Info Catalog reftex: Labels and References reftex: Referencing Labels

reftex: Creating Labels

 
 3.1 Creating Labels
 ===================
 
 In order to create a label in a LaTeX document, press ‘C-c (’
 (‘reftex-label’).  Just like LaTeX, RefTeX is context sensitive and will
 figure out the environment it currently is in and adapt the label to
 that environment.  A label usually consists of a short prefix indicating
 the type of the label and a unique mark.  RefTeX has three different
 modes to create this mark.
 
   1. A label can be derived from context.  This means, RefTeX takes the
      context of the label definition and constructs a label from
      that(1).  This works best for section labels, where the section
      heading is used to construct a label.  In fact, RefTeX’s default
      settings use this method only for section labels.  You will be
      asked to confirm the derived label, or edit it.
 
   2. We may also use a simple unique number to identify a label.  This
      is mostly useful for labels where it is difficult to come up with a
      very good descriptive name.  RefTeX’s default settings use this
      method for equations, enumerate items and footnotes.  The author of
      RefTeX tends to write documents with many equations and finds it
      impossible to come up with good names for each of them.  These
      simple labels are inserted without query, and are therefore very
      fast.  Good descriptive names are not really necessary as RefTeX
      will provide context to reference a label (Referencing
      Labels).
 
   3. The third method is to ask the user for a label.  This is most
      useful for things which are easy to describe briefly and do not
      turn up too frequently in a document.  RefTeX uses this for figures
      and tables.  Of course, one can enter the label directly by typing
      the full ‘\label{mark}’.  The advantage of using ‘reftex-label’
      anyway is that RefTeX will know that a new label has been defined.
      It will then not be necessary to rescan the document in order to
      access this label later.
 
    If you want to change the way certain labels are created, check out
 the variable ‘reftex-insert-label-flags’ (Options - Creating
 Labels).
 
    If you are using AUCTeX to write your LaTeX documents, you can set it
 up to delegate the creation of labels to RefTeX.  AUCTeX, for
 more information.
 
    ---------- Footnotes ----------
 
    (1) Note that the context may contain constructs which are invalid in
 labels.  RefTeX will therefore strip the accent from accented Latin-1
 characters and remove everything else which is not valid in labels.
 This mechanism is safe, but may not be satisfactory for non-western
 languages.  Check the following variables if you need to change things:
 ‘reftex-translate-to-ascii-function’, ‘reftex-derive-label-parameters’,
 ‘reftex-label-illegal-re’, ‘reftex-abbrev-parameters’.
 

Info Catalog reftex: Labels and References reftex: Referencing Labels