x-symbol?

x-symbol?

[Mario S. Mommer]

Hi,

One of the things I use emacs for is writing LaTeX documents, and
besides auctex and reftex, there is one package that is very important
and useful to me: x-symbol. The bad news is that the package has been
orphaned some while ago, and is suffering from bitrot. This is really
unfortunate, because x-symbol has two features that I have not found
anywhere else: an input method based on shortcuts and modifiers for
quite a few latex symbols, and optic sugar for many symbols, so that
e.g. \alpha appear as the greek letter alpha on screen. For some reason,
I find these two features really help a lot.

My questions are:

 - does anyone have a version of x-symbol that runs on emacs 23 and is
   willing to share it here?

 - Does anyone know of an alternative?

Thanks,

       Mario

Re: x-symbol?

[Eric S Fraga]

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On Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:50:45 +0200, m_mommer@yahoo.com (Mario S. Mommer) wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> One of the things I use emacs for is writing LaTeX documents, and
> besides auctex and reftex, there is one package that is very important
> and useful to me: x-symbol. The bad news is that the package has been
> orphaned some while ago, and is suffering from bitrot. This is really
> unfortunate, because x-symbol has two features that I have not found
> anywhere else: an input method based on shortcuts and modifiers for
> quite a few latex symbols, and optic sugar for many symbols, so that
> e.g. \alpha appear as the greek letter alpha on screen. For some reason,
> I find these two features really help a lot.
> 
> My questions are:
> 
>  - does anyone have a version of x-symbol that runs on emacs 23 and is
>    willing to share it here?
> 
>  - Does anyone know of an alternative?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>        Mario

I believe that CDlatex mode does everything that x-symbol did and much
more in fact.

for the sugar, I don't know what to suggest for direct latex/tex code
but I can recommend you use org-mode for composing your text instead
and export to latex when required...  org-mode provides the display
sugar you wish (and much more).

HTH,
eric

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-- 
Eric S Fraga
GnuPG: 8F5C 279D 3907 E14A 5C29  570D C891 93D8 FFFC F67D

Re: x-symbol?

[David Kastrup]

m_mommer@yahoo.com (Mario S. Mommer) writes:

> One of the things I use emacs for is writing LaTeX documents, and
> besides auctex and reftex, there is one package that is very important
> and useful to me: x-symbol. The bad news is that the package has been
> orphaned some while ago, and is suffering from bitrot. This is really
> unfortunate, because x-symbol has two features that I have not found
> anywhere else: an input method based on shortcuts and modifiers for
> quite a few latex symbols, and optic sugar for many symbols, so that
> e.g. \alpha appear as the greek letter alpha on screen. For some reason,
> I find these two features really help a lot.
>
> My questions are:
>
>  - does anyone have a version of x-symbol that runs on emacs 23 and is
>    willing to share it here?
>
>  - Does anyone know of an alternative?

With regard to the optic sugar, you might \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
in connection with some utf-8 special characters, namely let LaTeX cater
for the conversion.

For the input methods of x-symbol, I have no good substitution to
suggest.  It would be a good thing if somebody bothered porting them
over into AUCTeX.  That would require copyright assignments of both
porter and the original X-Symbol author (likely sympathetic to the
endeavor) to have this accepted there.

For the visual component, I consider X-Symbol's approach a bit too
invasive on the buffer text: if things go wrong, you lose original
input.  preview-latex's own way of inserting graphics instead, however,
appears like overkill for the same application space.  A middle ground
would be the use of display properties substituting appropriate Unicode
characters, but not graphics.

The work still has to be done, but once it _has_ been done, chances are
that it will at least be guarded somewhat against bitrot.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: x-symbol?

[Mario S. Mommer]

Hi,

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
> With regard to the optic sugar, you might \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> in connection with some utf-8 special characters, namely let LaTeX cater
> for the conversion.

Do you know of any resource that describes that? I presume one would
have some input method producing the (for example) nabla in utf8, and
then some macro that translates to \nabla. Is that what you mean?

> For the visual component, I consider X-Symbol's approach a bit too
> invasive on the buffer text: if things go wrong, you lose original
> input.

In all the years i've used it, i did not observe that I lost input. I
mean, yes, if you for example delete an alpha character, all six letters
of the \alpha disappear, but that has never bothered me.

> preview-latex's own way of inserting graphics instead, however,
> appears like overkill for the same application space.  A middle ground
> would be the use of display properties substituting appropriate Unicode
> characters, but not graphics.

But I think that is exactly what x-symbol does. It has a special font
for some characters that seem not be in Unicode, but that is about
it. It does include small thumbnails of graphics included with
\includegraphics (which btw, is of very little use).

> The work still has to be done, but once it _has_ been done, chances are
> that it will at least be guarded somewhat against bitrot.

Here is me crossing my fingers :-)

I'll try to contact the original author. Maybe assigning fsf the
copyright would be a first step...

Regards, and thanks,

          Mario

Re: x-symbol?

[Mario S. Mommer]

Hi

Andreas Politz <politza@fh-trier.de> writes:
> I don't know the x-symbol package, but from your description, you should
> take a look at LaTeX-math-mode (C-c ~) and TeX-fold-mode (C-c C-o C-f
> C-c C-o C-b) , which both come with AUCTeX.  The first one provides 2
> Key bindings for mathematical symbols, the second does a configurable lot
> of display candy.

LaTeX-math-mode looks a lot like some early version of CDLatex. And
TeX-fold mode is helpful indeed. Thanks.

Regards,
        Mario

Re: x-symbol?

[Mario S. Mommer]

Hi,

Eric S Fraga <ucecesf@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
> I believe that CDlatex mode does everything that x-symbol did and much
> more in fact.

That might well be. I didn't know about it, although i did search for
alternatives. Thanks.

> for the sugar, I don't know what to suggest for direct latex/tex code
> but I can recommend you use org-mode for composing your text instead
> and export to latex when required...  org-mode provides the display
> sugar you wish (and much more).

Do you have any pointers? In particular regarding the display sugar. Can
you preview the formulas to some extent?

I have been somewhat reluctant to try to write an article in org mode,
because it seems to me that the setups end up being very hairy and
brittle. I have not tried it, though.

Regards, and thanks,

         Mario

Re: x-symbol?

[David Kastrup]

m_mommer@yahoo.com (Mario S. Mommer) writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>> With regard to the optic sugar, you might \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>> in connection with some utf-8 special characters, namely let LaTeX cater
>> for the conversion.
>
> Do you know of any resource that describes that?

I'd guess the inputenc documentation.

> I presume one would have some input method producing the (for example)
> nabla in utf8, and then some macro that translates to \nabla. Is that
> what you mean?

For example.  In Emacs, the TeX input method will produce, when you type
\nabla, "∇" in your text.

>> For the visual component, I consider X-Symbol's approach a bit too
>> invasive on the buffer text: if things go wrong, you lose original
>> input.
>
> In all the years i've used it, i did not observe that I lost input. I
> mean, yes, if you for example delete an alpha character, all six
> letters of the \alpha disappear, but that has never bothered me.

It has happened to me quite a bit that something went wrong and the file
contained unconverted material.  When you were lucky, some code
conversions made it possible to salvage.

>> preview-latex's own way of inserting graphics instead, however,
>> appears like overkill for the same application space.  A middle ground
>> would be the use of display properties substituting appropriate Unicode
>> characters, but not graphics.
>
> But I think that is exactly what x-symbol does.

No, it replaces the buffer text instead of changing its display.

> It has a special font for some characters that seem not be in Unicode,
> but that is about it.

It works with special fonts and codings for other characters as well IIRC.

> It does include small thumbnails of graphics included with
> \includegraphics (which btw, is of very little use).

I don't consider this part of its defining feature set.  It's more like
a completely separate functionality.

>> The work still has to be done, but once it _has_ been done, chances
>> are that it will at least be guarded somewhat against bitrot.
>
> Here is me crossing my fingers :-)
>
> I'll try to contact the original author. Maybe assigning fsf the
> copyright would be a first step...

If you can't get anybody willing to work on the code, it would be sort
of pointless.  Sure, it is a kind of insurance against some programmer
eventually being able and willing to work on it, and the original author
being no longer available or willing to bother.  But I think it might be
smarter if you'd try to see whether you can find somebody willing to
work on this first.

-- 
David Kastrup