Subject: bug#36313: Two installation schemes of AUCTeX

From: Ikumi Keita <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 21:17:56 +0900

>>>>> Ryo Furue <[email-masked]> writes:
> I'm utterly confused!  I thought the starting point of our discussion was

> If the default value of `TeX-parse-self' is t, some emacs users who don't
> use AUCTeX will suffer from extra slow down due to the parsing of some
> directory tree.

> Is the above statement correct or not?

Actually, I'm not quite sure what David worries about in the quoted
statement.

Although I can enumerate some cases as quoted below that non-nil
`TeX-parse-self' harms the users, they are more or less exceptional
cases, in my opinion.  But I might be missing some critial cases.

1. The user who doesn't use AUCTeX opens a big TeX file inadvertently.
2. The machine is equipped with very limited amount of memory for some
reason.
   - fairly old real machine
   - virtual machine assigned small virtual memory
   - tablet with Android or iOS
3. The user is a beginner of (La)TeX and has just begun to use AUCTeX.
In this case, the user may get irritated if the parsing of the opened
file (and the parsing of the elisp directory tree in search of the style
files) takes up some time every time the document is opened, and choose
to switch from AUCTeX to built-in TeX mode of emacs before knowing well
the advantages the parsing provides.

> Assuming that it is correct, I guess the reason for the objection to the
> default value of TeX-parse-self is

>    1. If the system administrator elects to install emacs with AUCTeX
>    enabled, and
>    2. if the default value of `TeX-parse-self' is t,
>    3. all emacs users will experience slow down when emacs is launched
>    because of the parsing of some elisp files which wouldn't be parsed if
>    TeX-parse-self weren't set.

> So, I guess those elisp files in item 3 above are big ones.

As far as I know, the item 3 is not the case.  As I wrote, just
launching emacs without opening TeX files makes no difference due the
value of `TeX-parse-self', if I'm not missing something important.

(The elisp files loaded when `TeX-parse-self' is t are not so big in
general, but the number of them can be large instead, e.g., when the
opened LaTeX file uses quite many \usepackage's.)

Regards,
Ikumi Keita