limiting align-current in LaTeX-mode

Question

When working on a LaTeX document in Emacs align-current aligns & and \\, but does so for entire sections at a time. Anyone have any idea as to how one limits its range (in a new macro) to say the current environment?

I seldom need to do an align of anythis other than a matrix or a table.

My attempts to build something on top of align-regexp have not been successful.

Ideas?

Edit:

Given the following test data M-X align-current will normally align the &'s and \\'s, but on a sectional basis. I'd like them to work only on the current environment.

\begin{tabular}{xxx}
  a & bbbb & sdssd & \\
ccsssssss & jj& bb
\end{tabular}
\begin{tabular}{xxx}
      a & bbbb & sdssd & \\
cc & jj& bb
\end{tabular}

If I run it in this example, it aligned them in both tabulars at the same time.

Answer 1

align-current usually does the right thing for me. It only aligned multiple sections when there was no space before or after the \section macro. You can force align to stay within the current section with the following addition to your .emacs:

(defun align-section ()
  "Apply align to the current section only."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (LaTeX-mark-section)
    (align (point) (mark))))

(defun align-environment ()
  "Apply align to the current environment only."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (LaTeX-mark-environment)
    (align (point) (mark))))

Edit: I misunderstood the scope. The second function will limit the alignment to the current environment, not the whole section.

Note that this doesn't change align-current, but provides a new function to do what you want. Call it with M-x align-environment.