[Tex/LaTex] Does AucTeX Autocomplete

auctexauto-completionemacs

The quick start guide for AUCTeX says

As nearly everywhere in AUCTeX, you can use the TAB or SPC key to get a list of available level names, and to auto-complete what you started typing.

Which tantalizingly makes me thing AUCTeX has an auto-complete feature. But pressing TAB does nothing. I apologize for the simple question, but I've spent more time searching for it than I am ever likely to save so this is a last resort before I give up on it.

So, is there in fact an auto-complete feature in Emacs AUCTeX? How does one turn it on if so?

Edit: I just figured out M-TAB is problematic since it is bound to a OS GUI action. I saw a website discuss this problem and it notes that there are two key bindings which are supposed to be equivalent: c-[ c-I and ESC TAB. Except these for some reason give me dictionary spelling corrections for the word I wrote which is not exactly what I was expecting.

Best Answer

It does have auto-complete powers. (It has more than any one person knows about.) Try, e.g., C-c C-m (for calling macros like \footnote or \ref); type the letter 's' and hit TAB. The rest will become clear. C-c C-e will prompt for for starting new environments. And so on.

If you use AUCTeX with reftex, try things like C-c [ to prompt you for a bibliographical \cite{<key>} command.

You should skim the manual for the sections that are most relevant for your work.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] AUCTeX can’t find PDFLaTeX

AUCTeX complains that pdflatex cannot be found. However, according to your comments you checked and found pdftex, not pdflatex, which still can be missing.

Today, pdflatex if often just a symbolic link to pdftex. For example, on my Ubuntu system with TeX Live 2011:

> ls -l `which pdflatex`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 49 2011-10-07 22:13 /usr/local/bin/pdflatex
    -> /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdflatex
> ls -l /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdflatex
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2009-08-15 19:49
    /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdflatex -> pdftex

It finally points to pdftex.

So, you could

configure Emacs/AUCTeX to run pdftex instead of pdflatex, since LaTeX is just the format, not the engine or executable
or create a symbolic link, such as by
```
ln -s /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdftex pdflatex
```
in your path, where it can be found.
or use the TeX Live Manager, start it by
```
sudo tlmgr -gui
```
and have a look in the menu Actions/ Managing symbolic links to the point update symbolic links or let it create symbolic links, this is also possible via command line option to tlmgr (see tlmgr --help).

[Tex/LaTex] Adding custom macros to completion list with AUCTeX

AUCTeX has to be configured to parse files so that it can extract the macros you want. Make sure you have the variable TeX-parse-self set to t, so that it scans the current file for macros defined there, set TeX-auto-regexp-list to TeX-auto-full-regexp-list so it looks for as many macros as it can, and TeX-auto-parse-length to 999999 so it handles long files. These can be set in your .emacs file, and overridden as needed as file-local variables in your individual projects if they give you trouble. You should also try adding

%%% Local Variables:
%%% TeX-master: "your-main-filename"
%%% End:

to the bottom of all files belonging to your project, so that AUCTeX knows how to get back from one included file to the main one, and then to the other included files.

With all that done, it should be finding pretty much all the macros in your project.

EDIT

According to the AUCTeX wiki, you can avoid the TeX-master local variable by asking AUCTeX to guess the master file; they post the necessary elisp code to do this.

To check additional directories worth of style files, add the directories to the TeX-macro-private lists (see here).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] AUCTeX can’t find PDFLaTeX

[Tex/LaTex] Adding custom macros to completion list with AUCTeX

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