>From: Ramesh Sridharan <ramesh.eecs@gmail.com>

>I was wondering how to tell emacs not to allow style changes that
>change font face. In particular, latex-mode causes a number of changes
>I don't like:
>
>- Text inside of a \section{} or \subsection{} block is bigger and
>variable-width
>- Superscripts and subscripts are shown in superscript or subscript,
>making them smaller.
    ...
>I'm using emacs 22.2.1 on Debian (lenny).

You should be able to make most of the changes with M-x
customize-face.  For example, to change the appearance of text within
\section{...}, 

   - put point in the \section{...} name (i.e. between the braces)
   - M-x customize-face

Then change the face to suit your taste.

IIRC emacs-22 gives you the ability to change the face of superscript
and subscript characters, but the raise/lower amounts are hardwired
into tex-mode.el.  For example, I have a copy of emacs-22.3 where
(defun tex-font-lock-suscript) in tex-mode.el ends with the following
code:

     (if (eq (char-after pos) ?_)
         '(face subscript display (raise -0.3))
       '(face superscript display (raise +0.3))))

The only way I was able to prevent the raising (lowering) of
superscript (subscript) characters in emacs 22, was by changing the
`raise' amounts to 0.0, and then byte-recompiling tex-mode.el.  The
process was something like this

  - mv tex-mode.el.gz tex-mode.el.gz.ORIG

  - mv tex-mode.elc tex-mode.elc.ORIG

  - gunzip -c < tex-mode.el.gz.ORIG > tex-mode.el

  - edit tex-mode.el.  Change the raise amounts from -0.3 (or +0.3) to
    0.0

  - byte compile the modified tex-mode.el.  dired's `B' command does
    this (but there are other ways)

Emacs-23 adds a new variable, tex-font-script-display, which controls
the raise/lower amounts, and eliminates the need to modify
tex-mode.el.

Steve