LaTeX auto insertion of maths delimiters rather than TeX's

[Atcold]

Environment

• TeXstudio: 4.2.2
• Qt: 6.2.2
• OS: MacOS 12.2.1
• TeX distribution: texlive 2021

Expected behaviour

"Auto insert maths delimiters where needed" should add LaTeX maths delimiters \(…\) rather than TeX's $…$, or should let the user choose between LaTeX and TeX.

Moreover, how does one add custom maths to this auto delimiter insertion mechanism?

[hair-splitter]

You are wrong. $ ... $ can be used in LaTeX in the same way as in Plain TeX. But $$ ... $$ is not recommended for use in LaTeX.

[Atcold]

\( ... \) is LaTeX syntax. $ ... $ is TeX syntax.

plainTeX only allows $. In LaTeX you can use both, but \( ... \) will give less obscure error messages when there is a mistake inside it.

Both are shortcuts to start inline math environments.

https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/513/33287

[hair-splitter]

$ ... $ is officially-supported LaTeX2e syntax!

[Atcold]

Yes, LaTeX does support TeX commands, whereas TeX does not support LaTeX commands. Nothing I wrote seems incorrect to me.

[hair-splitter]

Your request suggested to me that using $ ... $ in LaTeX is incorrect, it is only correct to use it in plain TeX. I claim that $ ... $ is allowed in LaTeX as well as Plain TeX.

On the other hand, not all Plain TeX methods are supported in LaTeX! For example, $$ ... $$ works in LaTeX but is not supported!

[sunderme]

I take the feature request as making the delimiters user changeable. However that does not have a priority for me.

[Atcold]

@sunderme, thanks.

Could you also address my question? I.e. how to add custom maths to the auto-insertion of delimiters? Currently, typing \alpha will trigger the insertion of maths delimiters. But this won't happen, say, for \myAlpha. So, where is the list that the auto-insertion is checking? Is it user editable?

[sunderme]

cwl (completion word list) contain a indicator that a command is a math command, see manual/wiki.