Re: [AUCTeX] Re: help write a function?

[David Kastrup]

Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> writes:

> * David Kastrup (2006-07-23) writes:
>
>> Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> No wonder, latex-doc uses its own set of descriptions extracted from
>>> Ktexmaker2's LaTeX reference (at least that's what the source says).
>>> It would be nice if AUCTeX had something like this as well.
>>
>> C-h S works for me.
>
> This can be regarded a shortcut for a subset of `C-c ?'.
>
>>> I don't know how the descriptions were generated, but it would
>>> certainly help if there were a freely usable and machine-readable
>>> database of LaTeX commands.  Perhaps we will get something like this
>>> when LaTeX (package) authors will be using a standardized way of
>>> documenting macros and environments the description of which can
>>> then be extracted and put into such a database automatically ...
>>
>> But package authors _are_ using a standardized way of documenting
>> macros and environments, the ltxdoc format.
>
> Can I just throw a bunch of dtx files into a parser and that spews out
> a list of commands with their descriptions?  I am not sure what would
> be the easiest way for accessing that from Emacs Lisp.  Info?

Well, if you want to do this mechanically, I guess the way to do that
would be to run LaTeX on the dtx files with \OnlyDescription and patch
the \DescribeMacro and \DescribeEnvironment macros to roll out the
respective information into a file including page number and/or source
line number (maybe it would work to just parse the index file).  One
would then jump to either the .dtx file or to the right page in the
dvi file (maybe even the right location using source specials).

Something like that.  We _do_ have a dtx to texinfo converter as part
of preview-latex written in Perl, but while the output format is much
more convenient from Emacs, the conversion is not likely to work
reliably on arbitrary files.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum