Emacs and LaTeX without AucTex. New environments.

[Dox]

Hi everyone.

I'm an Emacs user with no-taste for AucTex... Why?, it changes some of the default Emacs configuration which I use often!

Reading the documentation for the default tex-mode (or latex-mode), I found the way to include new environments on the list of blocks

;; ---------- New environments for LaTeX
(setq latex-block-names '("theorem" "corollary" "proof" "frame" "block" "alertblock" "definition" "example" "align" "align*" "columns" "tikzpicture" "axis" "cases" "matrix" "pmatrix" "vmatrix" "parts" "questions" "solution" "Ebox" "WEbox" "widetext"))

by adding the previous line to the .emacs file.

However, I haven't found a way to specify other arguments of the environment... I mean, when I use `C-c C-o` to add a table, it ask for the format, and the caption.

*Question*

How could I specify other arguments for my environments?

Cheers.

[Peter]

C-c C-o is linked to a skeleton mode macro.

skeleton mode is the default template mode that many packages authors add to their packages - probably because they can see examples in other packages of how to create various templates using that mode :-)

Personally I have found skeleton mode extremely intrusive to use and certainly "gets in the way" of your editing with its Q&A session approach - clumsy and annoying!

There are other template systems out there, I would suggest that if you like the template system approach i.e. something that generates common textual structures for you with minimal key strokes (very few people like these systems! I guess they just like the extra typing :-)), then I suggest you investigate the various offerings through the Emacs Wiki (look under Editing -> templates).

This will mean a bit of work for you, but there are other template systems that are far less intrusive than skeleton mode and in at least one instance, is almost completely transparent (IMO :-)). But in my experience (30+ years of programming), it is fairly rare to find an Emacs user and even rarer still to find somebody who likes a template approach to their editing. In fact, it is so rare that when I lost the web-site that hosted the template system I have written, I haven't even bothered looking for a new host to put the system up on! Why spend time and effort when nobody wants to use it? :-)

Peter