Customization options can be found by typing M-x customize-group <RET> preview <RET>. Remember to set the option when you have changed it. The list of suggestions can be made very long (and is covered in detail in For advanced users), but some are:
If you use a non-white background in Emacs, you might have color
artifacts at the edges of your previews. Playing around with the option
Preview Transparent Color
in the Preview Appearance
group
might improve things. With some settings, the cursor may cover the
whole background of a preview, however.
Since this customization group is very specific to the display engine in use, you may see somewhat different options under XEmacs.
\label
s
When using preview-latex, the \label
s are hidden by the
previews. It is possible to make them visible in the output .dvi
by using the LaTeX package showkeys
alternatively
showlabels
. However, the boxes of these labels will be outside
the region preview-latex considers as the preview image. To enable a
similar mechanism internal to preview-latex, enable the
showlabels
option in Preview Default Option List
in the
Preview Latex
group.
The current default is to open previews automatically when you enter
them with cursor left/right motions. Auto-opened previews will close
again once the cursor leaves them again (this is also done when doing
incremental search, or query-replace operations), unless you changed
anything in it. In that case, you will have to regenerate the preview
(via e.g., C-c C-p C-p). Other options for Preview Auto
Reveal
are available via customize
.
Currently preview-latex asks you whether you want to cache the
document preamble (everything before \begin{document}
) before
it generates previews for a buffer the first time. Caching the preamble
will significantly speed up regeneration of previews. The larger your
preamble is, the more this will be apparent. Once a preamble is cached,
preview-latex will try to keep track of when it is changed, and dump
a fresh format in that case. If you experience problems with this, or
if you want it to happen without asking you the first time, you can
customize the Preview Auto Cache Preamble
setting.
Since preview-latex frequently runs only small regions through
LaTeX, values like equation counters are not consistent from run to
run. If this bothers you, customize Preview Required Option
List
and check the `counters' option. LaTeX will then output a
load of counter information during compilation, and this information
will be used on subsequent updates to keep counters set to useful
values. The additional information takes additional time to analyze,
but this is relevant mostly only when you are regenerating all previews
at once, and maybe you will be less tempted to do so when counters
appear more or less correct.
If you have a certain macro or environment that you want to preview,
first check if it can be chosen in the Preview Default Options
List
in the Preview Latex
group.
If it is not available there, you can add it to Preview Default
Preamble
also in the Preview Latex
group, by adding a
\PreviewMacro
or \PreviewEnvironment
entry
(see Provided commands) after the \RequirePackage
line. For example, if you want to preview the center
environment,
press the <Show> button and the last <INS> button, then add
\PreviewEnvironment{center}
in the space that just opened. Note that since center
is a
generic formatting construct of LaTeX, a general configuration like
that is not quite prudent. You better to do this on a per-document
base so that it is easy to disable this behavior when you find this
particular entry gives you trouble.
One possibility is to save such settings in the corresponding file-local variable instead of your global configuration (see Local Variables in Files). A perhaps more convenient place for such options would be in a configuration file in the same directory with your project (see Package options).
The usual file for preview-latex preconfiguration is
prauctex.cfg
. If you also want to keep the systemwide defaults,
you should add a line
\InputIfFileExists{preview/prauctex.cfg}{}{}
to your own version of prauctex.cfg
(this is assuming that
global files relating to the preview
package are installed in a
subdirectory preview
, the default behavior).
If you have performance problems because your document is full of
inline math ($...$
), or if your usage of $
conflicts
with preview-latex's, you can turn off inline math previews. In the
Preview Latex
group, remove the checkmark in the box next to
textmath
in Preview Default Option List
.