tlt-prettify

TL;DR: tlt-prettify is an Emacs package written in an effort to make writing logic in LaTeX-, Beamer- and org-mode more comfortable. See the .gif images below to get a first impression.

In summary, tlt-prettify supports the prettification of LaTeX commands that, when compiling, result in symbols commonly used in mathematics or logic, as well as those commands which print text in a certain color. This behavior is supported both for .text and .org documents. On top of that, tlt-prettify introduces a machinery to convert back and forth strings containing LaTeX commands and strings containing Unicode symbols.

Installation

Automatic Installation (via quelpa)

The package can be installed using quelpa like this:

(quelpa '(tlt-prettify :fetcher github :repo "opensource-philosophy/tlt-prettify"))

Manual Installation

To install tlt-prettify manually, download/clone the repository to a directory of your choice and add this directory to your load-path. Lastly, autoload the commands you want to use:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/tlt-prettify-dir")
(autoload 'tlt-prettify "tlt-prettify" nil t)
(autoload 'tlt-copy-region-unicode-to-LaTeX  "tlt-prettify" nil t)
(autoload 'tlt-paste-region-unicode-to-LaTeX "tlt-prettify" nil t)
(autoload 'tlt-copy-region-LaTeX-to-unicode  "tlt-prettify" nil t)
(autoload 'tlt-paste-region-LaTeX-to-unicode "tlt-prettify" nil t)

Features

LaTeX Command Prettification

The most basic functionality tlt-prettify provides is that LaTeX commands which produce special characters – and especially those which mathematicians and logicians commonly use for writing formulas – are treated as if they actually were these special characters. To be exact, the Unicode symbols these commands would print if they were compiled with LaTeX are shown instead of the commands themselves, and a single keystroke deletes them. For example, instead of \forall, ∀ is displayed, and hitting backspace right before it deletes the whole \forall. tlt-prettify offers support both for .tex and .org documents.

Prettification for .tex documents

If you happen to write your documents or beamer presentations directly in a .tex file, tlt-prettify-TeX-mode is the minor-mode you will need to activate in order for the prettification to happen. This can be done either manually or automatically. For the former, run the same-named interactive command, i.e. type M-x tlt-prettify-TeX-mode RET. For the latter, add the following line to your Emacs configuration file:

(add-hook 'TeX-update-style-hook #'tlt-prettify-TeX-mode)

Prettiication for .org documents

Similar functionality can be turned on for .org documents, which are commonly used to export into .tex documents. Here, too, both manual and automatic activation is possible; the former with M-x tlt-prettify-org-mode RET, the latter by adding

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook #'tlt-prettify-org-mode)

In addition to the prettification of LaTeX commands, inline LaTeX and beamer code is displayed colored as well. By default, @@latex:foo@@ and @@beamer:foo@@ are both displayed as foo colored in turquoise2.

LaTeX ⇔ Unicode conversion

Next to the prettification machinery, tlt-prettify allows for conversion form LaTeX macros to their Unicode counterparts and vice versa. Specifically, it provides the following interactive commands:

• tlt-copy-region-unicode-to-LaTeX
• tlt-copy-region-LaTeX-to-unicode
• tlt-paste-region-unicode-to-LaTeX
• tlt-paste-region-LaTeX-to-unicode

Let TEXT be the text to be converted and CONV(TEXT) the result of applying one of the conversion functions above. As a rule of thumb, note:

1. Use tlt-copy-* commands when TEXT is in an Emacs buffer and CONV(TEXT) is intended for use in an external program.
2. Use tlt-paste-* commands if TEXT is in an external program and CONV(TEXT) is intended for use in an Emacs buffer.
3. Use the commands indiscriminately if both TEXT and CONV(TEXT) are to be used in an Emacs buffer.

A word of caution to UNIX users: If Emacs is closed, the currently copied text will not be available anymore, which, if not known, can result in data loss. To change this behavior, you can install the package system-package clipit, which stores the clipboard contents in a text file to make it available even if the programs you copied from are closed. Installation instructions are not well-documented on the GitHub page, but the package is available for all major package managers. To install it using pacman, for example, run

sudo pacman -S clipit

in the shell console of your choice. Also make sure to add clipit -d to your autostart. This way, the functionality is turned on right after system start.

Copy-commands

If you select a region and run tlt-copy-region-*, the respective conversion will happen and the converted text will be put to the kill-ring (i.e., the Emacs-internal clipboard). For instance, selecting ∀x∃y and running M-x tlt-copy-region-unicode-to-LaTeX results in \forall x \exists y being copied to your clipboard. The recently copied string may, of course, be used in other programs as well.

To clarify this point, let us have a look at an example. if you would like to send a formula from one of your papers via mail, open the respective .tex file, select that formula and run tlt-copy-region-LaTeX-to-unicode. Now, the Unicode analogon of your LaTeX formula is copied to your clipboard. Go back to your mail application and string just obtained into the mail using Ctrl + v.

Paste-commands

On the other hand, if you run tlt-paste-region-* on a selected region, the string most recently stored in the clipboard is converted and inserted at point.

For instance, if we wished to copy a rather long formula like ∀x ◻α[x] → ◻∀x α[x] from a presentation to our .tex file, we would need a conversion from Unicode to LaTeX. To do that, we would copy the unicode formula from your presentation, go into Emacs and type M-x tlt-paste-region-unicode-to-LaTeX RET. This would result in \forall x \Box \alpha [x] \to \Box \forall x \alpha [x] to be inserted at point.

Deleting characters and LaTeX macros

Another feature that tlt-prettify provides is the possibility to remove the whole LaTeX macro when you press Shift-Backspace or Shift-Delete.

To spell this out, let | indicate the current position of the point and _ indicate a whitespace character (in this case, a space). Let us further assume this situation: text \macro|. Pressing Shift-Backspace now removes \foo so that only some_ is left. If you press Shift-Backspace again, you get some (only the space is removed since there is no LaTeX macro to delete backwards).

Similarly, if you press Backspace or Delete, then either a prettified LaTeX macro (that is shown as a Unicode symbol) or a single character is deleted. If you don’t like this behavior, you can disable it with the following setting:

(setq tlt-enable-delete-LaTeX-macros nil)

This will make Backspace and Delete remove a single character. In analogy to the above example, you would end up with text \macr| and text \mac|, respectively.

Color command prettification

By default, tlt-prettify displays \COLOR{TEXT} and \textcolor{COLOR}{TEXT} as TEXT highlighted with COLOR. For example, \green{foo} and \textcolor{green}{foo} will both be displayed as foo colored green.

tlt-prettify support the most important colors out of the box. Additional colors to be regarded for prettification can be specified by manipulating the variable tlt-color-commands. To add these custom colors, you can append them to the existing list:

(append tlt-color-commands '(
                             ("babig" "0,0,50")
                             ("bebig" "75,125,175")
                             ;; further custom colors ;;
                             ))

An additional color is specified by a string of the form ("COLOR" "R,G,B"), where COLOR is the name of the color you define and R, G and B are integers ranging between 0 and 255, specifying its red, green and blue values, respectively. For example, appending a list containing ("babig" "0,0,50") would result in both \babig{TEXT} and \textcolor{babig}{TEXT} being displayed as TEXT colored in navy blue.

If you wish to disable this feature, you can do so by adding the following piece of code to your configuration file:

(setq tlt-enable-colors nil)

An example configuration using use-package

Below, you will find a very basic configuration of tlt-prettify using use-package.

(use-package tlt-prettify
  :hook ((org-mode . tlt-prettify-org-mode) 
         (TeX-mode . tlt-prettiy-TeX-mode))
  :config
  (append tlt-color-commands '(("anthracite" "41,42,45")
                               ("froggreen" "61,212,37"))))

This configuration automatically enables tlt-prettify-org-mode in .org documents and tlt-prettify-TeX-mode in .tex documents. It also adds two custom colors: anthracite and froggreen.

History

Originally, tlt-prettify was meant to be an extension of magic-latex-buffer written by zk-phi. Over time, though, a great deal of other features was added, including, but not limited to …

• more ways to adjust the package to one’s needs
• a greater range of symbols relevant to logicians and mathematicians (for example, \mathbb and \mathfrak commands are supported)
• more sophisticated prettification (e.g., \neg \alpha is prettified as ¬α instead of ¬ α)
• the prettification of LaTeX color commands.
• the possibility to delete prettified LaTeX commands with a single key stroke
• commands to convert Unicode symbols to LaTeX commands and vice versa
• an analogous and more resource-efficient minor-mode for .org files.

For this reason, and since magic-latex-buffer does not seem to be maintained anymore, tlt-prettify has become a package of its own.