[Bug-AUCTeX] Re: preview oddity when "merging" inline formulas...

[Evil Boris]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Evil Boris <address@hidden> writes:

>> I do not know if I explained myself properly.  What I do is have
>> "$x$ and $y$" in my text, previewing fine.  Then I edit it to say
>> "$x,y$" and try to force preview to update the picture at the point.
>
> Yes.  But you then have _two_ modified previews, each of them starting
> with a preview icon (the options you can use on those icons are shown
> if you move mouse over them).
>
> The first one is something like '$x,' and the second one something
> like 'y$'.  Now if you regenerate either of those two previews, you
> basically get a mess.

Aha!  I had not realized (having not looked at the code, ever) that a
preview is attached to the entire math mode string (a portion of the
buffer, more precisely) and is kept around even if the string is
modified.  Would it be too difficult to simply catch modifications of
the string and nuke the preview?  I would find this a more logical
behavior, as a user.

I do understand what's going on now, though...  Thanks for an
explanation... 

>> A secondary issue is that there are those slightly annoying pictures
>> attached to "opened" math expressions --- in this case the second
>> one, that was attached to $y$ refuses to go away, even though it
>> looks to me like I have have deleted character (namely the $ in
>> front of "y") to which it seems to be attached.
>
> Well, you can use C-c C-p C-c C-p to remove the preview, or you can
> use mouse-3 on the "annoying picture" to remove it.

Sorry, I meant the icon that lives at the beginning of the unfolded
previewed math expression.  Forgot the appropriate term (can never
remember the right lingo for the right context, sorry...).  I just was
pointing out that in my opinion a natural behavior from a users point
of view would be for the icon to disappear once one (C-d)s over the
characters surrounding the place where it appears to be located in the
buffer.

Thanks for quick response.  I am just playing with preview, trying to
see if it is useful to me---worked for years w/o previewing except in
reading/proofreading stage, but seem to be constantly invoking an
external previewer (via AUCTeX)...  Anything that slows things down
too much or requires too much interaction to distract me from editing
the manuscript is not worth it, for me.  

--Boris