>> You may have seen an on-going discussion about the annoyance of the >> mixups between latex-mode and LaTeX-mode and such. > Could you tell us where that discussion takes place?
I think it's on gnu.emacs.help, aka help-gnu-emacs. It started with someone complaining that rainbow-delimiters doesn't work with LaTeX's braces, derived into AUCTeX-vs-plain because IIUC the problem was that they enabled the mode via `latex-mode-hook` which their AUCTeX doesn't run even though the mode describes itself as `latex-mode`. >> I do think it would be good to try and "integrate" the two modes, for >> some definition of "integrate". The question being indeed what >> "integration" is the best way forward. > > I also want some improvements with regard to the "integration" because I > recently realized that emacs built-in `tex-mode' (accidentally?) shadows > AUCTeX `TeX-tex-mode' since emacs 28.1, to fail to enter LaTeX mode for > some cases[1][2]. (I'm not sure that the above discussion involves this > issue.) > > [1] thread beginning with > https://lists.gnu.org/r/auctex/2022-08/msg00001.html Oh, I wasn't aware of regression. We can workaround the problem using the `depth` property on `advice-add`, to make sure AUCTeX's advice takes precedence over that of `tex-mode.el` even if it's installed before. E.g. if you add the patch below to Emacs, can you confirm that it fixes the problem on your end? diff --git a/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el b/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el index f624b604aac..77c0d234206 100644 --- a/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el +++ b/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el @@ -1014,7 +1014,10 @@ tex-mode says which mode to use." (tex-common-initialization)) -(advice-add 'tex-mode :around #'tex--redirect-to-submode) +(advice-add 'tex-mode :around #'tex--redirect-to-submode + ;; Give it lower precedence than normal advice, so + ;; AUCTeX's advice takes precedence over it. + '((depth . 50))) (defvar tex-mode--recursing nil) (defun tex--redirect-to-submode (orig-fun) "Redirect to one of the submodes when called directly." I pushed this to `emacs-28` so it will be fixed in the next Emacs release (but that may be Emacs-29.1). In the mean time, you can use a `((depth . -10))` in AUCTeX to make it work with Emacs-28.1. The dual use of `tex-mode` (as both a major mode and a dispatch function) is very messy :-( >> I'm wondering if it would be possible to turn AUCTeX into a minor mode. >> E.g. `LaTeX-mode` would then be redefined as > >> (define-derived-mode TeX-latex-mode latex-mode ... >> (AUCTeX-mode 1)) > >> and `TeX-modes-set` would add/remove `AUCTeX-mode` from the hooks like >> `latex-mode-hook`. > > It basically looks reasonable. I assume that you are thinking that > `AUCTeX-mode' actually chooses suitable behavior according to the value > of `major-mode' between `latex-mode', `plain-tex-mode', `doctex-mode' > and `texinfo-mode'. That'd be the idea, yes. > 1. There will be some overheads because it first runs initialization > codes of emacs built-in mode and then runs AUCTeX minor mode; I expect > that the associated cost is cheap enough. I'm assuming it would be cheap, yes. > 2. AUCTeX still must retain some major modes, i.e., ConTeXt mode, > AmS-TeX mode, Japanese LaTeX mode and Japanese plain TeX mode because > there are no counterparts in emacs built-in modes. In the short term at least it will also keep `(TeX-)LaTeX-mode` and friends, I think. And maybe even in the long term. > 3. Currently, there is defect in handling doc strings of AUCTeX LaTeX > mode, plain TeX mode and docTeX mode; C-h m and C-h f show doc string > of built-in modes, not AUCTeX modes. Maybe the help facility should be more careful in how it builds the docstring when a function has an `:override` advice, indeed. Could you `M-x report-emacs-bug` for that? Maybe the `latex-mode` docstring would need some tweaking, but `C-h m` would show the docstring of `AUCTeX-mode` as well. > `AUCTeX-mode' should put suitable `function-documentation' property > for the respective major mode symbol. I think that would be exactly the kind of messing around I'd like to move away from. > 4. `TeX-tex-mode' and `tex-mode' would need some special treatment. Special care, that's for sure, yes. >> To be honest, I haven't looked very much at the code to see how >> realistic this is, but I think this could help clarify the situation >> for users. E.g. it would eliminate "lies" such as (setq major-mode >> 'latex-mode) in `latex.el`. > > From the users' point of view, I don't think it matters much. They just > specify > %%% mode: latex > as the file local variable and think that they are using `latex-mode'. > I think that it would be only Elisp programmers that care about the > "lies". There's regularly discussion (among (AUC)TeX Emacs users) about which major mode runs which hook. I think it's an important issue not just for ELisp programmers. Stefan
