX-engine-alist that starts with the same symbol as that the entry in the built-in list and specify the executables you want to use instead.  You can also add entries to TeX-engine-alist in order to add support for engines not covered per default.

 -- User Option: TeX-engine-alist
     Alist of TeX engines and associated commands.  Each entry is a list with a maximum of five elements.  The first element is a symbol used to identify the engine.  The second is a string describing the engine.  The third is the command to be used for plain TeX.  The fourth is the command to be used for LaTeX.  The fifth is the command to be used for the --engine parameter of ConTeXt's texexec program.  Each command can either be a variable or a string.  An empty string or nil means there is no command available.

In some systems, Emacs cannot inherit the PATH environment variable from the shell and thus AUCTeX may not be able to run TeX commands. Before running them, AUCTeX checks if it is able to find those commands and will warn you in case it fails.  You can skip this test by changing the option TeX-check-TeX.

 -- User Option: TeX-check-TeX
     If non-nil, AUCTeX will check if it is able to find a working TeX distribution before running TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, etc.  It actually checks if can run TeX-command command or the shell returns a command not found error.  The error code returned by the shell in this case can be set in TeX-check-TeX-command-not-found option.

Some LaTeX packages requires the document to be compiled with a specific engine.  Notable examples are fontspec and polyglossia packages, which require LuaTeX and XeTeX engines.  If you try to compile a document which loads one of such packages and the set engine is not one of those allowed you will be asked to select a different engine before running the LaTeX command.  If you do not want to be warned by AUCTeX in these cases, customize the option TeX-check-engine.

 -- User Option: TeX-check-engine
     This boolean option controls whether AUCTeX should check the correct engine has been set before running LaTeX commands.

As shown above, AUCTeX handles in a special way most of the main options that can be given to the TeX processors.  When you need to pass to the TeX processor arbitrary options not handled by AUCTeX, you can use the file local variable TeX-command-extra-options.
 -- User Option: TeX-command-extra-options
     String with the extra options to be given to the TeX processor.  For example, if you need to enable the shell escape feature to compile a document, add the following line to the list of local variables of the source file:

          %%% TeX-command-extra-options: "-shell-escape"

     By default this option is not safe as a file-local variable because a specially crafted document compiled with shell escape enabled can be used for malicious purposes.

You can customize AUCTeX to show the processor output as it is produced.

 -- User Option: TeX-show-compilation
     If non-nil, the output of TeX compilation is shown in another window.

You can instruct TeX to print error messages in the form file:line:error which is similar to the way many compilers format them.

 -- User Option: TeX-file-line-error
     If non-nil, TeX will produce file:line:error style error messages.

ConTeXt users can choose between Mark II and Mark IV versions.  This is controlled by ConTeXt-Mark-version option.

 -- User Option: ConTeXt-Mark-version
     This variables specifies which version of Mark should be used.  Values currently supported are "II", the default, and "IV".  It can be set globally using customization interface or on a per-file basis, by specifying it as a file variable.

Viewing the Formatted Output
============================

AUCTeX allows you to start external programs for previewing the formatted output of your document.

Starting Viewers
----------------

Viewers are normally invoked by pressing C-c C-c once the document is formatted, which will propose the View command, or by activating the respective entry in the Command menu.  Alternatively you can type C-c C-v which calls the function TeX-view.

 -- Command: TeX-view
     (C-c C-v) Start a viewer without confirmation.  The viewer is started either on a region or the master file, depending on the last command issued.  This is especially useful for jumping to the location corresponding to point in the viewer when using TeX-source-correlate-mode.

AUCTeX will try to guess which type of viewer (DVI, PostScript or PDF) has to be used and what options are to be passed over to it.  This decision is based on the output files present in the working directory as well as the class and style options used in the document.  For example, if there is a DVI file in your working directory, a DVI viewer will be invoked.  In case of a PDF file it will be a PDF viewer.  If you specified a special paper format like a5paper or use the landscape option, this will be passed to the viewer by the appropriate options. Especially some DVI viewers depend on this kind of information in order to display your document correctly.  In case you are using pstricks or psfrag in your document, a DVI viewer cannot display the contents correctly and a PostScript viewer will be invoked instead.

The association between the tests for the conditions mentioned above and the viewers is made in the variable TeX-view-program-selection. Therefore this variable is the starting point for customization if you want to use other viewers than the ones suggested by default.

 -- User Option: TeX-view-program-selection
     This is a list of predicates and viewers which is evaluated from front to back in order to find out which viewer to call under the given conditions.  In the first element of each list item you can reference one or more predicates defined in TeX-view-predicate-list or TeX-view-predicate-list-builtin.  In the second element you can reference a viewer defined in TeX-view-program-list or TeX-view-program-list-builtin.  The viewer of the first item with a positively evaluated predicate is selected.

So TeX-view-program-selection only contains references to the actual implementations of predicates and viewer commands respectively which can be found elsewhere.  AUCTeX comes with a set of preconfigured predicates and viewer commands which are stored in the variables TeX-view-predicate-list-builtin and TeX-view-program-list-builtin respectively.  If you are not satisfied with those and want to overwrite one of them or add your own definitions, you can do so via the variables TeX-view-predicate-list and TeX-view-program-list.

 -- User Option: TeX-view-predicate-list
     This is a list of predicates for viewer selection and invocation.  The first element of each list item is a symbol and the second element a Lisp form to be evaluated.  The form should return nil if the predicate is not fulfilled.

     A built-in predicate from TeX-view-predicate-list-builtin can be overwritten by defining a new predicate with the same symbol.

 -- User Option: TeX-view-program-list
     This is a list of viewer specifications each consisting of a symbolic name and either a command line or a function to be invoked when the viewer is called.  If a command line is used, parts of it can be conditionalized by prefixing them with predicates from TeX-view-predicate-list or TeX-view-predicate-list-builtin.  (See the doc string for the exact format to use.)  The command line can also contain placeholders as defined in TeX-expand-list and TeX-expand-list-builtin which are expanded before the viewer is called.

     The third element of each item is a string, or a list of strings, with the name of the executable, or executables, needed to open the output file in the viewer.  Placeholders defined in TeX-expand-list and TeX-expand-list-builtin can be used here.  This element is optional and is used to check whether the viewer is actually available on the system.

     A built-in viewer spec from TeX-view-program-list-builtin can be overwritten by defining a new viewer spec with the same name.

After the viewer is called via either the View command or the key stroke C-c C-v, the window system focus goes and stays on the viewer.  If you prefer that the focus is pulled back to Emacs immediately after that and you are using evince-compatible viewer, customize the option TeX-view-enince-keep-focus.

 -- User Option: TeX-view-evince-keep-focus
     When this option is non-nil and the viewer is compatible with evince, the focus is pulled back to Emacs immediately after the viewer is invoked or refreshed from within AUCTeX.

Note that the viewer selection and invocation as described above will only work if certain default settings in AUCTeX are intact.  For one, the whole viewer selection machinery will only be triggered if there is no %V expander in TeX-expand-list.  So if you have trouble with the viewer invocation you might check if there is an older customization of the variable in place.  In addition, the use of a function in TeX-view-program-list only works if the View command in TeX-command-list makes use of the hook TeX-run-discard-or-function.

Forward and Inverse Search
--------------------------

Forward and inverse search refer to the correlation between the document source in the editor and the typeset document in the viewer.  Forward search allows you to jump to the place in the previewed document corresponding to a certain line in the document source and inverse search vice versa.

AUCTeX supports three methods for forward and inverse search: source specials (only DVI output), the pdfsync LaTeX package (only PDF output) and SyncTeX (any type of output).  If you want to make use of forward and inverse searching with source specials or SyncTeX, switch on TeX-source-correlate-mode.  See Processor Options, on how to do that.  The use of the pdfsync package is detected automatically if document parsing is enabled.  Customize the variable TeX-source-correlate-method to select the method to use.

 -- User Option: TeX-source-correlate-method
     Method to use for enabling forward and inverse search.  This can be source-specials if source specials should be used, synctex if SyncTeX should be used, or auto if AUCTeX should decide.

     When the variable is set to auto, AUCTeX will always use SyncTeX if your latex processor supports it, source specials otherwise.  You must make sure your viewer supports the same method.

     It is also possible to specify a different method depending on the output, either DVI or PDF, by setting the variable to an alist of the kind

          ((dvi . <source-specials or synctex>)
           (pdf . <source-specials or synctex>))

     in which the CDR of each entry is a symbol specifying the method to be used in the corresponding mode.  The default value of the variable is

          ((dvi . source-specials)
           (pdf . synctex))

     which is compatible with the majority of viewers.

Forward search happens automatically upon calling the viewer, e.g. by typing C-c C-v (TeX-view).  This will open the viewer or bring it to front and display the output page corresponding to the position of point in the source file.  AUCTeX will automatically pass the necessary command line options to the viewer for this to happen.

Upon opening the viewer you will be asked if you want to start a server process (Gnuserv or Emacs server) which is necessary for inverse search. This happens only if there is no server running already.  You can customize the variable TeX-source-correlate-start-server to inhibit the question and always or never start the server respectively.

 -- User Option: TeX-source-correlate-start-server
     If TeX-source-correlate-mode is active and a viewer is invoked, the default behavior is to ask if a server process should be started. Set this variable to t if the question should be inhibited and the server should always be started.  Set it to nil if the server should never be started.  Inverse search will not be available in the latter case.

Inverse search, i.e. jumping to the part of your document source in Emacs corresponding to a certain position in the viewer, is triggered from the viewer, typically by a mouse click.  Refer to the documentation of your viewer to find out how it has to be configured and what you have to do exactly.  In xdvi you normally have to use C-down-mouse-1.

Note that inverse search with the Evince PDF viewer or its MATE fork Atril might fail in raising the Emacs frame after updating point in your document's buffer.  There is simply no way to raise the Emacs frame reliably accross different operating systems and different window managers with their different focus stealing policies.  If the Emacs frame is not raised after performing an inverse search from Evince or Atril, you can customize the following option.

 -- User Option: TeX-raise-frame-function
     A function that will be called after performing an inverse search from Evince or Atril in order to raise the current Emacs frame.

     If your Emacs frame is already raised in that situation, just leave this variable set to its default value raise-frame.  Otherwise, here are some alternative settings that work for some users.

          ;; Alternative 1: For some users, `x-focus-frame' works.
          (setq TeX-raise-frame-function #'x-focus-frame)

          ;; Alternative 2: Under GNOME 3.20 (and probably others), it
          ;; seems some focus stealing prevention policy prohibits that
          ;; some window gets the focus immediately after the user has
          ;; clicked in some other window.  Here waiting a bit before
          ;; issuing the request seems to work.
          (setq TeX-raise-frame-function
                (lambda ()
                  (run-at-time 0.5 nil #'x-focus-frame)))

          ;; Alternative 3: Use the external wmctrl tool in order to
          ;; force Emacs into the focus.
          (setq TeX-raise-frame-function
                (lambda ()
                  (call-process
                   "wmctrl" nil nil nil "-i" "-R"
                   (frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'outer-window-id))))

Catching the errors
===================

Once you've formatted your document you may `debug' it, i.e. browse through the errors (La)TeX reported.  You may also have a look at a nicely formatted list of all errors and warnings reported by the compiler.

 -- Command: TeX-next-error ARG REPARSE
     (C-c `)  Go to the next error reported by TeX.  The view will be split in two, with the cursor placed as close as possible to the error in the top view.  In the bottom view, the error message will be displayed along with some explanatory text.

     An optional numeric ARG, positive or negative, specifies how many error messages to move.  A negative ARG means to move back to previous error messages, see also TeX-previous-error.

     The optional REPARSE argument makes AUCTeX reparse the error message buffer and start the debugging from the first error.  This can also be achieved by calling the function with a prefix argument (C-u).

 -- Command: TeX-previous-error ARG
     (M-g p) Go to the previous error reported by TeX.  An optional numeric ARG specifies how many error messages to move backward. This is like calling TeX-next-error with a negative argument.

The command TeX-previous-error works only if AUCTeX can parse the whole TeX log buffer.  This is controlled by the TeX-parse-all-errors variable.

 -- User Option: TeX-parse-all-errors
     If t, AUCTeX automatically parses the whole output log buffer right after running a TeX command, in order to collect all warnings and errors.  This makes it possible to navigate back and forth between the error messages using TeX-next-error and TeX-previous-error.  This is the default.  If nil, AUCTeX does not parse the whole output log buffer and TeX-previous-error cannot be used.

As default, AUCTeX will display a special help buffer containing the error reported by TeX along with the documentation.  There is however an `expert' option, which allows you to display the real TeX output.

 -- User Option: TeX-display-help
     If t AUCTeX will automatically display a help text whenever an error is encountered using TeX-next-error (C-c `).  If nil a terse information about the error is displayed in the echo area.  If expert AUCTeX will display the output buffer with the raw TeX output.

Controlling warnings to be reported
-----------------------------------

Normally AUCTeX will only report real errors, but you may as well ask it to report `bad boxes' and warnings as well.

 -- Command: TeX-toggle-debug-bad-boxes
     (C-c C-t C-b) Toggle whether AUCTeX should stop at bad boxes (i.e. overfull and underfull boxes) as well as normal errors.  The boolean option TeX-debug-bad-boxes is set accordingly.

 -- Command: TeX-toggle-debug-warnings
     (C-c C-t C-w) Toggle whether AUCTeX should stop at warnings as well as normal errors.  The boolean option TeX-debug-warnings is set accordingly.

While many users desire to have warnings reported after compilation, there are certain warnings that are considered unimportant and users want to ignore them.  For a more fine-grained control of what kinds of warnings should be shown after compilation, AUCTeX provides other options.

 -- User Option: TeX-ignore-warnings
     Controls which warnings are to be ignored.

     It can be a regexp matching the message of the warnings to be ignored.

     More advanced users can set also this option to a symbol with the name of a custom function taking as arguments all the information of the warning listed in TeX-error-list variable, except the last one about whether to ignore the warning.  See the code of TeX-warning function and the documentation of TeX-error-list for more details.

 -- Command: TeX-toggle-suppress-ignored-warnings
     (C-c C-t C-x) Toggle whether AUCTeX should actually hide the ignored warnings specified with TeX-ignore-warnings.  The boolean option TeX-suppress-ignored-warnings is set accordingly.  If this is nil, all warnings are shown, even those matched by TeX-ignore-warnings, otherwise these are hidden.

     Note that TeX-debug-warnings takes the precedence: if it is nil, all warnings are hidden in any case.

List of all errors and warnings
-------------------------------

When the option TeX-parse-all-errors is non-nil, you will be also able to open an overview of all errors and warnings reported by the TeX compiler.

 -- Command: TeX-error-overview
     Show an overview of the errors and warnings occurred in the last TeX run.

     In this window you can visit the error on which point is by pressing RET, and visit the next or previous issue by pressing n or p respectively.  A prefix argument to these keys specifies how many errors to move forward or backward.  You can visit an error also by clicking on its message.  Jump to error point in the source code with j, and use l see the error in the log buffer.  In addition, you can toggle visibility of bad boxes, generic warnings, and ignored warnings with b, w, and x, respectively (see Ignoring warnings for details).  Press q to quit the overview.

 -- User Option: TeX-error-overview-open-after-TeX-run
     When this boolean variable is non-nil, the error overview will be automatically opened after running TeX if there are errors or warnings to show.

The error overview is opened in a new window of the current frame by default, but you can change this behavior by customizing the option TeX-error-overview-setup.

 -- User Option: TeX-error-overview-setup
     Controls the frame setup of the error overview.  The possible value is: separate-frame; with a nil value the current frame is used instead.

     The parameters of the separate frame can be set with the TeX-error-overview-frame-parameters option.

     If the display does not support multi frame, the current frame will be used regardless of the value of this variable.

Checking for problems
=====================

Running TeX or LaTeX will only find regular errors in the document, not examples of bad style.  Furthermore, description of the errors may often be confusing.  The utilities lacheck and chktex can be used to find style errors, such as forgetting to escape the space after an abbreviation or using ... instead of \ldots and other similar problems.  You start lacheck with C-c C-c Check RET and chktex with C-c C-c ChkTeX RET.  The result will be a list of errors in the *compilation* buffer.  You can go through the errors with C-x ` (next-error, see Compilation (The Emacs Editor)), which will move point to the location of the next error.

Alternatively, you may want in-buffer notation.  AUCTeX provides support for this using the Flymake package in Emacs 26 or newer (see Using Flymake (GNU Flymake) for details).  To enable, call M-x flymake-mode RET in the buffer or enable it in all buffers by adding this to your init file:

     (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook #'flymake-mode)

Note that AUCTeX currently only provides support for using chktex as the flymake backend.

Each of the two utilities lacheck and chktex will find some errors the other doesn't, but chktex is more configurable, allowing you to create your own errors.  You may need to install the programs before using them.  You can get lacheck from URL:https://www.ctan.org/pkg/lacheck and chktex from URL:https://www.ctan.org/pkg/chktex.  TeX Live contains both.

Controlling the output
======================

A number of commands are available for controlling the output of an application running under AUCTeX

 -- Command: TeX-kill-job
     (C-c C-k)  Kill currently running external application. This may be either of TeX, LaTeX, previewer, BibTeX, etc.

 -- Command: TeX-recenter-output-buffer
     (C-c C-l)  Recenter the output buffer so that the bottom line is visible.

 -- Command: TeX-home-buffer
     (C-c ^) Go to the `master' file in the document associated with the current buffer, or if already there, to the file where the current process was started.

Additionally, output files produced by AUCTeX can be placed in a separate directory.

 -- User Option: TeX-output-dir
     Set this option to the path of a directory where output files will be placed.  The output files include those that are produced by applications running under AUCTeX, temporary files related to region processing and the previewlatex files.  If a relative path is specified, it is interpreted as being relative to the master file in a mutlifile document.

     This is a buffer local variable and must be set separately for all documents and all files in a multifile document.  For example,

          %%% Local Variables:
          %%% mode: latex
          %%% TeX-output-dir: "build"
          %%% End:

     Alternatively, you may use setq-default to set the default value of this option or set it as a directory local variable (see Directory Variables (The Emacs Editor)).

     Note that a non-nil value of TeX-output-dir might be incompatible with some TeX commands and macros.  In particular, the LaTeX macro \include is known to not work with this option.  Some TeX packages which produce intermediary files might also be incompatible.  A possible workaround for those packages is to append the value of TeX-output-dir to the environment variables TEXINPUTS and BIBINPUTS.

Cleaning intermediate and output files
======================================

 -- Command: TeX-clean
     Remove generated intermediate files.  In case a prefix argument is given, remove output files as well.

     Canonical access to the function is provided by the Clean and Clean All entries in TeX-command-list, invokable with C-c C-c or the Command menu.

     The patterns governing which files to remove can be adapted separately for each AUCTeX mode by means of the following variables:

       * plain-TeX-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * plain-TeX-clean-output-suffixes

       * LaTeX-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * LaTeX-clean-output-suffixes

       * docTeX-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * docTeX-clean-output-suffixes

       * Texinfo-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * Texinfo-clean-output-suffixes

       * ConTeXt-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * ConTeXt-clean-output-suffixes

       * AmSTeX-clean-intermediate-suffixes

       * AmSTeX-clean-output-suffixes

 -- User Option: TeX-clean-confirm
     Control if deletion of intermediate and output files has to be confirmed before it is actually done.  If non-nil, ask before deleting files.

Documentation about macros and packages
=======================================

 -- Command: TeX-documentation-texdoc
     (C-c ?)  Get documentation about the packages installed on your system, using texdoc to find the manuals.  The function will prompt for the name of packages.  If point is on a word, this will be suggested as default.

     If the command is called with a prefix argument, you will be shown a list of manuals of the given package among to choose.

     The command can be invoked by the key binding mentioned above as well as the Find Documentation... entry in the mode menu.

Customization and Extension
***************************

Modes and Hooks
===============

AUCTeX supports a wide variety of derivatives and extensions of TeX.  Besides plain TeX those are LaTeX, AMS-TeX, ConTeXt, Texinfo and docTeX.  For each of them there is a separate major mode in AUCTeX and each major mode runs text-mode-hook, TeX-mode-hook as well as a hook special to the mode in this order.  (As an exception, Texinfo mode does not run TeX-mode-hook.) The following table provides an overview of the respective mode functions and hooks.

Type   Mode function   Hook
Plain TeX   plain-tex-mode   plain-TeX-mode-hook
LaTeX       latex-mode       LaTeX-mode-hook
AMS-TeX     ams-tex-mode     AmS-TeX-mode-hook
ConTeXt     context-mode     ConTeXt-mode-hook
Texinfo        texinfo-mode     Texinfo-mode-hook
DocTeX      doctex-mode      docTeX-mode-hook

If you need to make a customization via a hook which is only relevant for one of the modes listed above, put it into the respective mode hook, if it is relevant for any AUCTeX mode, add it to TeX-mode-hook and if it is relevant for all text modes, append it to text-mode-hook.

Other useful hooks are listed below.

 -- Variable: TeX-after-compilation-finished-hook
     Hook which is run after the TeX/LaTeX processor has successfully finished compiling your document.  (see Processing, for finding out how to compile your document.)  Each function in the hook is run with the compiled output document as its argument.

     This is useful for automatically refreshing the viewer after re-compilation especially when using Emacs viewers such as DocView or PDF Tools.  The function TeX-revert-document-buffer can be added to the hook for this purpose.

Multifile Documents
===================

You may wish to spread a document over many files (as you are likely to do if there are multiple authors, or if you have not yet discovered the power of the outline commands (see Outline)).  This can be done by having a ``master'' file in which you include the various files with the TeX macro \input or the LaTeX macro \include.  These files may also include other files themselves.  However, to format the document you must run the commands on the top level master file.

When you, for example, ask AUCTeX to run a command on the master file, it has no way of knowing the name of the master file.  By default, it will assume that the current file is the master file.  If you insert the following in your init file (init.el or .emacs), AUCTeX will use a more advanced algorithm.

     (setq-default TeX-master nil) ; Query for master file.

If AUCTeX finds the line indicating the end of the header in a master file (TeX-header-end), it can figure out for itself that this is a master file.  Otherwise, it will ask for the name of the master file associated with the buffer.  To avoid asking you again, AUCTeX will automatically insert the name of the master file as a file variable (see File Variables (The Emacs Editor)).  You can also insert the file variable yourself, by putting the following text at the end of your files.

     %%% Local Variables:
     %%% TeX-master: "master"
     %%% End:

You should always set this variable to the name of the top level document.  If you always use the same name for your top level documents, you can set TeX-master in your init file such as init.el or .emacs.

     (setq-default TeX-master "master") ; All master files called "master".

 -- User Option: TeX-master
     The master file associated with the current buffer.  If the file being edited is actually included from another file, then you can tell AUCTeX the name of the master file by setting this variable.  If there are multiple levels of nesting, specify the top level file.

     If this variable is nil, AUCTeX will query you for the name.

     If the variable is t, then AUCTeX will assume the file is a master file itself.

     If the variable is shared, then AUCTeX will query for the name, but will not change the file.

     If the variable is dwim, AUCTeX will try to avoid querying by attempting to ``do what I mean''; and then change the file.

 -- User Option: TeX-one-master
     Regular expression matching ordinary TeX files.

     You should set this variable to match the name of all files, for which it is a good idea to append a TeX-master file variable entry automatically.  When AUCTeX adds the name of the master file as a file variable, it does not need to ask next time you edit the file.

     If you dislike AUCTeX automatically modifying your files, you can set this variable to "<none>".  By default, AUCTeX will modify any file with an extension of .tex, .texi or .dtx.

 -- Command: TeX-master-file-ask
     (C-c _) Query for the name of a master file and add the respective File Variables (see File Variables (The Emacs Editor)) to the file for setting this variable permanently.

     AUCTeX will not ask for a master file when it encounters existing files.  This function shall give you the possibility to insert the variable manually.

AUCTeX keeps track of macros, environments, labels, and style files that are used in a given document.  For this to work with multifile documents, AUCTeX has to have a place to put the information about the files in the document.  This is done by having an auto subdirectory placed in the directory where your document is located.  Each time you save a file, AUCTeX will write information about the file into the auto directory.  When you load a file, AUCTeX will read the information in the auto directory about the file you loaded and the master file specified by TeX-master.  Since the master file (perhaps indirectly) includes all other files in the document, AUCTeX will get information from all files in the document.  This means that you will get from each file, for example, completion for all labels defined anywhere in the document.

AUCTeX will create the auto directory automatically if TeX-auto-save is non-nil.  Without it, the files in the document will not know anything about each other, except for the name of the master file.  See Automatic Local.

 -- Command: TeX-save-document
     (C-c C-d) Save all buffers known to belong to the current document.

 -- User Option: TeX-save-query
     If non-nil, then query the user before saving each file with TeX-save-document.

Automatic Parsing of TeX Files
==============================

AUCTeX depends heavily on being able to extract information from the buffers by parsing them.  Since parsing the buffer can be somewhat slow, the parsing is initially disabled.  You are encouraged to enable them by adding the following lines to your init file such as init.el or .emacs.

     (setq TeX-parse-self t) ; Enable parse on load.
     (setq TeX-auto-save t) ; Enable parse on save.

The latter command will make AUCTeX store the parsed information in an auto subdirectory in the directory each time the TeX files are stored, see Automatic Local.  If AUCTeX finds the pre-parsed information when loading a file, it will not need to reparse the buffer. The information in the auto directory is also useful for multifile documents, see Multifile, since it allows each file to access the parsed information from all the other files in the document. This is done by first reading the information from the master file, and then recursively the information from each file stored in the master file.

The variables can also be set on a per file basis, by changing the file local variables.

     %%% Local Variables:
     %%% TeX-parse-self: t
     %%% TeX-auto-save: t
     %%% End:

Even when you have disabled the automatic parsing, you can force the generation of style information by pressing C-c C-n.  This is often the best choice, as you will be able to decide when it is necessary to reparse the file.

 -- User Option: TeX-parse-self
     Parse file after loading it if no style hook is found for it.

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-save
     Automatically save style information when saving the buffer.

 -- Command: TeX-normal-mode ARG
     (C-c C-n) Remove all information about this buffer, and apply the style hooks again.  Save buffer first including style information.  With optional argument, also reload the style hooks.

When AUCTeX saves your buffer, it can optionally convert all tabs in your buffer into spaces. Tabs confuse AUCTeX's error message parsing and so should generally be avoided.  However, tabs are significant in some environments, and so by default AUCTeX does not remove them. To convert tabs to spaces when saving a buffer, insert the following in your init file such as init.el or .emacs:

     (setq TeX-auto-untabify t)

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-untabify
     Automatically remove all tabs from a file before saving it.

Instead of disabling the parsing entirely, you can also speed it significantly up by limiting the information it will search for (and store) when parsing the buffer.  You can do this by setting the default values for the buffer local variables TeX-auto-regexp-list and TeX-auto-parse-length in your init file such as init.el or .emacs.

     ;; Only parse LaTeX class and package information.
     (setq-default TeX-auto-regexp-list 'LaTeX-auto-minimal-regexp-list)
     ;; The class and package information is usually near the beginning.
     (setq-default TeX-auto-parse-length 2000)

This example will speed the parsing up significantly, but AUCTeX will no longer be able to provide completion for labels, macros, environments, or bibitems specified in the document, nor will it know what files belong to the document.

These variables can also be specified on a per file basis, by changing the file local variables.

     %%% Local Variables:
     %%% TeX-auto-regexp-list: TeX-auto-full-regexp-list
     %%% TeX-auto-parse-length: 999999
     %%% End:

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-regexp-list
     List of regular expressions used for parsing the current file.

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-parse-length
     Maximal length of TeX file that will be parsed.

The pre-specified lists of regexps are defined below.  You can use these before loading AUCTeX by quoting them, as in the example above.

 -- Constant: TeX-auto-empty-regexp-list
     Parse nothing

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-minimal-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX class and packages.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-label-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX labels.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-index-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX index and glossary entries.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-class-regexp-list
     Only parse macros in LaTeX classes and packages.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-pagestyle-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX pagestyles.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-counter-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX counters.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-length-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX lengths.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-savebox-regexp-list
     Only parse LaTeX saveboxes.

 -- Constant: LaTeX-auto-regexp-list
     Parse common LaTeX commands.

 -- Constant: plain-TeX-auto-regexp-list
     Parse common plain TeX commands.

 -- Constant: TeX-auto-full-regexp-list
     Parse all TeX and LaTeX commands that AUCTeX can use.

Language Support
================

TeX and Emacs are usable for European (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) based languages.  Some LaTeX and EmacsLisp packages are available for easy typesetting and editing documents in European languages.

All Emacs versions supported by current AUCTeX can handle CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) languages by default.

In most cases, special versions of TeX engines are needed for high-quality typesetting of CJK languages: CTeX and ChinaTeX for Chinese, ASCII pTeX, upTeX and NTT jTeX for Japanese, HLaTeX and kTeX for Korean.  They are necessary as well when you want to typeset documents saved in their domestic encodings such as Shift-JIS.  Currently, AUCTeX offers native support for pTeX, upTeX and jTeX only.

If you don't need fine tuning in the result with respect to the typesetting rules of their respective national standards, most unicode based TeX engines, e.g. LuaTeX and XeTeX, can handle CJK languages by default if they are encoded in UTF-8.  The CJK-LaTeX package is provided for supporting CJK scripts in a standard LaTeX document.

Using AUCTeX with European Languages
------------------------------------

Typing and Displaying Non-ASCII Characters
..........................................

First you will need a way to write non-ASCII characters.  You can either use macros, or teach TeX about the ISO character sets.  I prefer the latter, it has the advantage that the usual standard emacs word movement and case change commands will work.

Recommended encoding for LaTeX document is UTF-8.  Recent LaTeX2e has native support for UTF-8.  If your LaTeX2e is not recent enough, just add \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}.

You can still use ISO 8859 Latin 1 encoding with \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}.

To be able to display non-ASCII characters you will need an appropriate font.  All Emacs versions supported by current AUCTeX can display 8-bit characters, provided that suitable fonts are installed.

A compromise is to use an European character set when editing the file, and convert to TeX macros when reading and writing the files.

iso-cvt.el
     Much like iso-tex.el but is bundled with Emacs 19.23 and later.

X-Symbol
     a much more complete package for Emacs that can also handle a lot of mathematical characters and input methods.

Style Files for Different Languages
...................................

AUCTeX supports style files for several languages.  Each style file may modify AUCTeX to better support the language, and will run a language specific hook that will allow you to for example change ispell dictionary, or run code to change the keyboard remapping.  The following will for example choose a Danish dictionary for documents including \usepackage[danish]{babel}. This requires parsing to be enabled, see Parsing Files.

     (add-hook 'TeX-language-dk-hook
               (lambda () (ispell-change-dictionary "danish")))

The following style files are recognized:

brazilian
brazil
     Runs style hook TeX-language-pt-br-hook.  Gives " word syntax, makes the " key inserts `` or '' depending on context.  Typing " twice will insert a literal ".  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.

bulgarian
     Runs style hook TeX-language-bg-hook.  Gives " word syntax, makes the " key insert a literal ".  Typing " twice will insert "` or "' depending on context.  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.

czech
     Runs style hook TeX-language-cz-hook.  Pressing " will insert \uv{ and } depending on context.

danish
     Runs style hook TeX-language-dk-hook.  Pressing " will insert "` and "' depending on context.  Typing - twice will insert "=, i.e. a hyphen string allowing hyphenation in the composing words.

dutch
     Runs style hook TeX-language-nl-hook.

english
australian
canadian
newzealand
     Runs style hook TeX-language-en-hook.

frenchb
francais
     Runs style hook TeX-language-fr-hook.  Pressing " will insert \og and \fg depending on context.  Note that the language name for customizing TeX-quote-language-alist is french.

german
ngerman
     Runs style hook TeX-language-de-hook.  Gives " word syntax, makes the " key insert a literal ".  Pressing the key twice will give you opening or closing German quotes ("` or "').  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.

icelandic
     Runs style hook TeX-language-is-hook.  Gives " word syntax, makes the " key insert a literal ".  Typing " twice will insert "` or "' depending on context.  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.

italian
     Runs style hook TeX-language-it-hook.  Pressing " will insert "< and "> depending on context.

polish
     Runs style hook TeX-language-pl-hook.  Gives " word syntax and makes the " key insert a literal ".  Pressing " twice will insert "` or "' depending on context.

polski
     Runs style hook TeX-language-pl-hook.  Makes the " key insert a literal ".  Pressing " twice will insert ,, or '' depending on context.

portuguese
portuges
     Runs style hook TeX-language-pt-hook.  Gives " word syntax, makes the " key inserts "< or "> depending on context. Typing " twice will insert a literal ".  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.  Note that the language name for customizing TeX-quote-language-alist is portuguese.

slovak
     Runs style hook TeX-language-sk-hook.  Pressing " will insert \uv{ and } depending on context.

swedish
     Runs style hook TeX-language-sv-hook.  Pressing " will insert ''.  Typing - twice will insert "=, three times --.

Replacement of language-specific hyphen strings like "= with dashes does not require to type - three times in a row.  You can put point after the hypen string anytime and trigger the replacement by typing -.

In case you are not satisfied with the suggested behavior of quote and hyphen insertion you can change it by customizing the variables TeX-quote-language-alist and LaTeX-babel-hyphen-language-alist respectively.

 -- User Option: TeX-quote-language-alist
     Used for overriding the default language-specific quote insertion behavior.  This is an alist where each element is a list consisting of four items.  The first item is the name of the language in concern as a string.  See the list of supported languages above.  The second item is the opening quotation mark.  The third item is the closing quotation mark.  Opening and closing quotation marks can be specified directly as strings or as functions returning a string.  The fourth item is a boolean controlling quote insertion.  It should be non-nil if if the special quotes should only be used after inserting a literal " character first, i.e. on second key press.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-babel-hyphen-language-alist
     Used for overriding the behavior of hyphen insertion for specific languages.  Every element in this alist is a list of three items.  The first item should specify the affected language as a string.  The second item denotes the hyphen string to be used as a string.  The third item, a boolean, controls the behavior of hyphen insertion and should be non-nil if the special hyphen should be inserted after inserting a literal - character, i.e. on second key press.

The defaults of hyphen insertion are defined by the variables LaTeX-babel-hyphen and LaTeX-babel-hyphen-after-hyphen respectively.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-babel-hyphen
     String to be used when typing -.  This usually is a hyphen alternative or hyphenation aid provided by babel and the related language style files, like "=, "~ or "-.

     Set it to an empty string or nil in order to disable language-specific hyphen insertion.

 -- User Option: LaTeX-babel-hyphen-after-hyphen
     Control insertion of hyphen strings.  If non-nil insert normal hyphen on first key press and swap it with the language-specific hyphen string specified in the variable LaTeX-babel-hyphen on second key press. If nil do it the other way round.

Using AUCTeX with Japanese TeX
------------------------------

To write Japanese text with AUCTeX, you need the versions of TeX and Emacs that support Japanese.  AUCTeX supports three Japanese TeX engines by default: NTT jTeX, ASCII pTeX and upTeX.

Activate japanese-plain-tex-mode or japanese-latex-mode to use the Japanese TeX engines.  If it doesn't work, send mail to Masayuki Ataka masayuki.ataka@gmail.com or Ikumi Keita ikumikeita@jcom.home.ne.jp, who currently concern with stuff related to Japanese in AUCTeX.  None of the primary AUCTeX maintainers understand Japanese, so they cannot help you.

It is recommended to enable TeX-parse-self for typical Japanese LaTeX users.  When enabled, japanese-latex-mode selects the suitable Japanese TeX engine automatically based on the class file name (such as jbook, jsarticle and tjreport) and its option.  See Parsing Files.

It is important to select the suitable Japanese TeX engine because the selected engine determines the command name such as platex and uptex to typeset the document.  If you find that wrong command is used, check the value of TeX-engine on that buffer. If the value does not suit the current document, change the value by the TeXing Options submenu below the Command menu. See Processor Options.

To make the selected engine to persist across Emacs sessions, there are two ways from which you can choose one according to your needs:

 1. If you use a specific engine (almost) exclusively, customize the option japanese-TeX-engine-default.

      -- User Option: japanese-TeX-engine-default
          The default TeX-engine in Japanese TeX mode.

          The default value is ptex.

 2. If you want to set the engine on a per file basis, use the file local variables to set TeX-engine.

     Here is a sample code to set TeX-engine to uptex:

          %%% Local Variables:
          %%% mode: japanese-latex
          %%% TeX-engine: uptex
          %%% End:

In the both cases above, the valid value is one of ptex, jtex and uptex.

You can override the command names associated with the above three engines or define your own engine by customizing TeX-engine-alist.  See Processor Options.

It is sometimes necessary to use an engine which differs from the one AUCTeX selects automatically.  For example, even when you want to use j-article document class deliberately with ASCII pLaTeX, AUCTeX selects NTT jLaTeX command if TeX-parse-self is enabled, because j-article originally belongs to NTT jLaTeX. In such cases, use the file local variable method above to select the engine you intend to use.

If you usually use AUCTeX in Japanese, setting the following variables is useful.

 -- User Option: TeX-default-mode
     Mode to enter for a new file when it cannot be determined whether the file is plain TeX or LaTeX or what.

     If you want to enter Japanese LaTeX mode whenever this may happen, set the variable like this:

          (setq TeX-default-mode 'japanese-latex-mode)

 -- User Option: japanese-LaTeX-default-style
     The default style/class when creating a new Japanese LaTeX document.

     The default value is "jarticle".

It is recommended also for Japanese users to customize the option TeX-PDF-from-DVI to "Dvipdfmx".  See Processor Options.

There are three customize options with regard to the encoding of Japanese text.

 -- User Option: japanese-TeX-use-kanji-opt-flag
     If non-nil, AUCTeX adds -kanji option to the typesetting command when TeX-engine is ptex.

Usually AUCTeX guesses the right coding systems for input to and output from the Japanese TeX process, but you can override them by the following two customize options.

 -- User Option: TeX-japanese-process-input-coding-system
     If non-nil, used for encoding input to Japanese TeX process. When nil, AUCTeX tries to choose suitable coding system.

 -- User Option: TeX-japanese-process-output-coding-system
     If non-nil, used for decoding output from Japanese TeX process. When nil, AUCTeX tries to choose suitable coding system.

The former customize options japanese-TeX-command-default, japanese-LaTeX-command-default and japanese-TeX-command-list are removed from AUCTeX.  Use japanese-TeX-engine-default instead.  If you need to customize the executable file name such as "latex", the options for them, or both, customize TeX-engine-alist.

The following two additional font commands are available in LaTeX mode buffer.

C-c C-f g
     Insert gothic font command \textgt{-!-} or \mathgt{-!-} depending on the context.

C-c C-f m
     Insert mincho font command \textmc{-!-} or \mathmc{-!-} depending on the context.

Although they are meaningful only with ptex and uptex engines, it won't matter in buffers with other engines.

See tex-jp.el for more information.

Automatic Customization
=======================

Since AUCTeX is so highly customizable, it makes sense that it is able to customize itself.  The automatic customization consists of scanning TeX files and extracting symbols, environments, and things like that.

The automatic customization is done on three different levels.  The global level is the level shared by all users at your site, and consists of scanning the standard TeX style files, and any extra styles added locally for all users on the site.  The private level deals with those style files you have written for your own use, and use in different documents.  You may have a ~/lib/TeX/ directory where you store useful style files for your own use.  The local level is for a specific directory, and deals with writing customization for the files for your normal TeX documents.

If compared with the environment variable TEXINPUTS, the global level corresponds to the directories built into TeX.  The private level corresponds to the directories you add yourself, except for ., which is the local level.

By default AUCTeX will search for customization files in all the global, private, and local style directories, but you can also set the path directly.  This is useful if you for example want to add another person's style hooks to your path.  Please note that all matching files found in TeX-style-path are loaded, and all hooks defined in the files will be executed.

 -- User Option: TeX-style-path
     List of directories to search for AUCTeX style files.

By default, when AUCTeX searches a directory for files, it will recursively search through subdirectories.

 -- User Option: TeX-file-recurse
     Whether to search TeX directories recursively: nil means do not recurse, a positive integer means go that far deep in the directory hierarchy, t means recurse indefinitely.

By default, AUCTeX will ignore files named ., .., SCCS, RCS, and CVS.

 -- User Option: TeX-ignore-file
     Regular expression matching file names to ignore.

     These files or directories will not be considered when searching for TeX files in a directory.

Automatic Customization for the Site
------------------------------------

Assuming that the automatic customization at the global level was done when AUCTeX was installed, your choice is now: will you use it?  If you use it, you will benefit by having access to all the symbols and environments available for completion purposes.  The drawback is slower load time when you edit a new file and perhaps too many confusing symbols when you try to do a completion.

You can disable the automatic generated global style hooks by setting the variable TeX-auto-global to nil.

 -- User Option: TeX-macro-global
     Directories containing the site's TeX style files.

 -- User Option: TeX-style-global
     Directory containing hand generated TeX information.

     These correspond to TeX macros shared by all users of a site.

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-global
     Directory containing automatically generated information.

     For storing automatic extracted information about the TeX macros shared by all users of a site.

Automatic Customization for a User
----------------------------------

You should specify where you store your private TeX macros, so AUCTeX can extract their information.  The extracted information will go to the directories listed in TeX-auto-private

Use M-x TeX-auto-generate RET to extract the information.

 -- User Option: TeX-macro-private
     Directories where you store your personal TeX macros.  The value defaults to the directories listed in the TEXINPUTS and BIBINPUTS environment variables or to the respective directories in $TEXMFHOME of kpsewhich setting if no results can be obtained from the environment variables.

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-private
     List of directories containing automatically generated AUCTeX style files.  These correspond to the personal TeX macros.

 -- Command: TeX-auto-generate TEX AUTO
     (M-x TeX-auto-generate RET) Generate style hook for TEX and store it in AUTO.  If TEX is a directory, generate style hooks for all files in the directory.

 -- User Option: TeX-style-private
     List of directories containing hand generated AUCTeX style files. These correspond to the personal TeX macros.

Automatic Customization for a Directory
---------------------------------------

AUCTeX can update the style information about a file each time you save it, and it will do this if the directory TeX-auto-local exists.  TeX-auto-local is by default set to "auto", so simply creating an auto directory will enable automatic saving of style information.

The advantage of doing this is that macros, labels, etc. defined in any file in a multifile document will be known in all the files in the document.  The disadvantage is that saving will be slower.  To disable, set TeX-auto-local to nil.

 -- User Option: TeX-style-local
     Directory containing hand generated TeX information.

     These correspond to TeX macros found in the current directory.

 -- User Option: TeX-auto-local
     Directory containing automatically generated TeX information.

     These correspond to TeX macros found in the current directory.

Writing Your Own Style Support
==============================

See Automatic, for a discussion about automatically generated global, private, and local style files.  The hand generated style files are equivalent, except that they by default are found in style directories instead of auto directories.

If you write some useful support for a public TeX style file, please send it to us.

A Simple Style File
-------------------

Here is a simple example of a style file.

     ;;; book.el - Special code for book style.

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "book"
      (lambda ()
        (LaTeX-largest-level-set "part"))
      TeX-dialect)

The example is from the AUCTeX sources and is loaded for any LaTeX document using the book document class (or style before LaTeX2e). (Note that the above code is much simplified for explanatory purpose.) The file specifies that the largest kind of section in such a document is part.  The interesting thing to notice is that the style file defines an (anonymous) function, and adds it to the list of loaded style hooks by calling TeX-add-style-hook.

The first time the user indirectly tries to access some style-specific information, such as the largest sectioning command available, the style hooks for all files directly or indirectly read by the current document are executed.  The actual files will only be evaluated once, but the hooks will be called for each buffer using the style file.

Note that the basename of the style file and the name of the style hook should usually be identical.

 -- Function: TeX-add-style-hook STYLE HOOK &optional DIALECT-EXPR
     Add HOOK to the list of functions to run when we use the TeX file STYLE and the current dialect is one in the set derived from DIALECT-EXPR.  When DIALECT-EXPR is omitted, then HOOK is allowed to be run whatever the current dialect is.

     DIALECT-EXPR may be one of:

       * A symbol indicating a singleton containing one basic TeX dialect, this symbol shall be selected among:

          :latex
               For all files in LaTeX mode, or any mode derived thereof.

          :bibtex
               For all files in BibTeX mode, or any mode derived thereof.

          :texinfo
               For all files in Texinfo mode.

          :plain-tex
               For all files in plain-TeX mode, or any mode derived thereof.

          :context
               For all files in ConTeXt mode.

          :classopt
               For class options of LaTeX document.  This is provided as pseudo-dialect for style hooks associated with class options.

       * A logical expression like:

          (or DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 ... DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N)
               For union of the sets of dialects corresponding to  DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 through DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N

          (and DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 ... DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N)
               For intersection of the sets of dialects corresponding to DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 through DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N

          (nor DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 ... DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N)
               For complement of the union sets of dialects corresponding to DIALECT-EXPRESSION1 through DIALECT-EXPRESSION_N relatively to the set of all supported dialects

          (not DIALECT-EXPR)
               For complement set of dialect corresponding to DIALECT-EXPR relatively to the set of all supported dialects

In case of adding a style hook for LaTeX, when calling function TeX-add-style-hook it is thought more futureproof for argument DIALECT-EXPR to pass constant TeX-dialect currently defined to :latex, rather than passing :latex directly.

 -- Constant: TeX-dialect
     Default dialect for use with function TeX-add-style-hook for argument DIALECT-EXPR when the hook is to be run only on LaTeX file, or any mode derived thereof.

Adding Support for Macros
-------------------------

The most common thing to define in a style hook is new symbols (TeX macros).  Most likely along with a description of the arguments to the function, since the symbol itself can be defined automatically.

Here are a few examples from latex.el.

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "latex"
      (lambda ()
        (TeX-add-symbols
         '("arabic" TeX-arg-counter)
         '("label" TeX-arg-define-label)
         '("ref" TeX-arg-ref)
         '("newcommand" TeX-arg-define-macro [ "Number of arguments" ] t)
         '("newtheorem" TeX-arg-define-environment
           [ TeX-arg-environment "Numbered like" ]
           t [ TeX-arg-counter "Within counter" ]))))

 -- Function: TeX-add-symbols SYMBOL ...
     Add each SYMBOL to the list of known symbols.

Each argument to TeX-add-symbols is a list describing one symbol. The head of the list is the name of the symbol, the remaining elements describe each argument.

If there are no additional elements, the symbol will be inserted with point inside braces.  Otherwise, each argument of this function should match an argument of the TeX macro.  What is done depends on the argument type.

If a macro is defined multiple times, AUCTeX will choose the one with the longest definition (i.e. the one with the most arguments).

Thus, to overwrite

             '("tref" 1) ; one argument

you can specify

             '("tref" TeX-arg-ref ignore) ; two arguments

ignore is a function that does not do anything, so when you insert a tref you will be prompted for a label and no more.

You can use the following types of specifiers for arguments:

string
     Use the string as a prompt to prompt for the argument.

number
     Insert that many braces, leave point inside the first.  0 and -1 are special.  0 means that no braces are inserted.  -1 means that braces are inserted around the macro and an active region (e.g. {\tiny foo}).  If there is no active region, no braces are inserted.

nil
     Insert empty braces.

t
     Insert empty braces, leave point between the braces.

other symbols
     Call the symbol as a function.  You can define your own hook, or use one of the predefined argument hooks.

list
     If the car is a string, insert it as a prompt and the next element as initial input.  Otherwise, call the car of the list with the remaining elements as arguments.

vector
     Optional argument.  If it has more than one element, parse it as a list, otherwise parse the only element as above.  Use square brackets instead of curly braces, and is not inserted on empty user input.

A lot of argument hooks have already been defined.  The first argument to all hooks is a flag indicating if it is an optional argument.  It is up to the hook to determine what to do with the remaining arguments, if any.  Typically the next argument is used to overwrite the default prompt.

TeX-arg-conditional
     Implements if EXPR THEN ELSE.  If EXPR evaluates to true, parse THEN as an argument list, else parse ELSE as an argument list.

TeX-arg-literal
     Insert its arguments into the buffer.  Used for specifying extra syntax for a macro.

TeX-arg-free
     Parse its arguments but use no braces when they are inserted.

TeX-arg-eval
     Evaluate arguments and insert the result in the buffer.

TeX-arg-label
     Prompt for a label completing with known labels.  If RefTeX is active, prompt for the reference format.

TeX-arg-ref
     Prompt for a label completing with known labels.  If RefTeX is active, do not prompt for the reference format.  Usually, reference macros should use this function instead of TeX-arg-label.

TeX-arg-index-tag
     Prompt for an index tag.  This is the name of an index, not the entry.

TeX-arg-index
     Prompt for an index entry completing with known entries.

TeX-arg-length
     Prompt for a LaTeX length completing with known lengths.

TeX-arg-macro
     Prompt for a TeX macro with completion.

TeX-arg-date
     Prompt for a date, defaulting to the current date.  The format of the date is specified by the TeX-date-format option.  If you want to change the format when the babel package is loaded with a specific language, set TeX-date-format inside the appropriate language hook (for details see European).

TeX-arg-version
     Prompt for the version of a file, using as initial input the current date.

TeX-arg-environment
     Prompt for a LaTeX environment with completion.

TeX-arg-cite
     Prompt for a BibTeX citation.  If the variable TeX-arg-cite-note-p is non-nil, ask also for optional note in citations.

TeX-arg-counter
     Prompt for a LaTeX counter completing with known counters.

TeX-arg-savebox
     Prompt for a LaTeX savebox completing with known saveboxes.

TeX-arg-file
     Prompt for a filename in the current directory, and use it with the extension.

TeX-arg-file-name
     Prompt for a filename and use as initial input the name of the file being visited in the current buffer, with extension.

TeX-arg-file-name-sans-extension
     Prompt for a filename and use as initial input the name of the file being visited in the current buffer, without extension.

TeX-arg-input-file
     Prompt for the name of an input file in TeX's search path, and use it without the extension.  Run the style hooks for the file.  (Note that the behavior (type of prompt and inserted file name) of the function can be controlled by the variable TeX-arg-input-file-search.)

TeX-arg-define-label
     Prompt for a label completing with known labels.  Add label to list of defined labels.

TeX-arg-define-length
     Prompt for a LaTeX length completing with known lengths.  Add length to list of defined lengths.

TeX-arg-define-macro
     Prompt for a TeX macro with completion.  Add macro to list of defined macros.

TeX-arg-define-environment
     Prompt for a LaTeX environment with completion.  Add environment to list of defined environments.

TeX-arg-define-cite
     Prompt for a BibTeX citation.

TeX-arg-define-counter
     Prompt for a LaTeX counter.

TeX-arg-define-savebox
     Prompt for a LaTeX savebox.

TeX-arg-document
     Prompt for a LaTeX document class, using LaTeX-default-style as default value and LaTeX-default-options as default list of options.  If the variable TeX-arg-input-file-search is t, you will be able to complete with all LaTeX classes available on your system, otherwise classes listed in the variable LaTeX-style-list will be used for completion.  It is also provided completion for options of many common classes.

LaTeX-arg-usepackage
     Prompt for LaTeX packages.  If the variable TeX-arg-input-file-search is t, you will be able to complete with all LaTeX packages available on your system.  It is also provided completion for options of many common packages.

TeX-arg-bibstyle
     Prompt for a BibTeX style file completing with all style available on your system.

TeX-arg-bibliography
     Prompt for BibTeX database files completing with all databases available on your system.

TeX-arg-corner
     Prompt for a LaTeX side or corner position with completion.

TeX-arg-lr
     Prompt for a LaTeX side with completion.

TeX-arg-tb
     Prompt for a LaTeX side with completion.

TeX-arg-pagestyle
     Prompt for a LaTeX pagestyle with completion.

TeX-arg-verb
     Prompt for delimiter and text.

TeX-arg-verb-delim-or-brace
     Prompt for delimiter and text.  This function is similar to TeX-arg-verb, but is intended for macros which take their argument enclosed in delimiters or in braces.

TeX-arg-pair
     Insert a pair of numbers, use arguments for prompt.  The numbers are surrounded by parentheses and separated with a comma.

TeX-arg-size
     Insert width and height as a pair.  No arguments.

TeX-arg-coordinate
     Insert x and y coordinates as a pair.  No arguments.

LaTeX-arg-author
     Prompt for document author, using LaTeX-default-author as initial input.

TeX-read-key-val
     Prompt for a key=value list of options and return them.

TeX-arg-key-val
     Prompt for a key=value list of options and insert it as a TeX macro argument.

If you add new hooks, you can assume that point is placed directly after the previous argument, or after the macro name if this is the first argument.  Please leave point located after the argument you are inserting.  If you want point to be located somewhere else after all hooks have been processed, set the value of TeX-exit-mark.  It will point nowhere, until the argument hook sets it.

Some packages provide macros that are rarely useful to non-expert users. Those should be marked as expert macros using TeX-declare-expert-macros.

 -- Function: TeX-declare-expert-macros STYLE MACROS...
     Declare MACROS as expert macros of STYLE.

     Expert macros are completed depending on TeX-complete-expert-commands.

Adding Support for Environments
-------------------------------

Adding support for environments is very much like adding support for TeX macros, except that each environment normally only takes one argument, an environment hook.  The example is again a short version of latex.el.

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "latex"
      (lambda ()
        (LaTeX-add-environments
         '("document" LaTeX-env-document)
         '("enumerate" LaTeX-env-item)
         '("itemize" LaTeX-env-item)
         '("list" LaTeX-env-list))))

It is completely up to the environment hook to insert the environment, but the function LaTeX-insert-environment may be of some help. The hook will be called with the name of the environment as its first argument, and extra arguments can be provided by adding them to a list after the hook.

For simple environments with arguments, for example defined with \newenvironment, you can make AUCTeX prompt for the arguments by giving the prompt strings in the call to LaTeX-add-environments.  The fact that an argument is optional can be indicated by wrapping the prompt string in a vector.

For example, if you have defined a loop environment with the three arguments FROM, TO, and STEP, you can add support for them in a style file.

     %% loop.sty

     \newenvironment{loop}[3]{...}{...}

     ;; loop.el

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "loop"
      (lambda ()
        (LaTeX-add-environments
         '("loop" "From" "To" "Step"))))

If an environment is defined multiple times, AUCTeX will choose the one with the longest definition.  Thus, if you have an enumerate style file, and want it to replace the standard LaTeX enumerate hook above, you could define an enumerate.el file as follows, and place it in the appropriate style directory.

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "latex"
      (lambda ()
        (LaTeX-add-environments
         '("enumerate" LaTeX-env-enumerate foo))))

     (defun LaTeX-env-enumerate (environment &optional _ignore) ...)

The symbol foo will be passed to LaTeX-env-enumerate as the second argument, but since we only added it to overwrite the definition in latex.el it is just ignored.

 -- Function: LaTeX-add-environments ENV ...
     Add each ENV to list of loaded environments.

 -- Function: LaTeX-insert-environment ENV [ EXTRA ]
     Insert environment of type ENV, with optional argument EXTRA.

Following is a list of available hooks for LaTeX-add-environments:

LaTeX-env-item
     Insert the given environment and the first item.

LaTeX-env-figure
     Insert the given figure-like environment with a caption and a label.

LaTeX-env-array
     Insert the given array-like environment with position and column specifications.

LaTeX-env-label
     Insert the given environment with a label.

LaTeX-env-list
     Insert the given list-like environment, a specifier for the label and the first item.

LaTeX-env-minipage
     Insert the given minipage-like environment with position and width specifications.

LaTeX-env-tabular*
     Insert the given tabular*-like environment with width, position and column specifications.

LaTeX-env-picture
     Insert the given environment with width and height specifications.

LaTeX-env-bib
     Insert the given environment with a label for a bibitem.

LaTeX-env-contents
     Insert the given environment with a filename as its argument.

LaTeX-env-args
     Insert the given environment with arguments.  You can use this as a hook in case you want to specify multiple complex arguments just like in elements of TeX-add-symbols.  This is most useful if the specification of arguments to be prompted for with strings and strings wrapped in a vector as described above is too limited.

     Here is an example from listings.el which calls a function with one argument in order to prompt for a key=value list to be inserted as an optional argument of the lstlisting environment:

          (LaTeX-add-environments
           '("lstlisting" LaTeX-env-args
             [TeX-arg-key-val LaTeX-listings-key-val-options]))

Some packages provide environments that are rarely useful to non-expert users.  Those should be marked as expert environments using LaTeX-declare-expert-environments.

 -- Function: LaTeX-declare-expert-environments STYLE ENVIRONMENTS...
     Declare ENVIRONMENTS as expert environments of STYLE.

     Expert environments are completed depending on TeX-complete-expert-commands.

Adding or Examining Other Information
-------------------------------------

Adding bibliographies in style hooks
....................................

You can also specify bibliographical databases and labels in the style file.  This is probably of little use, since this information will usually be automatically generated from the TeX file anyway.

 -- Function: LaTeX-add-bibliographies BIBLIOGRAPHY ...
     Add each BIBLIOGRAPHY to list of loaded bibliographies.

 -- Function: LaTeX-add-labels LABEL ...
     Add each LABEL to the list of known labels.

Examining package/class options
...............................

In LaTeX documents, style hooks can find the package names and those options given as optional argument(s) of \usepackage in LaTeX-provided-package-options.

 -- Variable: LaTeX-provided-package-options
     Buffer local variable holding alist of options provided to LaTeX packages.  Each element is a cons cell (PACKAGE . OPTION-LIST).  For example, its value will be

            (("babel" . ("german"))
             ("geometry" . ("a4paper" "top=2cm" "bottom=2cm" "left=2.5cm" "right=2.5cm"))
             ...)

You can examine whether there is a specific package-option pair by LaTeX-provided-package-options-member.

 -- Function: LaTeX-provided-package-options-member PACKAGE OPTION
     Return non-nil if OPTION has been given to PACKAGE. The value is actually the tail of the list of options given to PACKAGE.

There are similar facilities for class names and those options given in \documentclass declaration.

 -- Variable: LaTeX-provided-class-options
     Buffer local variable holding alist of options provided to LaTeX classes.  Each element is a cons cell (CLASS . OPTION-LIST).  For example, its value will be

            (("book" . ("a4paper" "11pt" "openany" "fleqn"))
             ...)

 -- Function: LaTeX-provided-class-options-member CLASS OPTION
     Return non-nil if OPTION has been given to CLASS.  The value is actually the tail of the list of options given to CLASS.

 -- Function: LaTeX-match-class-option REGEXP
     Check if a documentclass option matching REGEXP is active.  Return first found class option matching REGEXP, or nil if not found.

These functions are also useful to implement customized predicate(s) in TeX-view-predicate-list.  See Starting Viewers.

Automatic Extraction of New Things
----------------------------------

The automatic TeX information extractor works by searching for regular expressions in the TeX files, and storing the matched information.  You can add support for new constructs to the parser, something that is needed when you add new commands to define symbols.

For example, in the file macro.tex I define the following macro.

     \newcommand{\newmacro}[5]{%
     \def#1{#3\index{#4@#5~cite{#4}}\nocite{#4}}%
     \def#2{#5\index{#4@#5~cite{#4}}\nocite{#4}}%
     }

AUCTeX will automatically figure out that newmacro is a macro that takes five arguments.  However, it is not smart enough to automatically see that each time we use the macro, two new macros are defined.  We can specify this information in a style hook file.

     ;;; macro.el --- Special code for my own macro file.

     ;;; Code:

     (defvar TeX-newmacro-regexp
       '("\\\\newmacro{\\\\\\([a-zA-Z]+\\)}{\\\\\\([a-zA-Z]+\\)}"
         (1 2) TeX-auto-multi)
       "Matches \\newmacro definitions.")

     (defvar TeX-auto-multi nil
       "Temporary for parsing \\newmacro definitions.")

     (defun TeX-macro-cleanup ()
       "Move symbols from `TeX-auto-multi' to `TeX-auto-symbol'."
       (mapc (lambda (list)
               (mapc (lambda (symbol)
                       (setq TeX-auto-symbol
                             (cons symbol TeX-auto-symbol)))
                     list))
             TeX-auto-multi))

     (defun TeX-macro-prepare ()
       "Clear `Tex-auto-multi' before use."
       (setq TeX-auto-multi nil))

     (add-hook 'TeX-auto-prepare-hook #'TeX-macro-prepare)
     (add-hook 'TeX-auto-cleanup-hook #'TeX-macro-cleanup)

     (TeX-add-style-hook
      "macro"
      (lambda ()
        (TeX-auto-add-regexp TeX-newmacro-regexp)
        (TeX-add-symbols '("newmacro"
                           TeX-arg-macro
                           (TeX-arg-macro "Capitalized macro: \\")
                           t
                           "BibTeX entry: "
                           nil))))

     ;;; macro.el ends here

When this file is first loaded, it adds a new entry to TeX-newmacro-regexp, and defines a function to be called before the parsing starts, and one to be called after the parsing is done.  It also declares a variable to contain the data collected during parsing. Finally, it adds a style hook which describes the newmacro macro, as we have seen it before.

So the general strategy is: Add a new entry to TeX-newmacro-regexp. Declare a variable to contain intermediate data during parsing.  Add hook to be called before and after parsing.  In this case, the hook before parsing just initializes the variable, and the hook after parsing collects the data from the variable, and adds them to the list of symbols found.

 -- Variable: TeX-auto-regexp-list
     List of regular expressions matching TeX macro definitions.

     The list has the following format ((REGEXP MATCH TABLE) ...), that is, each entry is a list with three elements.

     REGEXP.  Regular expression matching the macro we want to parse.

     MATCH.  A number or list of numbers, each representing one parenthesized subexpression matched by REGEXP.

     TABLE.  The symbol table to store the data.  This can be a function, in which case the function is called with the argument MATCH.  Use TeX-match-buffer to get match data.  If it is not a function, it is presumed to be the name of a variable containing a list of match data.  The matched data (a string if MATCH is a number, a list of strings if MATCH is a list of numbers) is put in front of the table.

 -- Variable: TeX-auto-prepare-hook nil
     List of functions to be called before parsing a TeX file.

 -- Variable: TeX-auto-cleanup-hook nil
     List of functions to be called after parsing a TeX file.

Copying, Changes, Development, FAQ, Texinfo Mode
************************************************

Copying this Manual
===================

The copyright notice for this manual is:

This manual is for AUCTeX (version VERSION from UPDATED), a sophisticated TeX environment for Emacs.

Copyright © 1992-1995, 2001, 2002, 2004-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''

The full license text can be read here:

     [file fdl.texi not included]

Changes and New Features
========================

     [file changes.texi not included]

Older versions
--------------

See the file history.texi for older changes.

Future Development
==================

     [file todo.texi not included]

Frequently Asked Questions
==========================

     [file faq.texi not included]

Features specific to AUCTeX's Texinfo major mode
================================================

AUCTeX includes a major mode for editting Texinfo files.  This major mode is not the same mode as the native Texinfo mode (see Texinfo Mode (Texinfo)) of Emacs, although they have the same name.  However, AUCTeX still relies on a number of functions from the native Texinfo mode.

The following text describes which functionality is offered by AUCTeX and which by the native Texinfo mode.  This should enable you to decide when to consult the AUCTeX manual and when the manual of the native mode.  And in case you are a seasoned user of the native mode, the information should help you to swiftly get to know the AUCTeX-specific commands.

How AUCTeX and the native mode work together
--------------------------------------------

In a nutshell the split between AUCTeX Texinfo mode, and native Texinfo mode is as follows:

  * Most of the editing (environment creation, commenting, font command insertions) and/or processing commands (e.g. compiling or printing) which are available in other AUCTeX modes are also handled by AUCTeX in Texinfo mode.

  * Texinfo-related features (e.g. info node linkage or menu creation) rely on the commands provided by the native Texinfo mode.  AUCTeX provides the key bindings to reach these functions, keeping the same keys as in native Texinfo whenever possible, or similar ones otherwise.

Where the native mode is superseded
-----------------------------------

This section is directed to users of the native Texinfo mode switching to AUCTeX.  It follows the summary of the native mode (see Texinfo Mode Summary (Texinfo)) and lists which of its commands are no longer of use.

Insert commands
     In the native Texinfo mode, frequently used Texinfo commands can be inserted with key bindings of the form C-c C-c K where K differs for each Texinfo command; c inserts @code, d inserts @dfn, k @kbd, etc.

     In AUCTeX commands are inserted with the key binding C-c C-m instead which prompts for the macro to be inserted.  For font selection commands (like @b, @i, or @emph) and a few related ones (like @var, @key or @code) there are bindings which insert the respective macros directly.  They have the form C-c C-f K or C-c C-f C-K and call the function TeX-font.  Type C-c C-f RET to get a list of supported commands.

     Note that the prefix argument is not handled the same way by AUCTeX. Note also that the node insertion command from the native mode (texinfo-insert-@node) can still accessed from the Texinfo menu in AUCTeX.

Insert braces
     In AUCTeX braces can be inserted with the same key binding as in the native Texinfo mode: C-c {.  But AUCTeX uses its own function for the feature: TeX-insert-braces.

Insert environments
     The native Texinfo mode does not insert full environments.  Instead, it provides the function texinfo-insert-@end (mapped to C-c C-c e) for closing an open environment with a matching @end statement.

     In AUCTeX you can insert full environments, i.e. both the opening and closing statements, with the function Texinfo-environment (mapped to C-c C-e).

Format info files with makeinfo and TeX
     In the native Texinfo mode there are various functions and bindings to format a region or the whole buffer for info or to typeset the respective text.  For example, there is makeinfo-buffer (mapped to C-c C-m C-b) which runs makeinfo on the buffer or there is texinfo-tex-buffer (mapped to C-c C-t C-b) which runs TeX on the buffer in order to produce a DVI file.

     In AUCTeX different commands for formatting or typesetting can be invoked through the function TeX-command-master (mapped to C-c C-c).  After typing C-c C-c, you can select the desired command, e.g Makeinfo or TeX, through a prompt in the mini buffer.  Note that you can make, say Makeinfo, the default by adding this statement in your init file:

          (add-hook 'Texinfo-mode-hook
                    (lambda () (setq TeX-command-default "Makeinfo")))

     Note also that C-c C-c Makeinfo RET is not completely functionally equivalent to makeinfo-buffer as the latter will display the resulting info file in Emacs, showing the node corresponding to the position in the source file, just after a successful compilation. This is why, while using AUCTeX, invoking makeinfo-buffer might still be more convenient.

     Note also that in the case of a multifile document, C-c C-c in AUCTeX will work on the whole document (provided that the file variable TeX-master is set correctly), while makeinfo-buffer in the native mode will process only the current buffer, provided at the @setfilename statement is provided.

Produce indexes and print
     The native Texinfo mode provides the binding C-c C-t C-i (texinfo-texindex) for producing an index and the bindings C-c C-t C-p (texinfo-tex-print) and C-c C-t C-q (tex-show-print-queue) for printing and showing the printer queue.  These are superseded by the respective commands available through C-c C-c (TeX-command-master) in AUCTeX: Index, Print, and Queue.

Kill jobs
     The command C-c C-t C-k (tex-kill-job) in the native mode is superseded by C-c C-k (TeX-kill-job) in AUCTeX.

Where key bindings are mapped to the native mode
------------------------------------------------

This node follows the native Texinfo mode summary (see Texinfo Mode Summary (Texinfo)) and lists only those commands to which AUCTeX provides a keybinding.

Basically all commands of the native mode related to producing menus and interlinking nodes are mapped to same or similar keys in AUCTeX, while a few insertion commands are mapped to AUCTeX-like keys.

@item insertion
     The binding C-c C-c i for the insertion of @item in the native mode is mapped to M-RET or C-c C-j in AUCTeX, similar to other AUCTeX modes.

@end insertion
     The binding C-c C-c e for closing a @FOO command by a corresponding @end FOO statement in the native mode is mapped to C-c ] in AUCTeX, similar to other AUCTeX modes.

Move out of balanced braces
     The binding C-c } (up-list) is available both in the native mode and in AUCTeX.  (This is because the command is not implemented in either mode but a native Emacs command.)  However, in AUCTeX, you cannot use C-c ] for this, as it is used for @end insertion.

Update pointers
     The bindings C-c C-u C-n (texinfo-update-node) and C-c C-u C-e (texinfo-every-node-update) from the native mode are available in AUCTeX as well.

Update menus
     The bindings C-c C-u m (texinfo-master-menu), C-c C-u C-m (texinfo-make-menu), and C-c C-u C-a (texinfo-all-menus-update) from the native mode are available in AUCTeX as well.  The command texinfo-start-menu-description, bound to C-c C-c C-d in the native mode, is bound to C-c C-u C-d in AUCTeX instead.

Which native mode key bindings are missing
------------------------------------------

The following commands from the native commands might still be useful when working with AUCTeX, however, they are not accessible with a key binding any longer.

@node insertion
     The node insertion command, mapped to C-c C-c n in the native mode, is not mapped to any key in AUCTeX.  You can still access it through the Texinfo menu, though.  Another alternative is to use the C-c C-m binding for macro insertion in AUCTeX.

Show the section structure
     The command texinfo-show-structure (C-c C-s) from the native mode does not have a key binding in AUCTeX.  The binding is used by AUCTeX for sectioning.

Indices
*******