bug#31132: AUCTeX, RefTeX and biblatex's multicite commands

[Arash Esbati]

Hi Gustavo,

gusbrs <gusbrs.2016@gmail.com> writes:

> Oh, reading the old thread was a little embarrassing. I didn't even
> know how to reply to a mailing list (full html contents at the end,
> etc., sigh... ;-).

Wait another year or two, and you'll be writing Mails within Emacs ;-)

> I did test things and the TL;DR is: looks good to me.

Thanks, I installed that change on Emacs master, commit 7236010d2e.

> I did not attempt to test for possible side effects in other areas,
> given that `reftex-move-to-previous-arg' and `reftex-what-macro' are
> general purpose utility functions. But I think the patch at hand is
> pretty careful in changing the syntax of the parentheses only locally.
> That's what I'd do too and my assessment is that I see no reason it
> shouldn't be safe.

Thanks, this is/was also my impression; hopefully no side-effects.

> The only other thing of note I observed is that the mcite-like
> citation commands are not fontified as reference/citation commands
> (they get only the generic `font-latex-sedate-face'). I had agreed
> with you that the case is tricky and arguably not worth the trouble on
> RefTeX's side of things. But fontification for them should be trivial.
> So, why not?

Ok, I had another look, and biblatex manual says on page 120:

  In contrast to that, a biblatex entry set is an entity in its own
  right.

So I think the change attached gives sort of support for mcite-like
macros, incl. fontification.  Do you want to give it a roll?  Please
ignore the re-indent changes.

> Nice, perhaps something useful comes out of it. I'll share the code
> first and comment later.

Thanks, I will read through it later.  I'd like to address the issues in
this report and close it before we proceed.

> I'm using `el-patch' in my config, but it should be easy enough to
> read, even if you are not acquainted with it.

Yes, I think I get the message.

> Net of this kind of stuff are some things which accumulated over time,
> to add support to specific packages, or fixing things I didn't like.
> In hindsight, my general take on those is that RefTeX seems to presume
> that only the standard, or very traditional, reference and citation
> commands exist and, hence, chooses to hard-code most of the relevant
> behavior, making it very hard to extend and tweak. Inaccessible to the
> less daring users and, more importantly, to AUCTeX style files.

Yes, this is true: RefTeX hardcodes plenty of stuff.

> I recall you questioning somewhat the relevance of this peculiar
> notation of biblatex's citation lists
> (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/auctex-devel/2023-05/msg00015.html)
> so, as a regular user of them, I'm glad and thankful to see you soften
> a little your stance in this regard.

TBH, I still don't want to touch font-latex.el in order to make
fontification for cite-lists work, but we have an imperfect solution in
place which hopefully is enough for you and other users :-)

Again, thank you for your support.

Best, Arash

biblatex.el.diff
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