AUCTeX is an advanced (La)TeX mode for Emacs that provides a feature-rich environment for editing and compiling LaTeX documents, with improved functionality and usability.
A key feature of AUCTeX is editing. You can insert macros, environments, and headings with a simple key stroke or via a menu entry. AUCTeX is intelligent, and it will prompt you for parameters in case of known macros and environments. There is also a completion mechanism for partially written macros, which makes editing much easier. AUCTeX also supports keyboard shortcuts for inserting math. Additionally, sophisticated fontification and indentation of TeX/LaTeX macros and environments are available. You can even fold macros and environments and show their contents or a pre-defined string instead. If you need to edit the content again, you can temporarily un-fold it.
Compiling is also easy with AUCTeX. You can run various TeX/LaTeX interpreters and related programs like BibTeX or makeindex from within Emacs. You can also view errors of the compiler run and jump to the respective place in the TeX/LaTeX source code.
In terms of viewing, AUCTeX is powerful. You can start viewers for DVI, PostScript, and PDF output from within Emacs. You can also use forward and inverse search with DVI viewers.
AUCTeX is extensible and customizable too. It supports macros and environments of many TeX/LaTeX packages with the use of style files. You can easily extend AUCTeX by writing your own style files. Many aspects of AUCTeX can be adapted to fit your personal working style via the customize mechanism provided by Emacs.
Lastly, there have been some new features added in the latest release of AUCTeX. You can now access docs on C-c ? with a new function called TeX-doc. Also, new "Clean" and "Clean All" commands for intermediate and output files have been added. pdfsync support (forward search in PDF files) has also been added. LaTeX comes with its own toolbar enabled by default. And some existing bugs have been fixed.
Overall, AUCTeX is an excellent package that provides a lot of features to make your TeX/LaTeX experience easier and efficient.
Version 11.83: N/A