AUCTeX mode

AUCTeX is an Emacs package that provides considerable help for LaTeX (and TeX in general).
E.g., it will insert the \begin{}...\end{} constructs, helps you with the syntax, etc.
It comes with a manual (see AUCTeX's home-page), and is available on all Linux machines.

To invoke it, put in your ~/.emacs file the command


(require 'tex-site)
		; invoke the AUCTeX package (LaTeX support)

(this assumes that the package is available on your machine; if not, you can dowload it from http://www.nongnu.org/auctex/).

NOTE:

Until a better solution is found, add this line at the end of the file: in case the package is not available, it will yield an error message and the rest of the file ~/.emacs will be ignored.
AUCTeX will replace the "default" TeX-mode of Emacs!

Next time you run Emacs, whenever you start a file whose name ends in .tex (or other related ending), Emacs will switch to AUCTeX.
Note that this over-rules the "default" treatment of TeX files. If you prefer that, comment out the above line from ~/.emacs.

WARNING: AUCTeX does not know all the LaTeX commands; you might have to type some by hand (instead of relying only on the choices offered by Emacs).

Here are a few more often used commands (you can find them on the menus as well):

C-c C-e

purpose: start an environment (use TAB to complete)
remark: highlighted region will be enclosed in the environment

C-c RETURN

purpose: start a macro (use TAB to complete)
remark: highlighted region will be used as argument

C-c ]

purpose: close latest open environment

C-c C-c

purpose: start a command (use TAB to see choices; enough to give first letter)

C-c C-v

purpose: start a viewer without confirmation; it is the shortcut to TeX-view
see also TeX-view-mouse: start TeX-view at mouse position

C-c #

purpose: re-read the file for specific definitions (this way, Emacs is aware of the macros defined in the file)
remark: a file is created with this information in a directory called auto; you can remove the directory without any loss (do "C-c #" again next time you work on the file).

M-TAB (or ESC TAB, if M-TAB has another meaning on your system)

purpose: complete symbol;
Its effect depends on the current location of the pointer:
- if in regular text, try to complete the word using the dictionary
- if within \ref{} or \eqref{}, complete from the list of known \label's
- if within \cite{}, complete from the list of known \bibitem's
- in the above cases, "known" refers to what AUCTeX is aware of. You might have to run C-c # to update this information.

C-c ` (note: this is the "backward" quote)

purpose: jump to next error (after a latex or tex command was executed, and errors were found)
remark: you can also find it under the LaTeX menu

C-c C-w

toggles the function TeX-toggle-debug-bad-boxes, which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in tex.el
Toggle if the debugger should display "bad boxes" too.