TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:43 AM

Quick question: I'm using gather from amsmath and have \onehalfspacing (setspace) enabled. Not sure if it caused by it, but there is a lot of vertical skip between the leading paragraph and the top of gather.

Is this normal?

Canageek

@MartinScharrer You are a mod, right? Was I out of line to downvote this answer:

-1

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

@Stephan Lehmke, of course, until someone develops a software (GUI) for all the commands above. Anyway, both the alternatives you offer: a) not installing new fonts and b) switching to another engine are: 1) easier 2) same pdf results, ergo: more rational choices. I've never heard of publishers/...

We'd already gone over the fact that I wasn't interested in switching to XeTeX or LuaTeX in the question comments more then once, and it doesn't actually answer the question.

Martin Scharrer

@Canageek Yes, I'm a mod. I added a comment already. You can also flag such posts for moderator attention if you want. Down-voting is OK here, I guess.

Canageek

@MartinScharrer I can flag it, wasn't sure what the right proceedure was. I'd be fine with it if it wasn't already clear from the question I wasn't looking for that (i.e. if I didn't know that LuaTeX or XeTeX exited and could use ttf and otf fonts nateivly)

Anyway, I just felt that the question was rather disrespectful of the very well done previous post--I can't wait to sit down and try it when I work on my adventure. I just finished my work for the night so I bid you good night.

leo

4:15 AM

is there a command like \implies but for the other implication?

Stephan Lehmke

5:00 AM

Is anything wrong with my use of < in the following answer (near the bottom)?

13

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

Ok, so here it comes. I should declare that I'm just talking about text fonts here. But I assume if someone puts in the several person years it'll take to make a math font with all the features required by TeX, they'll also make the TeX font setup to go with it. I don't have a lot of formal kn...

@speravir did an incomprehensible edit (deleting some essential information) which I just rolled back, so I'm getting the impression there might be viewing glitches in other browsers (I'm using firefox)?

Thorsten

5:33 AM

@StephanLehmke Do you mean because of the edit suggestion? I guess that there's a displaying issue. I see < instead of <

@StephanLehmke otftotfm -a -e ec -fkern -fliga <myfont>.ttf T1--<myfont

Werner

@Thorsten Agreed... not sure what to do about it though.

percusse

5:49 AM

@StephanLehmke I approved that edit but didn't realize there was essential info deleted. Sorry about that. Users including me, are seeing non-parsed HTML description of < which is probably due to how things are copied to clipboard from the terminal. (I'm using Firefox too and I'm kind of surprised that it doesn't appear as < )

Stephan Lehmke

@percusse Ok, this clarifies it. I swear it looks well here on my screen (and I really typed < ) I'll try to find out how to properly input a < here or think of another notation. Unfortunately I have to go now (to hospital), so I won't get around to it before evening. If anyone knows how to do it right, feel free ;-)

Stephan Lehmke

6:32 AM

Now I just removed the pointy braces, they were ambiguous in a command shell anyway...

percusse

7:06 AM

@StephanLehmke By the way great answer too!

Roelof Spijker

8:41 AM

is it me, or is there an "answers" missing in the second sentence of the blog posting?

Andrew Stacey

8:54 AM

@RoelofSpijker *Types very quickly* No, looks alright to me.

Roelof Spijker

hehe, excellent :)

Andrew Stacey

10:32 AM

Seeing a question about clashes of packages, I'm curious as to whether anyone's ever done a "dependency graph" of CTAN. To be truly useful, it would link packages according to "depends on", "replaces", "clashes with" (and, of course, the old favourite: "must be loaded after" with hyperref as the supremum; more interesting would be to find a loop in this particular part).

David Carlisle

@AndrewStacey easy to answer that question:-) no

Andrew Stacey

@DavidCarlisle And I guess it would be near-impossible to do.

David Carlisle

@AndrewStacey well if you could define "clash" 9one man's clash is another woman' s functional improvement) you have the problem that it's combinatorialy difficult if A and B are OK as are A and c and B and C but A B c together blow up you need to consider all ordered subsets of ctan packages which is a big number;-0

Andrew Stacey

10:47 AM

@DavidCarlisle Well of course, I wouldn't do something like this myself. I'd get a graduate student to do it.

David Carlisle

ah yes the advantage of working in university, having slaves at your beck and call

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle @AndrewStacey don't call us "slaves"!!!

well, I mean, you're right, that's what students do

:)

percusse

11:13 AM

At least use "modern slaves". That would leave some tiny room for dignity :)

Paulo Cereda

11:41 AM

Grad slavery? Woohoo!

Stephan Lehmke

12:32 PM

@percusse I received a downvote for it ;-) Without a comment, I'm a bit undecided what to improve. Is the loading time for the images too long? Or should I say more about encodings?

Patrick Gundlach

12:42 PM

@StephanLehmke It wasn't me, i swear :) I have no clue why someone would dv that. I am always getting a bit upset if I get a dv w/o a decent explanation.

I also think the answer is very good, although the subject is difficult :)

I'd guess the downvoter didn't like the look of the fonts...

@StephanLehmke I don't think there is much room for improvement

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke Your answer is fantastic! :)

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach :-) You already made your anti-downvote attitude clear. I have somewhat been advocating downvotes recently ;-)

Patrick Gundlach

I have to admit that did 13 downvotes in the time I've been here. (But that's less than 1% of my votes)

Andrew Stacey

@StephanLehmke Clearly the down vote was because you didn't use Comic Sans in your answer.

@PatrickGundlach I'm ahead of you, then. I've 15 down votes to my demerit.

(but that comes in at a gnat's whisker over 0.4% of my total)

Stephan Lehmke

So I'm certainly not complaining. But a downvote accompanied with a comment on what can be improved is best. Just a comment would invite (from me) going into defensive position, explaining to the commenter why they weren't understanding the brilliance of the answer.

Patrick Gundlach

12:50 PM

> why they weren't understanding the brilliance of the answer

lol

Stephan Lehmke

With a downvote behind it it's clear the criticism won't go away by clever talk, only with a real improvement.

Andrew Stacey

@StephanLehmke My default assumption is always the opposite. A 'downvote' can just be a random "I didn't like your patronising tone" (not that yours was!). It's much easier to vote than to comment, so if a negative vote is cast without a comment then I tend to disregard the vote. I figure Paulo and his sockpuppets will counterbalance it.

Stephan Lehmke

@AndrewStacey Maybe it could be done with group theory? :-)

@AndrewStacey I tried, honest! I really looked for a usable free font in that direction, but gave up. There are simply too many of them. If none matches omic or and or whatever, it's pointless.

@AndrewStacey Not much disagreement. Although, if it was easy to give up some of one's own rep for a purpose, there'd much more bounties, wouldn't there?

Andrew Stacey

@StephanLehmke I think more that it isn't in the site's pysche for individuals to reward good answers by giving bounties. That's a reasonably new feature of bounties - earlier, they were only to attract attention to unanswered questions.

tohecz

1:19 PM

@StephanLehmke Maybe someone wanted to get Critic badge. Have you checked the "Recently awarded badges" list?

David Carlisle

1:41 PM

@tohecz how is your bidi foo? the shadowbox longtable has resurfaced:-)

I think the right thing to do must be to flag RTL before typesetting the table rather than trying to invert the box afterwards, but...

Paulo Cereda

10

Q: Light markup languages for TeX users

I was wondering if people could share their experience with various mark up languages. In particular, I am interested in situations for which you consider light markups preferable to TeX. I am also interested in the level of TeX output support by different markups. My initial contact with marku...

markup

Patrick Gundlach

@MartinScharrer I hope I didn't do anything wrong by putting the comment there - did I?

Paulo Cereda

Domain Specific Language (DSL) anyone? :)

Patrick Gundlach

1

Q: No hyper refs from citation to bibliography using BiBTeX, hyperref and harvard

I am trying to get internal hyperrefs from citation to the bibliography page. I am using BiBTeX, the harvard package, the hyperref package with optional [hidelinks]. The latter works fine to me on the TOC and sections refs. I read in hyperref package help that it is designed to work with the har...

hyperref bibtex

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle I got a mail from the OP and I'll look into that. I believe that one should use something like \def\myshadowbox#1{\shadowbox{\RTL{#1}}} and then \myshadowbox inside \LT@output

However I have never worked with RTL hence I will use the trial-and-error method...

Patrick Gundlach

1:55 PM

@PauloCereda I used to write ruby interfaces for DSLs

Paulo Cereda

@PatrickGundlach Really? I heard that Ruby is very easy to define DSLs. :)

Patrick Gundlach

@PauloCereda Yes, after I found out how it works I was able to write very clean DSLs (IMO, that is subjective, of course)

But I have to search my harddrive to find them

Paulo Cereda

Cool! :)

Patrick Gundlach

@PauloCereda mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/dwemthy

Paulo Cereda

@PatrickGundlach Wow! :)

Patrick Gundlach

2:02 PM

@PauloCereda _why is so awesome. Too bad he isn't around anymore.

zeroth

Why is the chat link in the upper line next to my username always removed when the blog gets updated, then a few days later it gets back. I dont get it? Or is it just me?

Patrick Gundlach

@zeroth I don't know either. Perhaps it disappears if you are in the chat?

zeroth

@PatrickGundlach I had just logged in to TeX.SE, no direct link to chat or anything... Let me check if it disappears... :) Be right back...

nope, still not on... I have to go to meta -> chat.

I will ask in meta, once I have handed in my thesis (due on Wednesday!!!!)

@PatrickGundlach does it also happen for you?

Patrick Gundlach

@zeroth I can see the chat link only on meta. I never look for it though.

This chat is my browser's startpage :)

4

zeroth

hmm. ok.

:D

nice touch. Hmm, i will do that in opera, just pin it! :)

only i cant see the difference by icons!! Ahh, well.

That was maybe not clear, I have pinned TeX.SE, but also pinning chat.TeX.SE makes two identical tabs.... :)

tohecz

2:43 PM

@zeroth I handed my Master Thesis today :-p Now I have to take the two copies and bring them personally to my supervisor and the reviewer...

zeroth

@tohecz CONGRATS!!! Very nice. (to be frank: you are stressing the hell out of me!!!) ;)

@tohecz what do you study?

tohecz

I do maths, specifically numeration systems (ways of storing numbers as sequences of symbols)

You can find it here if you are interested: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/…

zeroth

@tohecz something I dont have a clue in. :)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle Don't you know how bi-directional typesetting is done?

zeroth

but looks interesting with the graphs! :) I love figures!

tohecz

2:50 PM

@zeroth do you trust me that I believe you? :p

@zeroth way to impress people

;)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Congrats! :)

zeroth

@tohecz I have no other choice ;)

tohecz

@PauloCereda thx

zeroth

@tohecz Are you now chilling with a beer or just jumping around like a mad man who just handed in his thesis? Or both?

tohecz

@zeroth I have many other duties (I collaborate on a paper, collaborate on a university schoolbook, prepare some works for some competitions) so I'm busy anyways...

and I wish you the best!

what is your topic?

zeroth

2:56 PM

@tohecz ok...

Thank you!

I study physics, mastering in molecular electronics.

tohecz

cool

zeroth

I think so! :)

and hopefully, mastering! ;)

David Carlisle

3:17 PM

@tohecz well in theory I know some things, but in practice I know nothing.

tohecz

Ok, I tried to look into that and I failed. I can obviously make different algorithm for the first page and the other pages

Roelof Spijker

@tohecz Good for you man, looking at your thesis though... Why isn't Figure 3.4 done in TeX? :P

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle @ALL Is it possible to "split \box255 at a specified position"?

David Carlisle

@tohecz well you can ask for that (using vsplit) but you don;t always get what you ask for

tohecz

@RoelofSpijker because hand-drawn figures look good IMHO ;) and you can concentrate on the essence of the figure when you know that it is not exact

@DavidCarlisle it might work in this case since I know the height of the material above the table...

will look into that, thanks ;)

David Carlisle

3:22 PM

@tohecz note though that vsplit is like a page break it discards white space after the split

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle it doesn't matter I hope since the split should occur between the "previous text" and "long table"

Paulo Cereda

@David: is the Firefox Beta version the same as nightly?

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle ... but we have \splitdiscards nowadays to make up for that :-)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda nightly < aurora < beta < release

@StephanLehmke far too modern for me;-)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Ah thanks. :)

tohecz

3:32 PM

@DavidCarlisle @StephanLehmke Agree with David. The whole code is in output routine and written in very plain TeX and I would not like to change that ;)

David Carlisle

@tohecz \splitdiscards is more plain than plain really it's an etex primitive so only "modern" if your point of reference is 1990's

Stephan Lehmke

@tohecz Oooh kaay. I hope you're also not using \numexpr or \unexpanded to make sure everything is completely clean and backward compatible with 20 year old TeX engines ;-)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle i think I have it, but I can't finish it now, the current code I have would not work for longtables that does not split

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke this is longtable code he's modifying, it's not like it has changed for 20 years;-)

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@DavidCarlisle So if he'll invent a time machine he can even use his modified version at the very time longtable was made :-)

tohecz

3:41 PM

actually, this is my (completely wrong) view of "plain TeX": tug.org/utilities/plain/cseq.html

David Carlisle

@tohecz hmm despite the directory name being "plain" that's tex primitives (classic tex not etex) (best not to use plain as the word meaning tex primitives as it conflicts with "plain tex" meaning Knuth's macro format sitting on top of tex.

Stephan Lehmke

Would it be appropriate to ask a question like "What new primitives would you most want to see in an extended version of e-TeX?" in the sense that there is one answer for every new primitive? It is of the "your favourite" flavour which is frowned upon here...

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke It might be appropriate but I'm not sure you'd get any useful answers, you can't really design a language one command at a time so the question/answer format doesn't really helo. (and you'd have to say whether you'd want existing luatex or pdftex or xetex primitives including)

Stephan Lehmke

3:57 PM

@DavidCarlisle Well of course part of the idea would be that experts for different flavours of TeX engines edit answers to show how something currently unavailable in e-TeX could be done with another engine. This would be very valuable information to me.

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke well don't let me stop you asking:-)

Stephan Lehmke

But in addition to that, I'm simply interested what kinds of things people who really know TeX by heart feel to be lacking (not in a revolutionary sense, just simple additions).

I, for instance, would almost kill for an \expanded primitive.

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle @StephanLehmke Can you please test this? kmlinux.fjfi.cvut.cz/~hejdato1/temp/test.tex

Stephan Lehmke

@tohecz Sorry, I don't have time right now. I might have in the night, but it would be better to ask a question or something as a reminder...

tohecz

no worries. I will get to post it in the answer tomorrow anyways as I leave in 10 minutes

David Carlisle

4:08 PM

seems to work I get Underfull \vbox (badness 1377) has occurred while \output is active
Overfull \hbox (10.79999pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active
but didn't check whether they are from the test document or from the RTL or shadowbox insertions in the output routine, ie would that document give same warnings with the original LT code?

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle sorry, I have no time left now as I leave my office. Could you please mail me these errors to tohecz@gmail.com so that I don't forget it tomorrow?

@DavidCarlisle thx got it, and bye!

David Carlisle

@tohecz done

David Carlisle

4:27 PM

@StephanLehmke what would it do? (you mean like edef without the def bit?)

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle Yep, like \unexpanded but fully expanding its argument upon expansion of \expanded. So that when programming expandably, you could "expand over" an arbitrary token list with \expanded{...tokens...\expandafter}.

Is there a badge for the most uses of "expand" in a single sentence? :-)

egreg

@StephanLehmke There's a silver badge if one shows a really useful macro with 127 consecutive \expandafter's. :) For the gold badge 1023 are required. The platinum badge is for 1022. :)

percusse

4:44 PM

@tohecz I have only one super minor observation: The table is a little larger than \textwidth even without the shadow. Quite impressive though.

Stephan Lehmke

@egreg Oh well that depends on what you call "useful". In the early code for making the ERCO catalog there was the following gem:

4

egreg

@StephanLehmke 127? Silver expandafter badge!

5

percusse

We seriously need an \expandafter[n] macro :)

Stephan Lehmke

\Siebtes is an expandable macro which would return the seventh item of a tuple. All the expandafters were only there to make sure the argument was sufficiently expanded to really have turned into the tuple. You can see I didn't know a lot about expandable programming back then.

And nothing about e-TeX.

egreg

@StephanLehmke Did you solve with an \edef?

David Carlisle

4:51 PM

@percusse that's called \romannumeral for historical reasons

Stephan Lehmke

@egreg Uh well being expandable I couldn't really use assignments inside. It would be used in larger structures which would then be expanded by \protected@edef.

@DavidCarlisle Only if you can slip a 0 in there somewhere.

percusse

@DavidCarlisle By historical, you don't mean really the Romans I hope :P

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle Already we are discussing about situations where my \expanded primitive would be immensely useful :-)

Even better: \startexpansion ... \endexpansion in the sense that on expanding \startexpansion, every following token would be fully expanded until \endexpansion is seen.

David Carlisle

This can be closed as duplicate OP confirms tex.stackexchange.com/questions/53001/…

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TeX, LaTeX and Friends

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