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When I'm editing a file in LaTeX-mode (I guess it means AUCTeX), and the flyspell is enabled, then M-TAB is not responding. I cannot get completion of standard LaTeX commands - for example it won't complete \newc to \newcommand.

I couldn't find information about this around... I'm using Aquamacs with 23.3.1 Emacs on Mac OS X.

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migrated from superuser.com Aug 19 '11 at 6:57


I'm not sure this should have been migrated: It's more in SU's area of competence that it is ours... –  Seamus Aug 19 '11 at 8:43
I posted it there in the first place, about 3 months ago, after someone here suggested that this kind of question should be posted there. It wasn't helpful. I think this is an on-topic question, and that the chances it will be answered here are higher. –  Dror Aug 19 '11 at 8:50
From my experience of emacs questions, they don't get answered much. There are only a dozen or so emacs users on here regularly and none of us is that experienced. Whether or not it is on topic is immaterial really: there are more people who know more about emacs on SU than there are here. –  Seamus Aug 19 '11 at 10:52
As this question was there (i.e. on SU) for quite a while, I asked to try and migrate it here. In any case, if there will be enough people voting to return it to SU - it will happen :) –  Dror Aug 19 '11 at 11:34
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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

What does M-TAB do - anything? Is there a key combination mentioned in your LaTeX menu after "Complete Macro"? The lisp function which should be called is "TeX-complete-macro". Try running it manually by typing


and leave the cursor after this and do

M-x TeX-complete-macro

If this works, then you can probably just rebind the key in your .emacs with

(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook (lambda () (define-key TeX-mode-map "<M-tab>" 'TeX-complete-macro)))

Update: It seems there is a flyspell variable which controls this: flyspell-use-meta-tab. You can probably set this to nil and it will then work.

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For some reason I don't have M-x TeX-complete-macro. However, when typing \newc M-TAB, if flyspell-mode is disabled, then it auto completes to \newcommand. If flyspell is enabled this doesn't work, and it tries to correct the spelling. I guess there's a conflict between the key bindings which I don't know how to solve. Thanks in advance and for the answer. –  Dror Oct 27 '11 at 10:26
This sounds to me like you dont' have AUCTeX but only some basic LaTeX mode? What happend if you do: M-x find-library and then look for auctex.el? –  PLK Oct 27 '11 at 12:06
It seems like it opens the file auctex.el. I do think that auctex is installed as I can use features like C-C C-e to generate environment or C-c C-s to generate sectioning level. –  Dror Oct 27 '11 at 13:04
Hmm this is sounding like you might have an old version of AUCTeX. If you do M-h v (describe variable) and then type "AUCTeX-version", what version do you see? –  PLK Oct 27 '11 at 19:14
I just noticed that there is a variable for this in flyspell. Try to change "flyspell-use-meta-tab" to nil. C-h v flyspell-use-meta-tab will give you a link to customise this. –  PLK Oct 31 '11 at 11:26
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FlySpell has a variable that controls that behaviour: flyspell-use-meta-tab. The documentation says: Non-nil means that FlySpell uses M-TAB to correct word. So just put this on your .emacs file:

(setq flyspell-use-meta-tab nil)
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The folks on the AUCTeX-Mailinglist ( http://www.mail-archive.com/auctex@gnu.org/info.html ) answer questions like this, usually.

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