[AUCTeX-devel] Re: [AUCTeX] Generating symbols with preview-latex

[Miguel V. S. Frasson]

Dear David

I will put this post back in auctex-devel.

On 7/28/06, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> "Miguel V. S. Frasson" <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > The situation is the following: I want to eventually implement a
> > symbol toolbar without having to generate symbols by myself. In the
> > current stage, I am happy if my symbol toolbar has only the \alpha and
> > \beta symbols.
> >
> > I want
> >
> > 1) code to *request* the producion of a image object with the symbol
> > \alpha (using preview latex), without editing a LaTeX file preferably.
> > (if really necessary, fake such editing in a temp buffer).
> >
> > 2) code that tests if that the image is ready or not (predicate) and
> > code that runs (hook) when the image object (or set of image objects)
> > is ready.  The later can do the work of the former, because the hook
> > can set some variable and set the predicate.
> >
> > 3) a way to store it in some lasting cache, so that I don't have to
> > regenerate it every time that I restart Emacs.
>
> I don't see why you would not want to pregenerate all the symbols.  I
> don't see any need to use Emacs in an interactive session for that.

Symbols with white background and black font colors don't look nice
(IMO) in the toolbar.  Different displays may request different
resolutions.

For myself, not only for AUCTeX users, I like that symbols in my
symbol toolbar have the same background color that I have in the
toolbar.  I have not yet got such symbols, but a priori there is
nothing wrong on wanting that.

How many sets of icons do we have to ship?

We can distribute a basic set anyway.

> [later you say] I don't see why you would need Emacs for that.

Emacs should know the colors of toolbars. One can customize Emacs to
generate largers, darkers images, use custom colors for the symbols,
whatever.

Of course you can disagree with all this. Please tell me that this is
not what should happen and I just don't implement it. It is simple.

> > Is this possible?
>
> Is there some problem with
> \documentclass[minimal]
> \usepackage[active,tightpage,textmath]{preview}
> \begin{document}
> $\alpha$
> $\beta$
> $\gamma$
> $delta$
> \end{document}
>
> then running dvipng on the resulting DVI file?

I though that it was harder to do that.  I didn' t know that it was
easy (although the defauls are far from the best).  I thought that
preview-latex was necessary.

> > When user requests for instance th lowercase greek symbols, a
> > process is started and in the toolbar he would see that ``under
> > construction'' icon, like when using preview latex in a normal LaTeX
> > file.  When a symbol or set of symbols is finished, there is a
> > refresh of the toolbar and the buttons with the generated images are
> > displayed.  That is the idea.
>
> Why wouldn't you generate them once in advance and _distribute_ the
> generated image buttons?
>
> > I don't ask a function for it.  I want a way to compute it in the
> > way that preview-latex does, but disconnected with the latex file
> > that the user is typing.  My \alpha symbol should not depend if the
> > guy is using concrete math fonts or not, for instance (maybe symbols
> > in concrete math font look better in the toolbar than normal
> > computer modern fonts).
>
> I don't see why you would need Emacs for that.
>
> --
> David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


--
Miguel Vinicius Santini Frasson
address@hidden