Re: [AUCTeX] preview-latex on Fedora Core 4

[David Kastrup]

Alejandro Jakubi <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> Just get the latest suse src RPM file from the download site of AUCTeX
>> at <URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/auctex> and do an
>> rpmbuild --rebuild
>> on it.  You should have a reasonable chance of having this work.
>>
>> If not, you can deinstall AUCTeX and do a ./configure, make, make
>> install from the tarball.
>
> I have followed the first method. It generated a file
> auctex-emacs-11.82-2.fedora.noarch.rpm. Then I have uninstalled
> emacs-auctex-11.81-1.fc4.noarch and installed the other.
> Aparently it works fine.

Good to know.

> I have to say that I use mainly Windows and I am not very fond of
> Emacs, but I find this preview facility quite impressing. I know
> that new versions of LyX implement preview. I have not tried that
> yet. But I would like using preview with my usual editor.

LyX is not a LaTeX editor, but uses its own document format.  It
merely exports through LaTeX.  It offers "whatyouseeiswhatyoumean"
editing, something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike
WYSIWYG.

The advantage over preview-latex is that it works at every keystroke
and not just on demand: since LyX only needs to understand its own
document format and not LaTeX (which it can't import too reliably, not
even the stuff exported by itself), it can do so on the fly.

The preview mode for math, however, _is_ WYSIWYG and internally uses
preview.sty from AUCTeX, but dooes not make use of its full
flexibility (for example, having it pick out automatically inline
math).

> So, I wonder how much the preview tool is linked to the lisp basis
> of Emacs, or in principle an editor with macro language, based on C
> say, could do also the job.

It has been done.  However, the editor needs a graphics-capable
display engine.  In order to work well with inline constructs, it has
to be able to influence the baseline of images.  And in order talk
efficiently to the various rendering subtasks, it needs a whole lot of
process intercommunication trickery.

However your stance towards Emacs as an editor is: as a rapid
prototyping platform for text-based editing and intercommunication
tasks, it got what it takes in terms of robustness (programming in C,
in contrast, is much more crash-prone) and functionality.  And that
has, over time, lead to the abundance of functionality accumulating
for it.

You can, obviously, implement stuff in other editors as well.  And
preview.sty has been employed in quite a few other settings, in
particular in connection with dvipng.  But the maturity of
preview-latex's document, image and process management has not nearly
been matched elsewhere yet in my opinion.

I'd not mind seeing it elsewhere.  In fact, I have helped employing
preview.sty for the purposes of LyX' math preview.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum