If you’re an Emacser who writes in LaTeX you’re doubtless familiar with AUCTeX. Most of the time, you can depend on Org mode to do the heaving lifting but when you have a complicated layout you may have to invoke AUCTeX.
Randy Ridenour, a professor at Oklahoma Baptist University, writes in LaTeX using AUCTeX and, of course, wanted to configure it using John Wiegley’s use-package macro. He did what we’d all do:
(use-package tex :ensure auctex)
but it didn’t work. It turns you have to do
(use-package tex-site :ensure auctex)
instead.
When I saw his post, it rang a bell so I checked my config and I do the exact same thing. I vaguely remember going through the same steps as Ridenour years ago. I no longer recall how I discovered the magic spell but I doubtless found it on the Web somewhere. Ridenour’s problem was getting things to work with Skim. I’ve never used Skim so I had some other problem but the answer was the same.
Once I fixed the problem, I just moved on and so have no idea why you need tex-site instead of tex. I’m sure one of Irreal’s well informed readers will jump in with the answer.
I know this trip down memory lane isn’t all that interesting to most of you but I’m writing about it for the same reason that Ridenour did: to help someone else struggling with the problem find the answer.