How do you create (automatically inserted) LaTeX template with Emacs+AUCTeX?

Question

I use Emacs+AUCTex for writing LaTeX documents. I have specific needs so my typical preamble is quite long. Today, I have a .tex file with only this preamble (a template so) and I use C-x C-w to write a new file from this template. It isn't the best solution because my template localization could be far away from the new file.

So is there a way to call LaTeX templates in Emacs in another (shorter) way?

EDIT : auto-insert-mode offers a way to achieve what I want but it doesn't put automatically my template (LaTeX preamble) when I create a .tex file. I have to launch M-x auto-insert. How can I automatize this based on the file extension?

Answer 1

At the end of VirTeX-common-initialization (essentially) TeX-master-file is added to find-file-hooks. This is the source for the %%% Local Variables: %%% mode: latex %%% TeX-master: t %%% End: stuff. (Note, that VirTeX-common-initialization is the first thing in LaTeX-common-initialization which is called in TeX-latex-mode being an alias for latex-mode.)

To get ride of the automagically added comments you can remove the hook:

(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook '(lambda ()
  (remove-hook 'find-file-hooks (car find-file-hooks) 'local)))

That looks like a hack. But adding TeX-master-file is quite hard-coded without user-options. So, it seems to me that you have no other chance.

After that correction the auto-insert stuff works automagically. (At least for me.)

But, I have replaced the entries in auto-insert-alist. Meaning, instead of

(define-auto-insert "\\.tex$" "my-latex-template.tex")

I have something like that:

(let ((el (assoc 'latex-mode auto-insert-alist)))
  (if el
      (setcdr el "/c/temp/autoinsert.tex")
    (define-auto-insert "\\.tex$" "/c/temp/autoinsert.tex")))

Maybe, that is important, maybe not. I've got to get home now and I cannot further investigate that.

Answer 2

You're probably looking for auto-insert-mode. This is orthogonal to AUCTeX - for instance, I use it to insert a class-template for .java files.

Put the following in your .emacs file:

(auto-insert-mode)
 ;; *NOTE* Trailing slash important
(setq auto-insert-directory "/path/to/template/directory/")
(setq auto-insert-query nil)
(define-auto-insert "\\.tex$" "my-latex-template.tex")

Of course, you could make the regular expression used as the first argument to define-auto-insert more complex e.g. to insert different preambles depending on the working directory.

I adapted this code from an example from the EmacsWiki where you can also find additional information.

Answer 3

This is the simplest solution I can think of:

(defun insert-latex-template()
  (when (= (point-max) (point-min))
    (insert-file "/path/to/your/template/file")))

(add-hook 'latex-mode-hook 'insert-latex-template)