Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Sharing value of a variable between all files of the same document

[Matthew Leach]

Mosè Giordano <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi Matt,

Hi Mosè,

> 2016-04-16 23:57 GMT+02:00 Matthew Leach <address@hidden>:
>> Would `TeX-document-variables' be stored exclusively in the TeX-master's
>> auto-save file or all the auto-save files for a document?  If it is the
>> latter, we would need to ensure the alists are synchronised for all
>> auto-save files in a document, do you know of an easy way to do this?
>
> No no, only in master's auto-save file.

That's good.  I think the other way would have been rather difficult.

>>> , with the name of a variable as key and its value as value.  This
>>> should be used only for certain variables, above all (or only) those
>>> related to TeXing options (engine, extra options,
>>> `ConTeXt-Mark-version', etc).
>>
>> How would the user set and edit a variable document wide?  Would we
>> provide a new interactive setter function that would write that to the
>> `TeX-document-variables' alist?
>
> My simple idea was to set the variables as usual (either manually or
> with `add-file-local-variable', I have no new special tool in mind),
> but with this new framework users need to set them only once in the
> master file, instead of every single file part of the document.

That sounds reasonable.  I presume that if a user wanted to change an
already-set variable, they would change it as normal in the TeX-master
file and our code to write the auto-save file would handle this?

>>> Every function that needs to access those variable should check this
>>> alist first fallbacking onto the (local) value of the variable if not
>>> present in `TeX-document-variables'.  We can define a function similar
>>> to `TeX-process-get-variable' to get the value of the variable from
>>> the alist.
>>
>> Rather than modifying all the places where these values are accessed,
>> couldn't we check the alist and set the buffer-local variables when a
>> buffer is loaded?  When reading the alist, we could exclude variables
>> that we don't allow.
>
> Sounds reasonable.  Actually, you suggested me the idea of not
> creating a new alist, but rather defining a new function that sets the
> relevant variables locally.  Much like `TeX-add-symbols' or
> `LaTeX-add-environments'.

Ah, I see.  Yes I think that could work quite well.  Could this be
defined with TeX-auto-add-type or would we need to define a new macro?

> I can try and write down a proof-of-concept, but probably later next
> week.

That sounds good - I shall wait and see :-).

Thanks,
-- 
Matt