update

[Silvio Levy]

Dear Ralf - as you may have suspected, ANY M-x customize-* failed
for me (not just AUCTeX related ones); I just had never noticed it.
(I'm accustomed to editing .emacs directly.)

So the problem turned out to be this: in the command
(setq keyboard-translate-table "....") in my .emacs,
there was a naked control-M (instead of \C-M). This never caused
trouble with other aspects of emacs, but apparently it ruins the
customization mechanism.

Thank you very much for your help. If I may make a suggestion,
you-all might think of including in the AUCTeX doc a list of the
variables involved in syntax highlighting and an example of their
direct use. Putting such a line such as
'(font-latex-match-reference-keywords (quote ("fullref")))
(which is what I wanted to do from the beginning)
is a lot quicker than going though the customization menus, especially
if one wants to make the change on two or more systems.

Thanks again, and best wishes,

Silvio

[Ralf Angeli]

Post by Silvio Levy
Dear Ralf - as you may have suspected, ANY M-x customize-* failed
for me (not just AUCTeX related ones); I just had never noticed it.
(I'm accustomed to editing .emacs directly.)

[...]

Post by Silvio Levy
Thank you very much for your help. If I may make a suggestion,
you-all might think of including in the AUCTeX doc a list of the
variables involved in syntax highlighting and an example of their
direct use.

These variables _are_ included in the documentation. Just look at
(info "(auctex)Font Locking"). If this is not clear enough, please
make a suggestion for improving it.

Post by Silvio Levy
Putting such a line such as
'(font-latex-match-reference-keywords (quote ("fullref")))
(which is what I wanted to do from the beginning)
is a lot quicker than going though the customization menus, especially
if one wants to make the change on two or more systems.

I adapted the doc string of these variables which now says (taking
`font-latex-match-reference-keywords' as an example):

"List of keyword strings for reference face.
Each string has to be the name of a macro omitting the leading backslash."

Does that make it clear to you what you have to insert in your init
file for changing such a variable?

I don't think it would be a good idea to add a setq example for each
variable into the manual. Somebody accustomed with editing an init
file should be able to find the doc string or extract the necessary
information from the manual and know how to construct such a list.

[Silvio Levy]

Dear Ralf

These variables _are_ included in the documentation. ... If this is
not clear enough, please make a suggestion for improving it.

There could be a "Customization" entry at top level (info auctex),
with just a few links to relevant sections. Or this entry might be
under "Advanced Features" instead of at top level. Or you might
mention under "Parsing Files" that the stuff about fonts is covered
under "Display -> Font Locking".

You see, "font locking" is not a term that occurs naturally to people.

When I went hunting for variables, the entries that seemed relevant on
the top-level page were "Advanced Features" and "Parsing Files". I did
not find again the page where everything is so nicely explained, EVEN
THOUGH I had looked at it earlier (I know that I did for two reasons:
I had scanned the documentation a few days earlier, at installation
time, and I had already tried "customize-group font-latex", which
failed).

At the time one really WANTS a piece of information, one sometimes
can't find it :-( so it helps to have lots of cross-references.

I don't think it would be a good idea to add a setq example for each
variable into the manual.

I agree. My (poorly expressed) suggestion was having one
example overall, or one example per group, or per documentation page.

Somebody accustomed with editing an init
file should be able to find the doc string or extract the necessary
information from the manual and know how to construct such a list.

I agree, and I HAD managed to find a sort of solution; but now thanks
to your help I have found the RIGHT solution.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

Silvio

[Ralf Angeli]

Post by Silvio Levy

These variables _are_ included in the documentation. ... If this is
not clear enough, please make a suggestion for improving it.

There could be a "Customization" entry at top level (info auctex),
with just a few links to relevant sections.

Customization options are spread all over the manual because they are
usually explained together with the respective functionality. So I
don't think this would be very helpful.

Post by Silvio Levy
Or this entry might be
under "Advanced Features" instead of at top level.

Font locking once was explained inside "Advanced Features" but now
that we also have folding to be described the explanations related to
the display of source code grew to large to be kept there. I thought
it would be better to separate these things from the description of
editing functionality and give them their own chapter. Maybe the term
"Display" is not descriptive enough?

Post by Silvio Levy
Or you might
mention under "Parsing Files" that the stuff about fonts is covered
under "Display -> Font Locking".

Hm, I thought it would be obvious that the chapter about parsing
covers something completely different.

Post by Silvio Levy
You see, "font locking" is not a term that occurs naturally to people.

"Font locking" is the term usually used for syntax highlighting in the
context of Emacs.

Post by Silvio Levy
When I went hunting for variables, the entries that seemed relevant on
the top-level page were "Advanced Features" and "Parsing Files". I did
not find again the page where everything is so nicely explained, EVEN
I had scanned the documentation a few days earlier, at installation
time, and I had already tried "customize-group font-latex", which
failed).
At the time one really WANTS a piece of information, one sometimes
can't find it :-( so it helps to have lots of cross-references.

And it helps using the index. (c; I know that people not familiar with
Emacs use the term syntax highlighting instead of font locking.
That's why it is mentioned right at the start of the "Display" chapter
_and_ got an index entry. If you are using the info documentation of
AUCTeX, simple type `i syn TAB' and there it is.

[Silvio Levy]

Right, thanks for the hint about the index.

Best wishes,

Silvio