AUCTeX and Xetex

Question

I use emacs+AUCTeX to write my *-tex. Using the PDF mode, I can run pdflatex automatically with the C-c C-c command. However, I don't see a way to run xelatex automatically, or even set up a command option in the drop down window. My LISP skills are very rusty, and I was wondering if someone had a tex.el patch to enable xelatex support ?

Answer 1

If you have AUCTeX version 11.86, you can set the local variable TeX-engine to xetex. This is what I use:

%%% Local Variables: 
%%% coding: utf-8
%%% mode: latex
%%% TeX-engine: xetex
%%% End: 

You can check the version you have with

C-h v AUCTeX-version <RET>

Answer 2

You can add this to your emacs.el:

(setq TeX-engine 'xetex)

And add this if you want a PDF output by default:

(setq TeX-PDF-mode t)

Answer 3

You could customize the Tex Command List:

   M-x customize-variable TeX-command-list

There you can add a new commands to AUCTeX. Alternatively, you can directly modify your emacs init file:

;;set XeTeX mode in TeX/LaTeX
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda()
(add-to-list 'TeX-command-list '("XeLaTeX" "%`xelatex%(mode)%' %t" TeX-run-TeX nil t))
(setq TeX-command-default "XeLaTeX")
(setq TeX-save-query nil)
(setq TeX-show-compilation t)))