Older changes in Lightning Completion/Ultra-TeX

Changes made between 13 February 1999 and 24 April 1999:

Fixed some miscellaneous bugs.

ultex.el:

Added a new customizable variable ultex-return-checks-for-new-commands. If non-nil (the default), then hitting RET looks to see if you just entered a new command (or theorem type, or environment, etc.); if so, it adds it to the completion list.

Rewrote the Greek keyboard stuff. I hope that the changes are completely backwards compatible; they are supposed to allow users to use all of the various Emacs syntax for rebinding keys. For example, one can now use

  (define-key ultex-greek-map '[(meta ?h)] "\\hookrightarrow ")
    

  (define-key ultex-greek-map "\M-h" "\\hookrightarrow ")
    

Several frivolous additions: since XEmacs is capable of displaying pictures, then the Greek keyboards can be displayed with either pictures or text (not in GNU Emacs, only in XEmacs). Here is a picture with an example. Furthermore, in XEmacs, there are now commands (accessible from the Ultra-TeX menu) to open up windows with tables of various sorts of symbols. Here is an example of this. This stuff requires you to install the LaTeX symbols package.

Changes made between 27 January 1999 and 12 February 1999:

Changes made 26 January 1999:

Changes made 19 January 1999:

Changes made 14 January 1999:

Changes made December 1998:

light.el:

First, lightning completion now occurs only if Emacs is idle for a time specified by the variable lc-complete-idle-time-default. The default value is 0.5, which is just long enough to really annoy those of us who are used to the old-fashioned, instantaneous, completion. To get the old behavior, set this variable to 0. Second, just about all of the options for lightning completion are customizable via the custom package in Emacs: run

  M-x customize-group lightning-completion
    

Third, I fixed a few bugs.

ultex.el:

First, I added support for multiple textree files. Now every time Emacs opens up a TeX file, it sees what the documentclass/style is and what packages are loaded; then it looks at the variable ultex-extra-tree-files to see if these classes/styles/packages have textree files associated to them. If so, they are loaded. See the documentation (or look in the customization group ``ultra-tex-files'') for more details. Second, just about all of the options for Ultra-TeX mode are customizable by running the command

  M-x customize-group ultra-tex
    

Because of the addition of customization code, I have removed various sample files from the package (like sample-keys.el, sample.emacs, and sample.ultex). They are not nearly as useful since options should now be more easily browsed and changed by users.

Warning: Starting with version 0.50 of this package, I have removed support for GNU Emacs 18. If you have to use Emacs 18, stick with version 0.41 or earlier.

Changes made 28 September 1998:

I fixed a bug in the Greek keys stuff that occurred with defining SPC in the Greek keymap.

Changes made 24 September 1998:

I tried to improve things for working with multiple-file documents. If you have a document broken up into several files, with one main file (called main.tex, for instance) containing a bunch of \include and \input statements, then a while ago I set things up (actually, Mike Mandell provided most of the code) so that new commands, labels, etc. would be retrieved from each of the include files. For some time now, the AUC-TeX people have had things set up so that if you are editing one of the auxiliary files, say chpt6.tex, if that file either starts with a line like

%% -*- TeX-master: "main.tex"; -*-
    

%% Local variables:
%% TeX-master: "main.tex"
%% End:
    

The change: I've now set things up so that if the file chpt6.tex contains either of the aforementioned sets of lines involving the variable TeX-master, then the file named by that variable will be scanned for definitions when you start editing chpt6.tex.

Changes made 3 September 1998:

I also changed some of the suggested key bindings in sample-keys.el, and changed a bit of the documentation in light.texi to reflect this.

Changes made 28 April 1998:

Bug fix in ultex-make-ref-from-label.

Changes made 17 April 1998:

Bug fix.

Changes made 7 April 1998:

Fixed a bug in ultex-grab-bibs, and reorganized some stuff.

Changes made 27 March 1998:

There are about a dozen changes. From the user's point of view, the most important ones are: ultex-grab-defs now works recursively on all input and include files. ultex-grab-commands now recognizes \DeclareMathSymbol. And hitting TAB (which runs ultex-tab-resume) now works better at resuming completion.

As far as the recursive command-grabbing goes, if you have an \input{bozo} command and you don't want the file bozo to be scanned by Ultra-TeX, put a space or TAB at the beginning of the line (before the \input command).

Changes made 23 March 1998:

Fixed bug in ultex-grab-commands, ultex-grab-labels.

Changes made 22 September 1997:

Made the font-lock stuff work with GNU Emacs 20.1 (at least on my machine). Some day soon I may rewrite ultex-setup.el (etc.) so that you can use the custom package to customize everything.

Changes made 1 August 1997:

Fixed a little bug in ultex-grab-bibs. This only affects things when this function is called in a buffer which is not associated to any file. (That's why I said "little bug.")

Changes made between 1 March 1997 and 31 July 1997:

aucify.el:

In response to changes in a recent version of AUC-TeX, I introduced a new variable, ultex-ignore-auctex-tex.el. If this is non-nil (the default), then the AUC-TeX file tex.el will not be loaded when requested by other files (such as tex-buf.el). If the only part of AUC-TeX that you use is the part that comes with Ultra-TeX (i.e., just the file tex-buf.el), then this change won't affect you. If you use more features of AUC-TeX than that, you should set this variable to be nil (although this may break some things in aucify.el). If I get a chance (or if Mark Hovey does), then we may clean this up a bit.

light.el:

Fixed a few bugs.

ultex.el:

Fixed a few bugs. Also, in ultex, added recognition for providecommand. ultra-tex-mode no longer runs text-mode-hook when it starts, because it shouldn't. It still runs tex-mode-hook, and of course ultra-tex-mode-hook. Furthermore, if you are typing on a line which has been commented out and you use a math-mode specific command (like a Greek key), ultra-tex won't beep at you. Similarly, if you use a math-mode specific command in the argument to \newcommand (etc.), it won't beep at you.

Other:

In response to unpopular demand (i.e., nobody has mentioned it, but I thought it was a good idea), I've started to include the files tex-buf.el and font-latex.el with the distribution. This way, users don't have to go around getting various things by ftp, and they get versions of these files that have been (at least cursorily) tested with Ultra-TeX.

Changes made between 15 February 1997 and 28 February 1997:

I incorporated the stuff in the file bufcomp.el into light.el, and removed bufcomp.el from the package.

Things regarding the *Completions* buffer were fixed up a bit, so that they seem to work with XEmacs. I also fixed one or two bugs.

ultex18.el:

This is a new file. Various changes in ultex.el make it incompatible with GNU Emacs 18, so ultex18.el patches the problems. If you use GNU Emacs 18, just make sure that both ultex.el and ultex18.el are in your load-path; ultex-setup.el will figure out which version of Emacs you are using, and load the appropriate thing. (GNU Emacs 18 requires both of these files, by the way.) ultex.el:

The Greek keymap stuff was rewritten a bit. This shouldn't have too much of an impact on anyone, I hope.

There is a new variable, ultex-dont-use-completion. If for some odd reason, you want to use Ultra-TeX mode, but you don't want to use lightning completion, then set this variable to t--i.e., put a line like this in your .emacs (or .ultex) file:

(setq ultex-dont-use-completion t)
    

I've introduced three new variables, ultex-match-braces, ultex-match-brackets, and ultex-match-parens. The default values are t, nil, and nil, respectively. If ultex-match-braces is non-nil, then hitting { inserts {} into the buffer (and similarly for the other two variables). So the default behavior of ultra-tex regarding insertion of braces, brackets, and parentheses hasn't changed, but it's easier to modify that behavior.

Changes made between 17 January 1997 and 14 February 1997:

Just a few bug fixes and things like that.

ultex.el:

There is a new variable, ultex-rescan-after-new-label. If this is non-nil, then every time you enter a new \label, Emacs rescans your file for labels. This way, if you change a label, Emacs won't complete on the old one.

There is a new function, ultex-dont-use-completion. If for some odd reason, you want to use Ultra-TeX mode, but you don't want to use lightning completion, then add this function to your ultra-tex-mode-hook--i.e., put a line like this in your .emacs (or .ultex) file:

(add-hook 'ultra-tex-mode-hook 'ultex-dont-use-completion)
    

Changes made between 10 December 1996 and 16 January 1997:

I have enhanced the behavior of the dollar sign. For quite a while now, if you had $$ with the cursor between the dollar signs, then hitting $ would produce $$\n\n$$, and so on. This now works even if the math environment is not empty, so that if you have $x=y$ with the point somewhere between the dollar signs, hitting $ produces

$$
x=y
$$
    

I have also changed the default value of ultex-dollar-array. The entries are now:

 Starting delimiter        Ending delimiter
$                         $
\[                        \]
\begin{equation}\label{}  \end{equation}
\begin{equation*}         \end{equation*}
\begin{align}\label{}     \end{align}
\begin{align*}            \end{align*}
\begin{gather}\label{}    \end{gather}
\begin{gather*}           \end{gather*}
\begin{multline}\label{}  \end{multline}
\begin{multline*}         \end{multline*}
    

(setq ultex-dollar-back 0)
    

I changed ultex-math-mode, the function that tries to determine if the cursor is in a math environment or not. Now: it no longer beeps when you are entering arguments to \newcommand and \renewcommand, and it no longer treats the string \\[ as the start of a math environment, which it used to because it would only look at the substring \[.

There were some problems with comments and indentation and things; I think I have fixed them. (But in so doing, I have probably introduced some new problems. Oh well.) Along the way, I corrected an oversight, pointed out by Tom Roby: now \% is no longer treated as the start of a comment.

light.el:

There are now functions lc-make-command-dark and lc-make-command-light for disabling and then re-enabling lightning completion on commands. For example, I use

(lc-make-command-dark 'dired-create-directory)
    

(lc-make-command-light 'dired-create-directory)
    

I changed some things around so that file-name completion is a bit faster when looking at big directories, and you don't get that long pause anymore if the minibuffer says "/home/palmieri/" and you hit "/".

Changes made on 10 December 1996:

New file: this is a sample .emacs file for use with light.el.

sample.ultex

New file: this is a sample .ultex file for use with ultex.el.

Changes made on 03 December 1996:

I removed the key binding on C-c C-g. This used to be bound to ultex-redefine-greek-key, but I don't think one should use that very much. And if I hit C-c accidentally, I want to be able to cancel it by hitting C-g.

Due to changes in lightnification, ultex-delete-csname (bound to C-c C-d) no longer completes on TeX commands. This will be fixed eventually.

There are several changes to ultex-grab-defs, the function that Ultra-TeX uses to find TeX commands. First, it now will search the buffer no farther than the first occurrence of "\end{document}" (if it can find that string), so if you put "\newcommand"s (or whatever) after that, they will be ignored by Emacs, just as they are ignored by LaTeX. Second, it ignores lines that are commented out.

Changes made on 02 December 1996:

Added a few things to lightnification. There is a new variable, lc-dark-recursive-minibufs. If this is a number N, then lightning completion will be disabled if the recursion depth is bigger than N; if this is non-nil but not a number, it's as if the value were 1. If it is nil, then lightning completion goes ahead normally.

Another new variable: lc-dark-commands. This is a list of commands for which lightning completion is disabled. For example, if you want one version of find-file which uses lightning completion and another that doesn't, give the following commands:

(lightnify 'files)     ;; enables lightning completion on file names
(defalias 'find-file-dark 'find-file)   ;; defines new command,
                       ;; find-file-dark, which acts like find-file
(setq lc-dark-commands (cons 'find-file-dark lc-dark-commands))
                       ;; adds find-file-dark to lc-dark-commands 
    

Changes made on 27 November 1996:

Totally rewrote the lightnify function, at Richard Stallman's suggestion. Now, rather than using lightnify on particular functions, you use it on situations. For example, calling

(lightnify 'files)
    

(add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'lightning-completion)
    

    ARGUMENT          EFFECT: toggle lightning completion on
    'files             file names      (e.g., for C-x C-f)
    'commands          commands        (e.g., for M-x)
    'functions         lisp functions  (e.g., for C-h f)
    'variables         lisp variables  (e.g., for C-h v)
    'lisp-objects      lisp objects
    'user-variables    user variables
    'buffers           buffer names    (e.g., for C-x b)
    'info-menu-items   menu items in info   (e.g., when
                                        you hit m in Info-mode)
    'query             buffer contents when using query-replace
    'misc              everything else
    

    'all      turn on lightning completion everywhere imaginable. 
    'none     turn off lightning completion everywhere.
    

light18.el:

This is a new file. The file light.el is now no longer completely compatible with Emacs 18. Instead, you should use light18.el, which in turn loads light.el. So you need to have both of these files in your load-path, and then run

(load "light18")
    

lightnify-old.el:

This is a new file. It contains the old version of the lightnify function, in case you want to use that instead of the improved one. Load this file after you've loaded light.el.

Changes made on 21 November 1996:

Lightnified TeX-command-master, etc. Also added some code to determine whether to run xdvi with a landscape option or not.

ultex-setup.el:

Fixed changes from 20 November, so that imenu and bib-cite work well together or separately.

Changes made on 20 November 1996:

Two little changes: I defined a new function, called ultex-imenu-create-index, for imenu support. Also, ultra-tex-mode now runs tex-mode-hook when it starts up, as well as text-mode-hook and ultra-tex-mode-hook, which it has always run).

ultex-setup.el:

Added two new variables: ultex-use-imenu and ultex-use-bib-cite. If non-nil, these tell Ultra-TeX to use the imenu package and the bib-cite package, respectively. See ultex-setup.el for a bit more documentation.

Changes made on 19 November 1996:

Messed around a bit so that when you enter lightning completion mode, there is a menu called "Light" rather than a menu called "Minibuf" (the way there used to be).

aucify.el:

(This is the file that adds the AUC-TeX feature of running (La)TeX on the current document, and things like that.) There were some bugs here--we left some things out when we were stealing things from the AUC-TeX package, and now we've put them back in.

Changes made on 14 November 1996:

First of all, I've changed the default key bindings for lightning completion, so that there is some consistency with the default Emacs completion. In particular, the TAB key opens up a *Completions* buffer with a list of possible completions; the RET key acts like LFD: it ends completion (and exits the minibuffer, if you're in the minibuffer). To cycle through the possible completions, you hit C-f. To cycle backwards, hit C-b. If you want to keep using the old keybindings, put the following in your .emacs file (before you load light.el):

(setq lc-use-old-lc-keymap t)
    

(By the way, the more I play with the keymap code in light.el, the less satisfied I am with this code when combined with XEmacs. Some day I'll have to rewrite the keybindings for XEmacs, but getting things to work well with GNU Emacs 19 is my highest priority.)

Next, I've made the *Completions* buffer work better, at least in GNU Emacs 19. If you hit TAB (with the new key bindings), this buffer is opened, and it should say something like this at the top:

Click mouse-2 on a completion to select it.
In this buffer, type RET to select the completion near point.
    

Lastly, all the stuff discussed below about lc-override-flag may be unnecessary. I do not set this flag to t, and I never have any problems. So don't be too quick about changing the default setting of this variable.

I also changed the version number to 0.21.

Changes made between 6 November 1996 and 13 November 1996:

Back in August (or so), I changed light-mode so that it would work better with minor modes like outline mode that use C-c for a prefix character. Well, this produced a minor conflict: if you were in lightning completion mode and you hit RET to get a list of possible completions, you couldn't select one with the mouse the way you were supposed to. I don't feel like fixing this properly, so there is a temporary fix. By default now, the mouse thing will work, but you will have problems if you use minor modes that use C-c as a prefix character. To reverse this situation, put the following line in your .emacs file:

(setq lc-override-flag t)
    

Changes made between 27 October 1996 and 6 November 1996:

light.el:

Only the addition of a version number.

ultex.el:

There are two major changes here. First of all, installation is different. Rather than having lines like

(defun tex-mode nil (interactive) (ultra-tex-mode))
(defun latex-mode nil (interactive) (ultra-tex-mode))
(defun LaTeX-mode nil (interactive) (ultra-tex-mode))
    

(load "ultex-setup")
    

(setq ultex-tree-file "~/tex/inputs/ultra-tex/textree.el"
      ultex-greek-keys-file "~/tex/inputs/ultra-tex/greek.el"
      ultex-latex-skel-file "~/tex/inputs/ultra-tex/skel.tex"
      ultex-alist-local-flag t
      ultex-use-color t
      ultex-use-font-latex t
      ultex-use-auctex t)

(add-hook 'ultra-tex-mode-hook
      ...
      etc
      ...)
    

• If you set the variable ultex-use-color to t, then (when using X windows with a color display, together with Emacs 19 or XEmacs) your TeX buffers will be colorized.
• If ultex-use-font-latex is nil (the default), then Emacs uses colors according to its standard colorization of TeX buffers; if this variable is t, then Emacs colorizes (I suppose "fontifies" is the more appropriate "word") things according to the instructions in the file font-latex.el. (This file is not included with the Ultra-TeX distribution, because I didn't write it and don't maintain it. There are instructions for how to get it in the Installation section of the Ultra-TeX documentation.)
• Mark Hovey threw together some code to do the following: if the variable ultex-use-auctex is non-nil, then you can use AUC-TeX commands for doing things like running LaTeX on a buffer, or spawning a previewer, or printing your document. (This requires one file, tex-buf.el, from the AUC-TeX distribution. Again, this is not included in the Ultra-TeX package--see the Installation section of the Ultra-TeX documentation for information about where to get it.)

Changes made between 5 September 1996 and 27 October 1996:

Introduced a new variable, ultex-alist-local-flag. Its default value is nil; if you set it to be non-nil (in your .emacs file, for instance), then the ultex-current-alist will be buffer-local.

Changed ultex-grab-defs in two ways. First, in the old version, calling this function with some argument, say "bozo.tex", would leave you with the a buffer containing the file bozo.tex (so, for instance, ultra-tex-mode would be started for that file, and if you were using font-lock-mode in X windows, then the buffer would be fontified; all this caused a noticeable delay). In the new version, this shouldn't happen--a temporary buffer is created, scanned, and then deleted. Second, in the old version, if the variable ultex-alist-local-flag were non-nil, so that the ultex-current-alist were buffer-local, then grabbing definitions from another buffer would have no effect on the definitions in the current one. This has been changed, so that running ultex-grab-defs on the file bozo.tex adds the TeX commands from bozo.tex to the ultex-current-alist associated to the current buffer. (So if ultex-alist-local-flag is non-nil, then the commands from bozo.tex are only valid in the buffer from which you gave the ultex-grab-defs command; if the variable is nil, then those commands are valid in all buffers running ultra-tex-mode.)

Fixed a small bug in ultex-scan-bbl that caused problems with GNU Emacs 18.

Changes made between June 1996 and September 1996:

In GNU Emacs and XEmacs, gave light-mode its own minor-mode-keymap. This (mostly) shouldn't affect the behavior of lightning completion, but it should make the package a bit more compliant with guidelines set out by the GNU people. (The one way in which it might affect the behavior is as follows: if you are using some minor mode, like outline-mode, which makes use of the key C-c, then that definition of C-c would take precedence over the lightning completion one. So you couldn't stop lightning completion with C-c if you were using outline-mode. Now you can.)

ultex.el:

Some of the default values for certain variables have been changed. For example, the variables ultex-math-start, ultex-math-end, paragraph-start, and paragraph-separate have been changed, so (in LaTeX2e, at least) hitting M-q to fill a paragraph works better than it did before.

Hitting the key M-X (that's meta-shift-x, not meta-x) gives \text{}, beeping if you're not in math mode.

Emacs understands the environment variable BIBINPUTS pretty well, so it can probably find your .bib file (if you use a \bibliography command, that is).

Changes made before June 1996:

One or two things were rewritten, but this shouldn't affect things from the user's viewpoint. (For instance, lightnification uses the minibuffer-setup-hook.) This was done to make the code cleaner and (I hope) more robust.

Light.el is now reasonably compatible with GNU Emacs 18, GNU Emacs 19, XEmacs. ("Reasonably compatible" means that it seems to work, as far as I've tested it. It doesn't mean that it is written in the most elegant and/or straightforward manner, or anything like that.) I've been using GNU Emacs 19, mainly, and I haven't noticed any glitches...

ultex.el:

The behavior of the dollar key has been changed: now when you hit $ repeatedly, ultra-tex cycles through the elements of the variable ultex-dollar-array. The default setting is so that first you get $$, with the point in between the dollar signs, then $$\n\n$$ (\n means newline, so this means a pair of dollar signs, followed by two newlines, then another pair of dollar signs) with the point on the blank line, then \begin{equation}\label{}\n\n\end{equation} with the point inside the label argument, then \begin{equation*}\n\n\end{equation*}, then \begin{eqnarray}\n\n\end{eqnarray}, then \begin{eqnarray*}\n\n\end{eqnarray*}, then it goes back to $$\n\n$$. To modify this, in your .emacs file change the variable ultex-dollar-array, and also include the line

    (setq ultex-dollar-max (length ultex-dollar-array))
    

    (setq ultex-dollar-array
      '[
	("$$" . -1)
	("\\[\n\n\\]" . -3)
	("\\begin{equation}\\label{}\n\n\\end{equation}" . -17)
	("\\begin{equation*}\n\n\\end{equation*}" . -16)
	("\\begin{align}\\label{}\n\n\\end{align}" . -14)
	("\\begin{align*}\n\n\\end{align*}" . -13)
	("\\begin{gather}\\label{}\n\n\\end{gather}" . -15)
	("\\begin{gather*}\n\n\\end{gather*}" . -14)
	("\\begin{multline}\\label{}\n\n\\end{multline}" . -17)
	("\\begin{multline*}\n\n\\end{multline*}" . -16)
	])
    (setq ultex-dollar-max (length ultex-dollar-array))
    

Fonts are handled a little differently, to take into account the difference between Latex 2.09 with the old font selection scheme and Latex 2e (and probably Latex 2.09) with the new font selection scheme. It used to be that meta-shift-e (a.k.a. M-E) would insert {\em }, with the point just inside the right brace. Now it inserts \emph{}, with the point inside the braces. Similarly, M-B used to insert {\bf }; now it inserts \mathbf{} or \textbf{}, depending on whether you're in math mode or not.

Ultra-tex is better at scanning your file for things on which to complete, when it first opens the file. Some new LaTeX commands (like \DeclareMathOperator) have been taken into account; ultra-tex also completes citation keys. For example, if you have a bibliography in your tex file with commands

    \bibitem{bozo} blah blah blah
    \bibitem{clown} blah blah blah
    

    \bibliography{bib-file}
    

    @article{bozo-clown,  
        author = "Bozo the Clown", etc.}
    

Naturally, the "smart return key" knows about this sort of thing. If you have \cite[]{bozo}, and the cursor is in the empty square brackets, hitting RET deletes the brackets and moves you all the way past {bozo}. If you have \cite[Theorem A]{bozo}, hitting RET from anywhere inside the square brackets should move you all the way past {bozo}, without deleting the square brackets or their contents.

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