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6 Viewing Cross-References

RefTeX can display cross-referencing information. This means, if two document locations are linked, RefTeX can display the matching location(s) in another window. The \label and \ref macros are one way of establishing such a link. Also, a \cite macro is linked to the corresponding \bibitem macro or a BibTeX database entry.

The feature is invoked by pressing C-c & (reftex-view-crossref) while point is on the key argument of a macro involved in cross-referencing. You can also click with S-mouse-2 on the macro argument. Here is what will happen for individual classes of macros:

\ref ¶

Display the corresponding label definition. All usual variants⁷ of the \ref macro are active for cross-reference display. This works also for labels defined in an external document when the current document refers to them through the xr interface (see xr: Cross-Document References).

\label ¶

Display a document location which references this label. Pressing C-c & several times moves through the entire document and finds all locations. Not only the \label macro but also other macros with label arguments (as configured with reftex-label-alist) are active for cross-reference display.

\cite ¶

Display the corresponding BibTeX database entry or \bibitem. All usual variants⁸ of the \cite macro are active for cross-reference display.

\bibitem ¶

Display a document location which cites this article. Pressing C-c & several times moves through the entire document and finds all locations.

BibTeX ¶

C-c & is also active in BibTeX buffers. All locations in a document where the database entry at point is cited will be displayed. On first use, RefTeX will prompt for a buffer which belongs to the document you want to search. Subsequent calls will use the same document, until you break this link with a prefix argument to C-c &.

\index ¶

Display other locations in the document which are marked by an index macro with the same key argument. Along with the standard \index and \glossary macros, all macros configured in reftex-index-macros will be recognized.

While the display of cross referencing information for the above mentioned macros is hard-coded, you can configure additional relations in the variable reftex-view-crossref-extra.