Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

Marking up Text for TEX and LATEX

GNU Emacs provides excellent support for marking up TEX files. Most people today use LATEX , which is written in TEX and provides more control over formatting. As a result, we'll talk about LaTeX mode here.

Before we launch into this discussion, we assume that you have set up LATEX on your platform. On Red Hat Linux, it's set up by default. Windows and Mac OS X users must install and configure LATEX before proceeding.^[12]

Emacs attempts to guess whether you're editing a TEX or LATEX file and enter the appropriate mode. You can force LaTeX mode if Emacs doesn't enter it automatically by typing M-x latex-mode Enter.

Matching Braces

LATEX commands often take the form \keyword{text}. LaTeX mode doesn't try to figure out if you're using the "right" keywords since the language is extensible and you may have defined your own keywords. It does, however, provide support for avoiding the most common error: mismatched curly braces and dollar signs.

In LATEX , curly braces ({}) and dollar signs ($$) should always appear in pairs; Emacs checks to make sure that each opening brace or dollar sign has a counterpart. When you type a closing brace or dollar sign, the cursor moves quickly to its counterpart (provided that it is on the screen; it shows the context in the minibuffer if it is not), then back again.

Emacs generates braces in matching pairs. The command C-c { inserts opening and closing braces and positions the cursor for typing between the braces.

Typing ...