TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2012-04-21 (page 1 of 2)

leo

12:12 AM

and works by loading it

lockstep

12:31 AM

@PauloCereda Half an hour after midnight, and not a single vote cast? ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@lockstep Ah! :P I'm writing a very long answer. :)

But wait until I finish it. :P

lockstep

@PauloCereda What is it about?

Paulo Cereda

@lockstep It's the Vim one I linked before. :)

I'm suggesting cool tricks. :)

Paulo Cereda

12:55 AM

Phew!

0

A: What is your favorite vi or vim command trick?

Disclaimer: I usually edit .tex files in Vim, but I don't use the Vim-LaTeX suite. I wouldn't say the following suggestions are tricks per se - they are provided by third-party plugins - but they actually help me with my usual TeX workflow: snipMate Created by Michael Sanders From the man...

It took me forever!

Now, back to the voting spree. :P

Werner

3:37 AM

@StephanLehmke: Since you provided an answer to my token-list question, you might be able to help me (if you don't mind).

I'm looking to add something to a token list, but it should be expanded first...

...here's an example:

...mmm, maybe I figured it out...

...I need to experiment a little more.

Thorsten

5:56 AM

@JosephWright Ok. I edited the post.

Joseph Wright

6:24 AM

I'd like to get some opinions on the range of 'favourite X tricks' questions that have popped up over the last few days (tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52752, tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52179, tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52750, tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52753)

There are a couple of concerns for me. First, the Vim and Emacs ones are of the form 'What is your favourite ...', which in general does not fit so well with the format for the site (subjective).

Secondly, I'm a bit worried about how TeX-related they are. Now, they do all mention TeX specifically, but I wonder to what extent the answers are TeX-related. Using say sed does not require TeX expertise and so the answers may well end up with little link to TeX and more to the tool involved. Of course, Emacs has AUCTeX, which is tied to TeX, so there is a stronger link there (I guess vim has some specialist mode too)

Another thing in my mind here is that most users probably are like me and don't do any editing from the command line directly. That's more about how useful the answers are than making the questions fit the site, of course, but it's worth at least bearing in mind.

Now, it may well be that other people see no issues here, since as I say the questions do specifically ask for tips for TeX users. I just want to be sure that this is the general feeling. (@StefanKottwitz, @MartinScharrer please do chip in!)

Stephan Lehmke

@JosephWright My opinion(s): 1. The answers are useful to TeX users. 2. As the answers are specific to TeX, it isn't likely there would be more useful answers on any other (maybe editor-specific) .SX site. 3. The answers make great reference targets for mor specific questions.

Andrew Stacey

7:00 AM

Shall we ask about perl scripts, lua scripts, php, ruby, ... ? I don't like them, but I can understand that some might like them. I don't actually think that this is a useful place for such information. This is where a wiki outranks SE. A better wuestion would be "I'm writing a wiki page on ... what are your suggestions for inclusion?". I recommend merging the sed and awk ones (vim and emacs are a bit different) and making the merged qn language agnostic.

N.N.

7:36 AM

@JosephWright I think they are ok as long as their connection to TeX and friends is clear. Even if you could do without most tools for interacting with TeX and friends tools are central to working with TeX.

Obviously if there is no connection or if it is not strong enough the questions should be handled accordingly, e.g. migrated.

Joseph Wright

8:11 AM

0

Q: How to recreate this figure in tikz 1:1?

I'm curious if the following simple figure can be recreated with all its characteristics, i.e the DIN correct arrow tips and the hatched areas. I'm very aware of various packages for tikz, where you can specify the arrow tips and fillings, but none of them met my requirements yet. The figure in ...

Closing reason: 'Please draw this for me' :-)

N.N.

Does it make sense to make another list question for articles by community members?

Marco Daniel

8:32 AM

@JosephWright Indeed

Henrik Hansen

What is the best way to deal with this? Ideally, they should be asking "How can I fill an area between several lines?", "How do I make arrows like this?" and so on. However, I can imagine it's difficult to cut the problem into pieces when you are still learning

Marco Daniel

@JosephWright Added a comment

@HenrikHansen A minimal example that shows the current status of the graphic. In special he can ask, how can I draw the following arrow.

Henrik Hansen

@MarcoDaniel I agree, but how do we encourage/guide askers into asking like that

On the SX Podcast Jeff has been talking a lot about the Duck-method. I.e. explaining your problem in as simple manners as possible,

Marco Daniel

@HenrikHansen I see the discrepant. So I think we should mentioned this in a comment and we shouldn't close such questions directly.

Martin Scharrer

9:06 AM

0

Q: Open PDF previewer width specific size and position and "always on top" from command line

I'm using latexmk -pdf -pvc to keep compiling my LaTeX files to PDFs while they are displayed in evince. I'm doing that a lot with different files and I keep needing to zoom the PDF content, resize the window and enable "always on top". I like to be able to do this automatically using the command...

command-line window-manager pdf size evince

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Nice clear question :-)

Martin Scharrer

9:17 AM

@JosephWright It's related to:

17

Q: PDF reader on Linux capable of continuous updating

I am using latexmk on a Red Hat 5 machine. I use it as: latexmk -pdf -pvc I would like to have my PDF reader automatically update the PDF as it is changed. What PDF reader do I need for this? What settings should I use?

pdf texworks latexmk viewers okular

Henrik Hansen

9:36 AM

I'm against talking behind people's back. But passive aggressive attitudes coupled with a feeling of entitlement to be correct and be served as widhed brings my blood to boil

Henrik Hansen

10:09 AM

@altermundus thanks for writing up an answer

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright: about the "editor" questions: I'm not a fan of those questions (IMHO they are quite subjective), but I think if the answers can be TeX-related, some users can benefit from them. :)

Henrik Hansen

@PauloCereda However, I also think something like sed and awk (or Unix shell for that matter) can be merged

N.N.

@PauloCereda I think they are ok if TeX related. Some represent real problems. For instance AUCTeX is not that transparent, so asking for tips makes sense.

Paulo Cereda

10:24 AM

@HenrikHansen Ah yes. :)

@NN Indeed. :) I'm quite tempted to give AUCTeX a try. :)

N.N.

@PauloCereda You should. I can take responsibility and all the blame if something bad happens.

N.N.

10:42 AM

We can have a chat room where you are allowed to vent your frustration (and happiness) in caps.

2

Paulo Cereda

@NN LOL

Henrik Hansen

@NN unfortunately I feel I need the same

I don't use TeX in my daily life anymore, so helping people on this site is the best way I got to keep my skills somewhat aloft. The fact that I volunteer my time and the fact that the best way for me to learn is to see great questions (and answers) makes it disturbing when someone feels they have an entitlement to receive a solution to their problem.

Stefan Kottwitz

@JosephWright If the question is related to TeX and helpful for TeX users, I don't have a problem with such "what's your favorite trick" questions. The "favorite" is a motivation for posting what answer thinks is the best, however sorting is still by voting for quality, and well, popularity. So it's not subjective and not offtopic.

Paulo Cereda

11:02 AM

@StefanKottwitz I think it might be considered subjective in the sense of not having a "definitive answer", but I think that would be easily solved with something like a big-list. :)

Henrik Hansen

Can these two be merged?

10

Q: Most useful sed one-liners for TeX users

The title of the question says it all. What is your favorite sed one-liner when it comes to editing TeX files. I have seen at least one sed goodfella on this forum who is writing a book about a sed in TeX. Maybe he could volunteer some of his tricks? I promise mine are coming soon (I love using ...

editors sed

3

Q: Some useful AWK scripts for TeX users

Some people like old cars, some like antiques, and I like classical Unix toolbox. Most likely the second (after shell script) scripting language that any old school Unix user learn is AWK. It is an indispensable tool of any cool teacher when it comes for dealing with grade books. It is however le...

editors awk

zeroth

@HenrikHansen I dont see a purpose for that, they are not the same question. Even though sed and awk has some similarities there are a multitude of different usages for both. I would rather have them seperate, however, they would be very good if a circular reference is added.

N.N.

Trying to learn Lisp by answering a question tex.stackexchange.com/questions/47277/…. Been thinking about it all week. May be a simple problem for the gurus!

Henrik Hansen

I think having a Unix shell tools question will lead to more useful tools

@zeroth

@NN so many backslashes

N.N.

@HenrikHansen Yup, I think there are enough backlashes in that snippet.

zeroth

11:15 AM

@HenrikHansen That would be a community post. I still think they should be seperated as is.

Henrik Hansen

@NN I'm no Lisp guru (especially not Emacs list), but I would imagine some DSL or macros could be made to make TeX manipulation more straighforward

Joseph Wright

@zeroth The point was that we don't want to have a series of separate 'command line tool X' questions. A suggested merged question is something along the lines of 'Good uses for command line *nix tools when editing .tex files'

zeroth

@JosephWright yes, and I agree if there are a few answers. However, in that case it really is a broad question. Shouldn't it then be a community wiki?

Joseph Wright

@zeroth Community wiki applies if either (a) there will be lots of edits from many people or (b) there is some reason that rep should not accumulate from answering. Simply having a 'big list' does not seem to fall within that.

Paulo Cereda

I wish Hans Zimmer wrote a TeX soundtrack.

Henrik Hansen

11:20 AM

I would say it should be a community wiki.

Say, an entry on Git will be a big topic, where many can commit with some information

zeroth

Ok. I more see a community wiki as informing the user that thumbs are irrelevant and all answers could be relevant to them. I think most users only use the top 1/2/3 answers and skip the rest. Surely the title states otherwise.
I would rather it be a community wiki, i see more purpose for that. As the rep acquired is not necessarily reflecting TeX knowledge.

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle @Werner I made a really weird contribution to the \gobblelast challenge ;-)

Stefan Kottwitz

Should a user be able to call himself Moderator?

Moderator, underground

669 2 25

pstricks diagrams tikz-pgf macros miktex compiling key-value

Joseph Wright

@StefanKottwitz I'd seen that

Patrick Gundlach

I like the image :)

Stefan Kottwitz

11:28 AM

Well, perhaps not really a topic for the chat. :-) just noticed it while being here.

Patrick Gundlach

wasn't the user name counter terrorist before? I think so

N.N.

@HenrikHansen \\( means opening of group in elisp regexp so to match the opening delimiter for LaTeX, \(, one needs to escape the backlash three times to distinguish it from a group opener. This is of course if I have understood it.

Joseph Wright

Used to be 'CounterTerrorist', I think

Paulo Cereda

As long as no one uses the ♦ symbol in the name, I think we are good. :)

Patrick Gundlach

I could rename myself to "egreg" and everyone would be concerned about the low quality answers suddenly

Paulo Cereda

11:31 AM

"I'm on fiiiiiireeeee!" on TV. Which means the Premier League is on. :)

N.N.

The day egreg hits 100k I think we all should temporarily rename ourselves to 'egreg' to celebrate.

Joseph Wright

12:08 PM

I've 'wikied' the editor questions: the argument that there is no 'right' answer to them seems reasonable to me

zeroth

@JosephWright yes, that is actually a better argument. Thanks for the discussion. :)

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright I almost hit 5.7k with that answer. :D

Patrick Gundlach

I think we are too harsh to close an answer like this:

-3

Q: How to recreate this figure in TikZ?

I'm curious how the following simple figure can be recreated with all its characteristics, i.e the DIN correct arrow tips and the hatched areas. I'm very aware of various packages for tikz, where you can specify the arrow tips and fillings, but none of them met my requirements yet. Please note...

tikz-pgf tikz-styles

I can well remember the old times where I had no clue whatsoever how to do things (similar to that) and I didn't know where to start.

5 downvotes is too much!

I thought our attitude is "friendliness" towards new users. A question like "did you try something before" should have been the reaction, but not a gun shot like that.

I think we sometimes forget how we felt when we were young and began with a completely new subject.

(I stop now)

Paulo Cereda

12:25 PM

@PatrickGundlach Joseph planned a blog post about those downvoting sprees (winks at @Joseph). We could also talk about the "close" actions. :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Slight issue with logging in to blog at the moment!

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Oh no!

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach Indeed. Compare and contrast

3

Q: Conformal mapping with pgfplots

I would like to realize the following graph with pgfplots: which represents the following conformal mapping: u=x^{1/q} v=y^{1/q} where q=2*(pi-alpha)/pi. I really don't know from where should I start to realize a graph of this kind, so every suggestion is welcome. Once I have some useful s...

pgfplots mapping

Stefan Kottwitz

Close as too localized?

0

Q: 3 out of 5 appendices missing

EDIT: This problem has been solved. It was as easy as this: one of the appendices had an \end{document}due to a copy-paste mistake. So if you ever have this problem, search for something like that. I apologize for any time wasted on problem solving here guys... I have a problem including appendi...

appendices

Joseph Wright

@StefanKottwitz Could you do me a favour with the blog and reset the password on my account. For some reason it won't let me log in!

Patrick Gundlach

12:34 PM

@JosephWright The only difference I can see is the "nice words" at the end. Is that the reason the 7 votes difference?

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach That's my point

There can be a tendency to overdo it with some questions

egreg

Too localized?

0

Q: 3 out of 5 appendices missing

EDIT: This problem has been solved. It was as easy as this: one of the appendices had an \end{document}due to a copy-paste mistake. So if you ever have this problem, search for something like that. I apologize for any time wasted on problem solving here guys... I have a problem including appendi...

appendices

Joseph Wright

@egreg Yes

Patrick Gundlach

@JosephWright I don't understand: just a few more "could you please" and "every suggestion is welcome" makes it a good question?

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach No, that's not what I was getting at. Like you, I don't see the difference between the two cases here, except that one got attention and downvotes, while the other did not.

Patrick Gundlach

12:39 PM

@JosephWright OK, I get your point. Thanks

One thing I really here is that we are normally nice to newcomers and not overly strict. And the moderators do a great job. I remember a discussion where some "helping moderator" tried to step in

Henrik Hansen

A huge problem with the closed question was the unwillingness to to restate the question from the asking. Ideally this shouldn't matter, but I think it lead to an overall unwillingness to help. He wasn't nice, cares not for guidelines and suggestions and so on. I do however find the downvotes and the closing rather harsh. The question wasn't off-topic and did have potential to improve.

Patrick Gundlach

" If you don't edited your question we will close it as too localized or not a real question. " is anything but a friendly welcome.

If I had received such a message on the first question, I would have gone away at that moment.

Stefan Kottwitz

@JosephWright did you try clicking on "lost password" ?

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach I'm going to tidy up the comments, I think

@StefanKottwitz Yes: for some reason I get no e-mail :-(

Paulo Cereda

@PatrickGundlach It's quite scary. :(

Joseph Wright

12:52 PM

I will try again :-)

Henrik Hansen

I will agree that the handling wasn't friendly. Just to play it on my self: I could have looked up how to modify the arrow tip - helping him get the question answered.

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright I can tell what your password is. :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@JosephWright Your email is configured. Strange, I cannot edit your profile there. There's just a "Remove" link, I better not click :-D

Henrik Hansen

I can't wait and see what the supposed blog post will be about, but I really hope this leads to a healthy discussion and some guidelines for how (and how not) to respond to newcomers

diabonas

1:37 PM

Please reopen

It is not a duplicate of the linked question: The older one is about actually signing PDF files, while this one only wants the possibility to sign a document using e.g. Adobe Reader (which needs a special form field). As this can be done using LaTeX, I think it's a perfectly valid question that deserves an answer.

7

Q: How do I create a PDF file that can be digitally signed?

Possible Duplicate: Digital signature We are using Acrobat digital signatures in my organization. With Acrobat Professional you can put in a signature block that allows signing with a client-side digital signature. This is something that can be then done by someone using Acrobat Read...

@diabonas Voted. :)

@diabonas Done

@diabonas done

That was fast, thank you all :-)

Marco Daniel

2:12 PM

Did anybody installed Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04 on a iMac?

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel I've installed Debian on an iBook (PPC, though). Is that any good?

Marco Daniel

@AndrewStacey Maybe. After the installation process I have to install grub bootloader. But I don't know the correct device. Should I use the mounting point /?

Or did you have any trouble during the installation?

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel Eeee. Okay, that's where my situation won't help: my iBook's hard drive burnt out so I actually installed onto an SD card and a CD (for the boot device) so that's the one bit of the process that wasn't the same as a standard installation.

Having said that, unless you've done something very strange then the bootloader should be on the same device as the root directory.

Hmm, lots happening today! My view on the scripts questions is that they really should be merged and a general purpose "Scripts useful for TeX" question. My "killer" reason is that someone looking for commandline scripts is highly unlikely to have a particular language in mind and be more interested in functionality.

Marco Daniel

@AndrewStacey At the moment I delete all my ext4 parts of my hard drive. After this process I will try to install ubuntu again.

Andrew Stacey

Regarding the furore over the closed question, I agree that piling on is Bad. Scanning through the comments, I can't help feeling that it started by an overreaction to how Marco expressed himself. I don't mean that Marco was wrong in any way, just that not being a native English speaker then the choice of phrasing was open to misinterpretation and the OP misinterpreted it. (ctd)

(ctd) This is one reason why we have the "Text Block"s: to provide a minimum comment that has been looked at by plenty of people and is pretty safe from being misunderstood.

It's also a good idea for those of us who are native English speakers to remember that not everyone who uses this site is such and step in to say something like "I think there's been a misunderstanding here.". That's what I would have liked to have seen in those comments.

@MarcoDaniel I've lost count of the number of times I've started installation from scratch. Only last week I tried upgrading Ubuntu through the upgrade path, only to get halfway and it all go wrong. Fortunately, I keep /home in a separate partition to the rest and so reinstalling (rather than just upgrading) isn't too painful.

Henrik Hansen

2:28 PM

I can't help but feel conflicted about all of this

Henrik Hansen

2:42 PM

I think it will be best if I stop caring to much about it. In all honesty, it pissed me off endlessly that someone could be so dismissive and ignorant - but reading the comments I can see what might have triggered that. I hate that it got so worked up. It's rare I have time and skill to actually help on this site; sad it should be wasted on correcting someone else.

Patrick Gundlach

@HenrikHansen If you don't like a question, why don't you just go on to the next one? I think it is a waste of time to get upset, life's too short for that.

Henrik Hansen

@PatrickGundlach Exactly the point in why I'm sad about it. I guess it's the "somebody's wrong on the Internet" problem that sprung up. Mental notes has been taken

Paulo Cereda

3:30 PM

13

@JosephWright: ^

Henrik Hansen

@PauloCereda The block about improvements is the dangerous thing. It really should be: "Suggest improvements that will help more people answer the question"

Patrick Gundlach

@PauloCereda that makes it hard for me to downvote questions ;-)

Henrik Hansen

2

Q: TeX works very slowly

LaTeX compiler on my Debian system works very slowly. For example, file including only a few lines of text compiles several minutes. All this time LaTeX does something, but what exactly it does is what I can't figure out. I think it is unnormal. I have texlive installed on my computer: $ te...

compiling

Do someone have any ideas for this mystery?

Marco Daniel

@PauloCereda You forgot a no at the arm of "any updates" ;-) --- Nice work.

egreg

@HenrikHansen The idea is in my comment: the tfm files for the cyrillic font are not precompiled and so when a new font is found its .tfm must be created. But it should happen only once per font.

Henrik Hansen

3:45 PM

@egreg Yep, got that. I just wonder if there was a way to check if A) files are on system, B) files are actually being rewritten

Patrick Gundlach

@StefanKottwitz or @JosephWright can we please reopen the question I've mentioned? The situation is worse. tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52786/…

zeroth

@PatrickGundlach I have opted for reopening, only a few more...

Patrick Gundlach

7 downvotes - we are getting better at discouraging new user to come here

Now we only need to scare away the active users. Then this place will be peaceful again.

Henrik Hansen

Is this a matter of elitism?

lockstep

4:01 PM

@PatrickGundlach Reopened.

Patrick Gundlach

@lockstep and @zeroth great!

zeroth

@HenrikHansen no definetly not, however, it is a matter of balance.
My first comment was too harsh. Even though I didn't meant it that harsh. My following comment reflected on what could have been done to improve the question (which I should have written first!)
We are after all trying to gather a base of willing and active users, helping other users.

This can not be achieved by the action we took for this poor guy. I think Marco's comment was appropriate, Ray mistook it.

Probably we should all stand back and let one/two users comment on how he could have improved.

4

Paulo Cereda

Back from the storm. :P

Stephan Lehmke

@egreg If there is something wrong with the font setup (mapfile for instance) then it might happen that at every compile the system is trying to make fonts with metafont and failing.

zeroth

This would not make him feel attacked, and hopefully he would have acknowledged a better way to present the question, which was purely on the arrow tip, and not the graph in it self. (the hatched area was a seperate question.)

@HenrikHansen

Canageek

4:12 PM

Is the right way of doing the absolute value of x, do I just type $|x|$ or is there a special way of noting that?

Or just to annoy @egreg $\left| x \right| $

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek Even better: \ensuremath{\left|x\right|}

Canageek

@StephanLehmke It is part of a longer formula, and is actually \[\left| - \frac{G M^2}{R} \right| > \sfrac{3}{2} N k_b T\] right now.

Stupid chat removing my \\

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek In that case I would certainly go for \left...\right.

Canageek

@StephanLehmke Egreg thinks you should always manually size things, I like typing things quickly as I have another 20 pages of formula to write up today. ;)

egreg

@StephanLehmke I believe that the problem is that the font files are created under /tmp, so they are removed by cron jobs.

@StephanLehmke AAAARGH!!! :) /me shrieking in pain

Henrik Hansen

4:17 PM

@zeroth Total agreement from here

Paulo Cereda

@egreg \setmathfont{Comic Sans MS}. :)

Canageek

@PauloCereda I've seen worse: Entire powerpoint saying with the research group should get funding done in Comic Sans.

egreg

@PauloCereda You should know that there exists a math font based on CS. But I won't tell what package to use even on the Comfy Chair.

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek I thinks that's a matter of taste. Personally, I liked very much \delimitershortfall-1sp ;-)

egreg

►

Paulo Cereda

4:22 PM

@Canageek Ouch! That's gonna hurt. :D

Henrik Hansen

Sweet topping on the cake?

3

A: How to recreate this figure in TikZ?

I used the approach (actually it was nearly the whole solution) contributed by @student and revised the code given by @Altermundus to look exactly like the figure in question. \documentclass[a4paper]{report} \usepackage{tikz} \usepackage{verbatim} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage[T1]{font...

Paulo Cereda

@egreg LOL! "Cardinal Fang, fetch... the COMFY CHAIR!" :)

Poor Biggles. :P

Canageek

@PauloCereda Well, everyone at the funding meeting pretty much used it. Except for the guy who put up his LaTeX document without using Beamer and just pointed to the figures.

@egreg I don't see it at tug.dk/FontCatalogue/mathfonts.html

egreg

@Canageek It's a well kept secret.

Anybody with a TeX Live 2009/Debian that can test the file in tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52808/tex-works-very-slowly

Canageek

@egreg I'm pretending that non-CTAN fonts don't exist until someone writes a good guide on who to use TrueType fonts, as I've yet to find one.

Andrew Stacey

4:34 PM

I must admit that my favourite part of that question is the line "Please note that this is an economic diagram and therefore has just an illustrative function— no real data points."

egreg

@AndrewStacey Another sign that in economics maths is used just for fun. :)

Andrew Stacey

@egreg I had a go, but as I have TL2011 also installed then just running /usr/bin/latex didn't work - my system got confused.

Canageek

wonders if any LuaTeX users are around

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek What could be the problem? otftotfm does the whole installation with a single call.

Joseph Wright

On tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52786/…, I've removed most of the comments, hopefully getting it about right.

Henrik Hansen

4:37 PM

@JosephWright Cue "don't destroy Internet history" response

Canageek

@StephanLehmke I have no idea what that is, how to specify using it in my TeX file, etc. All the 'how to use fonts' articles I've found are VERY out of date, so I just stick with using prewritten font packages.

Patrick Gundlach

@Canageek well, yes.

Joseph Wright

@HenrikHansen Oh, the information is still in the database :-)

Canageek

@PatrickGundlach Does it work with Microtype fully yet?

Patrick Gundlach

If you use a beta version: at least parts of it

the tracking does not work, if I remember correctly

Stephan Lehmke

4:39 PM

@Canageek otftotfm is a tool that will auto-generate the complete font installation. You can see an example of using such a font in

9

A: Greek pdf-bookmarks with greektex package; is it possible?

I think the amount of work needed wouldn't warrant the advantages of using greektex at all. May I ask what exactly you're using it for? If I'm reading this correctly, it's a package which breaks exactly everything LaTeX is doing nowadays in the inputenc/fontenc area. The goal of greektex is to ...

The only thing you need to do yourself is make a trivial .fd file (can be done with sed).

Canageek

@StephanLehmke @.@ I don't see what you are talking about in there.

otftotfm doesn't occure on that page

lockstep

One more vote needed to close:

0

Q: Loading hyphenation patterns in Texmaker

I've got problems making TexMaker / MikTeX 2.9 use polish hyphenation rules. As from what I've read on this forum (e.g. here), babel package should automatically load polish hyphenation rules after setting: \usepackage[polish]{babel} but it doesn't seem to do so. Until now, I always end up cre...

hyphenation babel texmaker

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek I wasn't referring to the greek stuff. But you were asking about how to use the font on the TeX side. The \mapdile line and the \rmdefault are basically all that's needed for the text font setup. Unless of course you also want math ;-)

Paulo Cereda

Dear King Haakon, I am not dictating. What?

Canageek

@StephanLehmke Not something like {\fontfamily{antt}\selectfont Foobarbaz} ?

Stephan Lehmke

4:45 PM

@Canageek No thats implicit in redefining \rmdefault.

@Canageek texdoc otftotfm works on my TeXLive 2011.

Canageek

22

Q: Installing TTF fonts in LaTeX

One of the annoying aspects of LaTeX is the limited number of fonts that come by default, and the pain involved in making new fonts 'LaTeX' ready. I have a collection of truetype fonts that I'd like to prepare for use, and I definitely want to make sure I have vector versions of these fonts (i.e ...

fonts installing truetype

4

Q: How to use downloaded fonts with pdfLaTeX on Ubuntu

I want to use the Fontin font in my pdfLatex document. What steps should I do for using a downloaded font Should I download the TTF or the OpenType version? Where should I store the font? Should any font processing be done? How can pdfLatex find this font? I am using TexLive 2011 installed i...

fonts pdftex

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek That's from mid 2010. I don't know what the state of otftotfm was back then, but I can assure you that nowadays (text) font installation is down in complexity to a single call of otftotfm and some very mild additional configuration which is several orders of magnitude below some of the tikz stuff I'm seeing here.

Canageek

Ok, question then: Would it be appropriate to ask a question about that, so I can get a step by step guide, and how to use it in the LaTeX file afterwards (Which seems ill-explained) given that the existing asnwers are outdated, or should I put a bounty on one of those asking for an update?

lockstep

@JosephWright or another moderator: Please un-CW this answer:

9

A: Include chapters in List of Figures with titletoc?

The code below illustrates a possible solution; the basic idea is to let the figure environment do the job and decide if the chapter info will be written to the ToC; this is accomplished by using \AtBeginEnvironment (from the etoolbox or xpatch packages); whenever the figure environment is used i...

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek At least I can add my own bit of wisdom to it :-) I think @PatrickGundlach wrote a ruby tool for the same purpose. Mind you, all this is for pdftex, so it will be obsolete in the near future.

Canageek

5:00 PM

@StephanLehmke I keep hearing that, but I've been hearing that since I started using LaTeX.

@StephanLehmke tex.stackexchange.com/a/1472/7880 ?

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke ctan.org/pkg/rfil and some in-house tool for my former employer (IIRC) @StephanLehmke should know more :-D

Joseph Wright

@lockstep Done

@StephanLehmke I doubt it: some server installations still don't have e-TeX, so will get to LuaTeX in perhaps 30 years

Patrick Gundlach

Holy cow, I even wrote a VF / TFM parser

Paulo Cereda

webupd8.org/2012/04/firefox-nightly-gets-new-built-in.html

@PatrickGundlach Yay!

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda I'll look forward to that later today, then :-)

Patrick Gundlach

5:06 PM

I must have been completely nuts: ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tex/support/rfil/lib/rfil/tex/tfm.rb

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright It's still in the nightly, I'm not sure when it will come to the stable branch. :) I'm very happy about it, that floating download screen annoys me. :D

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda I thought that the Aurora was the nightly build

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Ah! :) You are right. Aurora is the bleeding edge. :)

Patrick Gundlach

I should really save that code somewhere.

Paulo Cereda

I wonder for how long David's Firefox had already that feature, since it's probably version 15 or 16. :)

Patrick Gundlach

5:10 PM

# warning: had some wine

4

Paulo Cereda

@PatrickGundlach LOL

Epic comment is epic!

Canageek

How do I link to CTAN in a question again?

Joseph Wright

@Canageek http://ctan.org/pkg/<package-name>

Canageek

@JosephWright Oh, I thought there was a special way for it, since CTAN package names show up specially

Joseph Wright

@Canageek No, we just usually mark them as code too

Paulo Cereda

5:13 PM

Or http://texdoc.net/pkg/<package-name>. :)

Canageek

0

Q: How do I use TrueType Fonts with PDFTeX using otftotfm?

I've heard that PDFTeX can use TrueType fonts. There have been several answers related to this, but of these only the first one mentions using otftotfm, which I'm told is the standard way to do it now, and none clearly explain how to use the font if your document after it has been created. There...

fonts pdftex truetype

Joseph Wright

@Canageek Upvoted

Canageek

There, I indexed ALL the existing answers, described why they are not what I want, linked to all the relevant documentation and described what is confusing me about it.

Patrick Gundlach

@Canageek otftotfm does not work for truetype fonts

Canageek

I hope no one thinks I'm too lazy for trying to wade through the numerous, almost the same answers and confusing as heck font documenation

Patrick Gundlach

5:21 PM

@Canageek TeX font installation is pure evil

5

Canageek

@PatrickGundlach "You supply an OpenType ".otf" or ".ttf" font file, a base ".enc" encoding, and a TeX name "texname" for the resulting font, and say which OpenType features should be turned on." -- lcdf.org/type/otftotfm.1.html

Patrick Gundlach

I take back my comment (actually, I can't but you should ignore it .-))

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach It says something like "support for ttf is experimental" but I have successfully installed ttf fonts with it. If all else fails, you can save the ttf as otf with fontforge.

Patrick Gundlach

@Canageek Oh, you're right

But I don't see a reason to use truetype with otftotfm

Why not use it directly?

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach For me it's a hammer-nail thing. I only know otftotfm.

Patrick Gundlach

5:25 PM

@Canageek: do you have LuaTeX installed? Just in case I think of a texlua script for your question

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach We're talking about pdftex here, no? you at least need some map stuff and a tfm.

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke sure, but there is no need to convert the font to something else that otftotfm does

@StephanLehmke I've once wrote a script called "installfont" (or something similar) for you, didn't I?

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek Don't expect my answer any earlier than within 6h. Have to make lunch now.

Canageek

@StephanLehmke That is fine, something I saw just made me wonder. I should be studying about star formation anyway.

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach But you were the only user I believe :-) I tried once, but couldn't cope with ruby. Furthermore IIRC it only installs PFB.

Canageek

5:29 PM

Should I go back and archive all the PracTeX Journal articles on fonts as well? To make it really comprehensive and show even more why I am confused?

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach Sometimes otftotfm fails on ttf if it is missing some tables or whatever.

Canageek

@PatrickGundlach I might? I'm not sure if I did to be honest. I'm on TeXLive, so using tlmgr features are also fair game.

@PatrickGundlach I edited the question to make it clear I want the easiest way, so feel free to answer it. This is part of the reason why I asked, due to conflicting information.

Stephan Lehmke

5:47 PM

@Canageek just typing lualatex will solve the mystery.

Canageek

@StephanLehmke "This is LuaTeX, Version beta-0.70.1-2011082320 (rev 4277)"

leo

hi everybody

Canageek

Salutations

leo

:-)

@egreg I need some advice

@PauloCereda, nice one you stared comment

Paulo Cereda

@leo Thanks. :)

leo

6:00 PM

is it do it in TikZ?

Paulo Cereda

I wish. :) It was a drawing software.

leo

@PauloCereda I'm tempted to link that in some other place. Can I?

Paulo Cereda

@leo Sure. ;)

leo

thanks

Stephan Lehmke

@Canageek So we can conclude you have LuaTeX installed :-)

egreg

6:06 PM

@leo I'm going to dinner, sorry.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Have a nice dinner. :)

leo

@egreg Enjoy :-)

Canageek

6:17 PM

@StephanLehmke And XeLaTeX for that matter

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn: Do you like Engenheiros do Hawaii? :) They happened to have a song named Ilex paraguariensis, which is our beloved mate. :D

David Carlisle

someone's been reading my interview on the blog:-) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52782/custom-latex-report-class

user19161

@DavidCarlisle That is nice to know!

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Oops. :D

@DavidCarlisle: Does your Firefox have the new integrated download panel? :)

David Carlisle

6:33 PM

@PauloCereda er what?

Paulo Cereda

(you have the bleeding edge version)

@DavidCarlisle webupd8.org/2012/04/firefox-nightly-gets-new-built-in.html

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda well yes it just updated again a few minutes ago, I suppose I should try updating something big,...

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Out of curiosity, is it Aurora?

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda No aurora is more stable than nightly

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Ah cool.

lockstep

6:38 PM

Shouldn't this be on meta (if here at all)?

0

Q: Packages in StackExchange -- possible? If so, how?

Can you use packages on math.stackexchange? The help associated with the editor does not mention packages, so I am guessing it's not possible. But if it is, how? I am particularly interested in the centernot package at the moment. If there is documentation or a prior question for this, please...

packages

user19161

Why do people use "aurora" when they can just call it "alpha"?

David Carlisle

@JasperLoy mozilla choose to give names to their various release channels

Paulo Cereda

@JasperLoy I'd say "aurora" is the name, when "alpha" is the development state. :)

Joseph Wright

@JasperLoy It calls itself 'Aurora', for example in the window title

user19161

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, then they should call "beta" something else too, like "brilliante". :-)

David Carlisle

6:40 PM

@PauloCereda there is no predefined meaning for alpha/beta if you say aurora is alpha what would you call nightly?

Joseph Wright

@lockstep Commented. Anyone got the link to the MathJax reference?

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle "Downfall". :P

@JasperLoy I like tha name!

Joseph Wright

Ah, got it

David Carlisle

6:53 PM

@PauloCereda yes

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Awesome!

Joseph Wright

7:05 PM

texdev.net/2012/04/21/programming-latex3-expandability

Please let me know if this makes sense!

Andrew Stacey

@lockstep I've just voted to close as off-topic. I've also (since I have an account on Maths-SX) left a comment on the mentioned-question on meta-Maths-SX to say that TeX is on topic but MathJaX is not.

lockstep

@AndrewStacey I did so also.

egreg

@leo Here I am.

Marco Daniel

@JosephWright I will read the example. As I learned the first steps of expansion I found the example:

\def\text{ALT}
\edef\etest{\text}
\def\test{\text}
\def\text{NEU}

\text −→ NEU
\test −→ NEU
\etest −→ ALT

Joseph Wright

@MarcoDaniel I can alter the example if it makes more sense. Trying to come up with content is hard

Marco Daniel

7:13 PM

@JosephWright Isn't the type v also an expansion type?

Joseph Wright

@MarcoDaniel v type expansion would be something like \tl_set:Nv \l_tmpa_tl { l_tmpb_tl} - it's the value of a variable by name

Marco Daniel

@JosephWright For me it's an expansion ;-)

Joseph Wright

@MarcoDaniel Yes, of course, but 'value' expansion is different as it also works for \tl_set:NV \l_tmpa_tl \l_tmpa_int, which won't work by x-type expansion

Marco Daniel

@JosephWright Ok.

The details of a language ;-)

I have finished my backup and try to install Ubuntu again on my Mac.

Joseph Wright

@MarcoDaniel Hence me writing the series. I'm trying to get it right for us and for you

Marco Daniel

7:24 PM

@JosephWright In this case a small (really small) note. In your preface you wrote about the expansion of TeX. In this section you are using the word "function". TeX uses "macros" and LaTeX3 uses "function" -- This is how I understood the expl3 article by Will.

Joseph Wright

@MarcoDaniel I see what you mean, but I'm trying to refer here to LaTeX3 functions specifically. I still wonder if we should simply alter this description, as I'm not sure its entirely helpful.

lockstep

I provided a biblatex solution for this one:

3

Q: mulitple bibliographies and one global bibliography - all with global labels

What I want is the following: I have a tex file with several \sections, each with their own bibliography at the end and their own bib file. In every section several entries of the bib file are \cited BUT I also show all local bibliography entries at the end of each section. At the end of the file...

bibliographies bibtex

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel Good luck!

Joseph Wright

The V business reminds me that this was added to LaTeX3 by Morten Hoegholm: he's now left the project, and it seems LaTeX programming in general. We owe him a big vote of thanks.

Marco Daniel

@AndrewStacey Thanks. I burn Fedora as a second alternative ;-)

@JosephWright Based on your example with token listyou can remove this part. I believe you wrote a blog post about expansion some time ago. Maybe you can link to this one.

Paulo Cereda

7:34 PM

@MarcoDaniel Fedora! <3

Marco Daniel

@PauloCereda Do you like it

user19161

@MarcoDaniel Why don't you wait a few more days to download the release instead of the beta?

Paulo Cereda

@MarcoDaniel Yes, it's my fav one. :)

Marco Daniel

@JasperLoy Do you mean Ubuntu or Fedora?

user19161

I will stick to Debian. It is the best OS in the world!

user19161

7:35 PM

@MarcoDaniel I mean Ubuntu. 12.04 is out on April 26.

Marco Daniel

@JasperLoy I needed a new one ;-) Next week I will start with my new study and before I want to clean my mac ;-)

user19161

@MarcoDaniel Did you do a dual boot or did you wipe out your Mac OS?

Marco Daniel

@JasperLoy Dual with refit

Andrew Stacey

@JasperLoy Isn't it out already? I installed it on my wife's computer last week. What have I installed?

@JasperLoy I'm a Debian fan myself - stability, stability, stability.

user19161

@AndrewStacey The beta.

Marco Daniel

7:41 PM

@AndrewStacey The beta version ;-) wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel Is your iMac a PPC or one of the newer ones?

@MarcoDaniel Ooops. Don't tell my wife - I try to keep her computer non-experimental. I reserve the experimental stuff for my laptop.

Marco Daniel

@AndrewStacey :-)

I am using a new one (iMac 27)

user19161

@AndrewStacey Wheezy should be released in December hopefully.

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel Ah, then nothing like my creaking old iBook. I went from Ubuntu, to Fedora, to Debian, in search of a distribution that supports PPC architecture. Fedora was nice, but even they dropped PPC so I ended up on Debian. Then I decided I liked the stability so switched my main laptop to it as well.

@JasperLoy Plus Debian has a much better naming scheme than Ubuntu.

user19161

@AndrewStacey U to F to D sounds like me. It also stands for UFD=unique factorization domain!

Andrew Stacey

7:45 PM

@JasperLoy With Debian as the GCD?

Marco Daniel

@AndrewStacey But I have had the same problems since Ubuntu 11.04 -- here an example: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1470389

Andrew Stacey

@MarcoDaniel Ouch.

user19161

@AndrewStacey Are you talking about the release names or the package names?

Andrew Stacey

I do like Debian for its stability and the fact that it doesn't keep changing. After installing 12.04 on my wife's machine and tried Unity. Lasted 1 day before heading back to Gnome. Anything where I really need an up-to-date version, then I just install it on top.

@JasperLoy Release names.

user19161

@AndrewStacey I did not watch Toy Story but I wonder what happens when they run out of character names.

Andrew Stacey

7:50 PM

@JasperLoy "Debian 21 will be called 'Mater'".

user19161

@AndrewStacey I use backports for Iceweasel and Libreoffice. With that I get FireFox release versions.

Andrew Stacey

Actually, we've had Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 so there's plenty of room there. (TS3 was absolutely fantastic, BTW)

@JasperLoy Firefox is the annoying one for my iBook as it's a PPC machine. On my laptop then I install it by hand in /usr/local

user19161

@AndrewStacey I really wish Debian would switch to pure Firefox and keep it automatically upgraded though. Some websites require up-to-date versions to display properly.

Andrew Stacey

@JasperLoy I do a fair bit of MathML stuff and I've learnt that having the most up to date is pretty useful. But for things like that, I'm prepared to install by hand.

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