Rebinding keys in AUCTeX

Question

I'm trying to rebind a few keys in AUCTeX, mainly \textit and the like. So, as a test I've added to .emacs

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
  (lambda ()
    (define-key LaTeX-mode-map (kbd "C-S-i") 'find-file)
  )
)

It works, but which is the command I have to write instead of find-file to insert \textit as C-c C-f C-i does?

Answer 1

A very useful function in Emacs is describe-key that will tell you what function is being called by which keys. So, it seems that in AucTEX, C-c C-f C-i calls TeX-font and then passes C-i as argument.

So a simple solution would be to bind a key to TeX-font and keep the C-i (and others) to get the font you want. You can customize the list of possible fonts and secondary key shortcuts with TeX-font-list. You would thus have a simple:

(define-key LaTeX-mode-map (kbd "C-S-i") 'TeX-font)

(with whatever key you want).

If you really want to only rebind the italics and nothing else, you can always do:

(define-key LaTeX-mode-map (kbd "C-S-i") '(lambda () (interactive)(TeX-font nil ?\C-i)))

no need to redefine the whole behaviour of TeX-font.

Answer 2

You may use something like this:

  (defun insert-textit()
  "places textit{} into LaTeX buffer."
  (interactive)
  (if (region-active-p)
      (progn
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char (region-beginning))    
          (insert "\\textit{" ))
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char (region-end))
          (insert "}")))
    (insert "\\textit{}")
    (goto-char (forward-point -2)))
  (goto-char (forward-point 1)))

    (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
        (define-key LaTeX-mode-map (kbd "C-S-i") 'insert-textit)
      )
    )

Edit

This extended code handles the case of marked region too.

Edit #2

I removed the not needed concat and last progn

Answer 3

I've found a simple (and general) approach based on macros (thanks to insert-kbd-macro, which I've just discovered). Since I needn't remove C-c C-f C-i I define a macro and then I bind it to C-S-i.

(fset 'my-set-textit
   (lambda (&optional arg) "Keyboard macro." (interactive "p") (kmacro-exec-ring-item `(,(kbd "C-c C-f C-i") 0 "%d") arg)))

Then I use 'my-set-textit in define-key. (Edit: replaced code with special chars.)