Currently I am in the process of gathering requirements from a user's point of view for tool chains. This is what I already got:
R1: Provide preconfigured list of tools, a tool being a combination of a command, a process filter, a sentinel etc. R2: Provide a possibility for the user to define own tools. R3: The definition of user-defined tools shall not prevent the preconfigured list of tools from being updated when a new version of the software is installed. R4: Support creation of tool chains by concatenating tools. R5: Support automatic execution of tool chain both until file in final output format is produced and until display (view or print) is done. R6: Support manual step-by-step execution. R7: Automatic execution of the tool chain shall be aborted when an error occurs during execution of a tool. R8: Steps already executed and not necessary to be executed again shall not be repeated if execution of the tool chain was interrupted and started again. R9: Allow for tools to be executed independently. This is necessary for tools not actually fitting into a sequential tool chain, like spell or syntax checkers. R10: Provide possibility to define expanders returning strings to be inserted in the command call. It shall be possible to use arbitrary Emacs Lisp expressions for the logic behind the expanders. R11: Provide the possibility to switch between tool chains. R12: Provide the possibility to save a reference to the tool chain per document and switch to the tool chain once the document is opened. Tool chain settings of other documents shall be unaffected. (Note that just referencing a tool chain influences interchangeability of the document between different Emacs/AUCTeX installation negatively.) R13: Provide to specify a way to update the viewer if the tool chain is run through to the viewer part and the viewer is already running. Does anybody see problems with these requirements or has additions? A note: If we implement tool chains as sketched above at least the PDF and Omega minor modes can go. I am not sure about source specials mode yet. -- Ralf _______________________________________________ auctex-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/auctex-devel
