TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:00 AM

@cfr The hwyaden wants to see you in the lead. :)

@PauloCereda The hwyaden has mistaken preferences. I can't be in the lead. I never was in the lead, and it wouldn't count now anyway. I shouldn't have been there at all.

Paulo Cereda

@cfr :) Of course you should. :) Hopefully soon I'll be in UK-TUG too! :)

Paulo Cereda

12:16 AM

@cfr: when I hit Europe, I'll make sure to visit you too. :)

I'll try to learn some Welsh, I promise. :)

David Carlisle

@egreg no worse than it is now, hopefully a bit better

egreg

@PauloCereda Hey! You're an Italian citizen! You should learn Italian, first.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg That's true. :) It's in my list. :) I'll ask for the gelatos when we go have them. :)

azetina

Hi everyone, howdy

egreg

@azetina Hi!

azetina

12:23 AM

@egreg How's your TeXing today? Did you answer several questions?

Am going to post one about tangent lines but am still researching to see if I can answer it

egreg

@azetina Just six. But +275 anyway. :)

azetina

@egreg :)

@JosephWright I made an edit on my username on meta :)

egreg

@azetina The best thing of it is that @DavidCarlisle got only 205. :P

azetina

@egreg haha

@egreg @DavidCarlisle So I got to be one of the electeds for the TUG Membership

Feels wonderful

egreg

@azetina You definitely deserve support for spreading TeX in your country!

David Carlisle

12:36 AM

@egreg I've been busy ensuring your documents break after the next release, no time to play your rep chasing games here;-)

azetina

@egreg I wonder how @DavidCarlisle is doing that :)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle That's love!

cfr

@PauloCereda I might turn out to be a brain-in-a-vat...

Or I might not exist.

Gonzalo Medina

3:46 AM

@JosephWright Thanks!

Gonzalo Medina

4:08 AM

Congratulations to @azetina, @Jubobs, @Christian Hupfer, @cfr, @Werner, @Yiannis Lazarides and @yo'!

Christian Hupfer

6:07 AM

Good maen

@cfr @yo': Sorry, we had a sudden power failure and my computer crashed ...

azetina

@GonzaloMedina Gracias Senor

Joseph Wright

8:29 AM

@egreg Sorry, you've lost me: what implies that?

yo'

9:05 AM

@GonzaloMedina thanks!

@ChristianHupfer ah, don't worry :) I hope everything's fine there

Christian Hupfer

Is tex.stackexchange.com down?

yo'

@ChristianHupfer I'd say so

Christian Hupfer

@yo': Damn... I thought it's my internet connection

yo'

however, I don't care so much, I leave in ~5 minutes

Christian Hupfer

@yo': Playing the organ?

yo'

9:13 AM

@ChristianHupfer no, unfortunately. I'm in Paris

I play the organ in Prague, and when I do so, I gotta be in the church around 8.30, and not 11.00 ;)

Christian Hupfer

@yo': Late church event? :-P And I have no idea where you lurk around right now :-P

yo'

@ChristianHupfer neither do I sometimes :D

no, the church here starts at 11am because there's another congregation using the same church before (and another one in the afternoon)

Christian Hupfer

@yo': Well anyway, have fun what you do today ;-)

@GonzaloMedina: Thank you very much

yo'

thanks :)

egreg

@JosephWright The changes to the LaTeX kernel (or the format making files).

Joseph Wright

9:31 AM

@egreg What we are talking is moving stuff that already happens 'in the wild' into latex.ltx

@egreg If you use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX from either TL or MiKTeX now you'll find the codes are set up for Unicode (UC) not T1 encoding

Try for example

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\showthe\lccode150
\end{document}

with pdfLaTeX and XeLaTeX

@egreg We still have some open questions about directly using pdfLaTeX files with the Unicode engines: the font encoding is one area, but input encodings and inputenc is another (@DavidCarlisle is worrying about that one)

egreg

Any news about the site? Neither twitter.com/stackstatus nor stackstatus.net have information.

Joseph Wright

@egreg There's a tweet a minute ago

egreg

@JosephWright Just seen!

egreg

9:56 AM

Stack Overflow seems up

Paulo Cereda

Hello, gentlemen!

egreg

@PauloCereda Good morning!

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Good morning! :)

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda: Beeware ... the Bee is on the Beehive TeX.SX chat :-P

Paulo Cereda

@ChristianHupfer beehave yourself. :)

Christian Hupfer

9:59 AM

@PauloCereda: No chance :-P

Christian Hupfer

10:10 AM

Seems to be up again

egreg

@ChristianHupfer And @PauloCereda can finally start his voting spree

Paulo Cereda

@egreg oh no, I've been spotted!

Christian Hupfer

@egreg: And you profit most times of it :-P

Paulo Cereda

20 votes so far. :)

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda: Hurry up :-P

Paulo Cereda

10:18 AM

30 votes. :)

2

Joseph Wright

10:28 AM

@egreg Do my comments make sense now?

egreg

10:54 AM

@JosephWright Yes, they do.

David Carlisle

11:34 AM

@JosephWright running build check, again:-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Cool

David Carlisle

@JosephWright testing adding \@currname into the includeinrelease tests, assuming that's Ok, will check it in in a bit, then need to look again re-implementing it all again:-)

s__C

12:22 PM

Hi I have some trouble trying to fix lists when parskip is added with KOMA-script

basically to get rid of the topsep I use enumitem with \setlist{nolistsep,topsep=-\parskip} (because I also don't want spacing between \items

Now if I have a list followed by a new paragraph, the spacing is wrong

i.e.

\end{itemize}

blank line

Some new paragraph

Like it the blank line was somehow ignored

I'm looking for the best practice...

David Carlisle

12:48 PM

@s__C topsep=-anything looks wrong although without a test example hard to say exactly what will go wrong

@s__C setting topsep negative makes the space above and below the list smaller, and potentially negative, isn't that what you intended? That could perhaps be described as "somehow ignore" the paragraph spacing, depending what you mean, but without an example, hard to say:-)

s__C

1:16 PM

@DavidCarlisle Here is a MWE

\documentclass[parskip]{scrartcl}

\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{nolistsep,topsep=-\parskip}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
This is a list:
\begin{itemize}
\item Bla
\item Bli
\begin{itemize}
\item Oh
\end{itemize}
\item Blo
\end{itemize}
%With some blabla after. % problem if this line is commented

And between two paragraphs? Here it's not working.

\end{document}

erf blindtext is not needed

David Carlisle

1:29 PM

well the space after a list (that doesn't start a paragraph) is topsep +parskip and you made that total 0 so you get no space. If that isn't what you intended, what was the intention of setting topsep to -\parskip ?

Johannes_B

1:47 PM

@PauloCereda ctan.org/topic/cooking

Paulo Cereda

@Johannes_B Danke. :)

Johannes_B

I’ve tried using XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX for output but LyX has trouble using German fonts for BibTex entries.

@DavidCarlisle It seems that all your effort was in vain. There is a simpler way to put tables in LaTeX documents -> latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=86998#p86998

David Carlisle

2:15 PM

@Johannes_B simpler still just import the excel table in to Word and type the rest of the document there.

Johannes_B

@DavidCarlisle This would increase the efficiency as well, according to a recently published paper ;-)

David Carlisle

@Johannes_B must be right then

barbara beeton

this question is expressed nice and clearly: Labels in the left margin. another question covers exactly the same territory: How can I do numbering with a hanging indent to the left into the page margin? but the wording leaves a lot to be desired. (and tags on both are questionable.) suggestions for improvement?

Johannes_B

2:31 PM

@user1064929 No mod ping available

s__C

@DavidCarlisle well I'll need \medskip or some \..skip then to do what I want

Johannes_B

2:50 PM

@barbarabeeton Closing the old one as duplicate of the recent one?

barbara beeton

@Johannes_B -- they're not exactly the same; although enumitem is suggested in the older one, the actual recommendation (and it's a nice one) is to use titlesecsince it's sections that are being numbered. i guess maybe just ignore the similarity. thanks.

Johannes_B

@barbarabeeton Oh, i didn't notice that the older is on sections. I was wondering why titlesec plopped up there. Leave the old one alone and just retag the recent?

Gonzalo Medina

@ChristianHupfer Why did you delete your answer to tex.stackexchange.com/q/223694/3954? I think you should undelete it.

barbara beeton

@Johannes_B -- i've already done some retagging, so maybe the new one's okay. (though i'm sure i've seen it before.) i've now also found some other questions about section numbers in the margin, so maybe a different approach, with cross-reference(s) on the older one.

Johannes_B

3:05 PM

@barbarabeeton I found a bunch of questions/answers yesterday that all proposed a low level KOMA command that should only be used if absolutely necessary. I hope people will find the solutions on site that give the right command.

David Carlisle

@s__C unlike the underlying latex list params where it uses the same space before and after the list enumitem has separate keys to control space before and after (I think it was @Johannes_B who gave an answer using that to a question recently)

Johannes_B

@DavidCarlisle I can't remember answering a question about this.

David Carlisle

@Johannes_B I'll see if I can find it, ... maybe it wasn't you (I know it wasn' t me:-)

@Johannes_B @s__C Oh no it was:

4

A: Adding a new line after enumerate/itemize?

Load the package enumitem and add the following lines to your preamble \setlist[enumerate]{after={\bigskip}} \setlist[itemize]{after={\bigskip}} MWE \documentclass{article} \usepackage{enumitem} \setlist[enumerate]{after={\bigskip}} \setlist[itemize]{after={\bigskip}} \begin{document} \begi...

Johannes_B

3:39 PM

@JosephWright Really interesting. And quite complicated for me.

Joseph Wright

@Johannes_B There was a reason I didn't cover all of it in the first post!

Johannes_B

3:50 PM

Does anybody else understand what i mean in tex.stackexchange.com/questions/223679/…

@JosephWright I should check your blog more regularly.

egreg

4:06 PM

@Johannes_B Self-reference may be hard to see for non mathematicians.

The statement in my next line is false

The statement in my previous line is true

Johannes_B

@egreg I think you made a more concrete point. I didn't even think about decimal periods.

egreg

Good, the chat engine hasn't been programmed by a logician, or it would have crashed. ;-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Do my additions to ltnews make sense?

Christian Hupfer

4:21 PM

@GonzaloMedina: Because I was unsatisfied with the output

yo'

good afternoon, everybody :)

Johannes_B

@yo' Hi :-)

David Carlisle

4:57 PM

@JosephWright I'm sure they do but I just turned the machine back on so haven't seen them yet:-0

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle :-)

David Carlisle

Tree conflict on 'doc/ltnews22.tex'
ah yes you checked it in:-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Well yes

@DavidCarlisle Your text looked mainly good and we need something to work from :-)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright an implementation to describe would be good too:-)

David Carlisle

5:11 PM

@JosephWright OK yes looks good thanks.

s__C

5:54 PM

@DavidCarlisle but in my case it wouldn't work. I want a \parskip when the list ends before the next paragraph. bu if the list is part of a paragraph that is continuing, then no \parskip after the end of the list

David Carlisle

@s__C well normally (without enumitem) latex uses \topsep if there is no paragrah break before the list and \partopsep if there is (a paragraph break after the list is always ignired

s__C

that's why I need \medskip at the end of the list if in enumitem I set \topsep=-\parskip

Johannes_B

6:19 PM

@JosephWright What do we do with questions like

5

Q: Changing layout is difficult or easy in LaTeX?

I am new to LaTeX. I am writing an article in LaTeX but at the moment I am not sure what should be the final layout of my article; so, I am writing it in IEEEtran format. I thought that it would be easy to change the layout later if required. But I read a book on LaTeX and I found the following ...

Joseph Wright

@Johannes_B Too broad?

Johannes_B

@JosephWright Maybe, the title suggests it's opinion based.

Joseph Wright

@Johannes_B Also a possible

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- there's a specific example in the question about an ieee class, and there are a couple of comments on that point that could be turned into a cogent answer about how to shift between document classes without too much pain. maybe changing the question itself to "how can i change the layout of an article if the class i'm using isn't suitable?"

yo'

6:37 PM

@Johannes_B @JosephWright @barbarabeeton It's true that it could be re-worded to "how to switch from article to ieeetran. However, I have a feeling that this would be really just mechanical copying of passages of ieeetran manual...

Johannes_B

@yo' @barbarabeeton I think this is the classical »search for template« thing. Using article and a few of the thousands CTAN packages would be my guess of an answer.

barbara beeton

@yo' -- actually, i was thinking of it from the perspective of "how to switch from ieeetran to article. the suggestions for that are in the comments, but i doubt in the ieeetran manual.

yo'

@barbarabeeton ah I have it the other way around, sorry

However, as always, it's impossible to really answer the question without a MWE...

Paulo Cereda

7:06 PM

I'm getting very annoyed by all these subjective questions. :(

If I had a Macbook Air, I'd certainly do this: reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2sm5yk/…

yo'

@PauloCereda and you can't?

Paulo Cereda

@yo' I don't have a Macbook Air. :)

yo'

@PauloCereda but you have other macwhatever...

Paulo Cereda

@yo' I might give a try with my old Macbook. :) But I still need a pure Mac OSX machine for testing. :)

yo'

@PauloCereda well, I don't :p

Paulo Cereda

7:15 PM

Speaking of Linux, did I tell you guys my mum is enjoying every moment with her new PC and Fedora 21? :)

yo'

@PauloCereda she's not missing M$ W@#$?

Paulo Cereda

@yo' She has never used a computer ever in her life, so I guess not. :)

yo'

@PauloCereda ahh ok :) so she's happy to have minesweeper and klotski and that's it, right? :)

Paulo Cereda

@yo' She's playing games, using a paint application to get mouse skills and also browsing the internet. :)

yo'

@PauloCereda but honestly, that's it. The only problem's gonna be Adobe's shittiness with Flash

Paulo Cereda

7:19 PM

@yo' What else would you expect for my mom to do with a computer? :) Also, Flash is working like a charm in here. :)

yo'

@PauloCereda so far. But Adobe declared to stop releasing the linux versions, so in some time, when people start to use the new versions' features, we're screwed

Paulo Cereda

@yo' :)

Holy cow, I just broadcasted my iMac screen to my Apple TV and all of a sudden I had everything in the TV. That means I can watch @egreg and @DavidCarlisle battling for rep points in my living room! :)

2

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda Teach her how to use LaTeX and let her contribute to your recipe collection. Put it on github and we can all enjoy Mamas Lasagne :-)

Paulo Cereda

@Johannes_B ooh! :)

@Johannes_B To be honest, I was thinking of something along these lines: an app with lots of photos of ingredients in which she just had to select which ones apply to a particular recipe and the type some info on how to handle them. Then the app would generate the .tex file based on the selected input and we would have the recipe. :)

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda Wow. I mean, wow :-)

@PauloCereda An app would be nice that proposes, based on whats in the fridge, one of mamas recipes.

Paulo Cereda

7:35 PM

@Johannes_B We could use one of those smart fridges. :)

yo'

@Johannes_B my minister's wife says: the iPad is great: you look into your fridge and pantry, put the 3 least useful things there in google, and a recipe pops up using exactly these three things. So you put the the iPad on the empty shelf you have in your kitchen and start :)

Johannes_B

@yo' :-)

yo'

To the downvoter: If you have to downvote a newcomer's question, then at least have the dignity to comment on what do you think is wrong with it. — yo' 23 secs ago

cfr

8:17 PM

@yo' I would say the same about (even) non-newcomers' questions!

saadtaame

what is a tikz scope used for?

cfr

Question: in examples of e.g. \NewDocumentCommand using expl3 syntax, I see \group_begin: ... \group_end:. Why is this necessary?

David Carlisle

@cfr presumably the definition needed a group? example?

cfr

Another question: is there any way to avoid the 'unused global options' warning for a custom class. (I'm using l3keys2e and run \ProcessKeysOptions and then \ProcessOptionsX...

David Carlisle

@cfr do you have options that have not been used?

cfr

8:27 PM

@DavidCarlisle page 158/159 of interface3.pdf includes it in the recommended template for \DeclareDocumentCommand, so I've been repeating it but I'm not sure why.

@DavidCarlisle No. It is complaining about an option which is used. And it definitely recognises this in some sense because the option works.

\DeclareDocumentCommand \MyModuleMacro { o m }
{
\group_begin:
\keys_set:nn { mymodule } { #1 }
% Main code for \MyModuleMacro
\group_end:
}

[ Re. the first point, not the second. ]

Johannes_B

@egreg @JosephWright @DavidCarlisle anybody else: In the mood for answering? tex.stackexchange.com/questions/214477/…

David Carlisle

@cfr well, it keeps the key setting local to that command

@cfr sounds like a bug, perhaps the X version isn't clearing the option from the unused list?

cfr

@DavidCarlisle Is that good?

I just wondered why when I wasn't using it with 'ordinary' syntax. (i.e. I translate a macro into expl3 and suddenly I need a group.)

@DavidCarlisle Possibly. Probably not though. Probably I've failed to do something I'm meant to to keep it happy. Much more likely than a bug. Oh, well. I have plenty of other warnings, what's one or two more?!

David Carlisle

@cfr it depends on the use, but for example I use groups in includegraphics (which uses keyval of course not l3keys but it's same thing. If you go \includegraphics[width=2in]{zzz} you probably don't expect the value of the width key to be set to 2n when you come to the next \includegraphics

Paul Gessler

@saadtaame generally used to limit options to some subset of path/drawing commands.

cfr

8:41 PM

@DavidCarlisle Oh, OK. So I could leave it out if I wanted to create a macro which needed to set a key which would have an effect outside that context? Sorry, this is probably a dumb question, but it all still rather alien.

David Carlisle

@cfr yes keys are really just \def in disguise so if you have a command like \hypersetup{zz=zz} then obviously you want the key setting not to be scoped as it is documented as affecting the document, but normally keys are used more like \includegraphics where the expectation is that any settings are local to that one command

cfr

@DavidCarlisle Good. Thanks. It was only the documentation is a bit misleading (to me).

David Carlisle

@cfr blame @JosephWright

Johannes_B

@JosephWright Just noticed that your entry is just over mine :-) planet.dante.de

Guys, heading home. Good night.

yo'

@saadtaame For instance, with \begin{scope}[fill=blue] you can make all draw commands inside be blue-filled. If you later decide to change it to red, you gotta do only one change, not mmany

@Johannes_B night

yo'

9:14 PM

Please, is there any example as how should a LaTeX3 class file (for LaTeX2e of course) look like?

cfr

@DavidCarlisle OK.

yo'

9:33 PM

@Joseph another typo in interface3: part I, section 1, paragraph "c", double "So So". As well, I noticed that the interlineskip is missing between first paragraph of a macro description and the next one, throughout the whole document. This can be seen for instance in I.2, between the two paragraphs of \ExplSyntaxOn

cfr

@PauloCereda I'm currently updating my mother's machine to 21 (from 19). Fingers crossed that hers boots afterwards, unlike my work box.

yo'

@cfr ah, good luck!

damn, for using interface3.pdf I would need a PDF viewer with multiple windows of the same file allowed.

cfr

@yo' Okular?

yo'

@cfr maybe, but I got quite used to Acrobat, so now you see the dilemma ...

cfr

@yo' Well, I find it hard to imagine given the specific nature of what you're attached to, but I get the general idea. [Don't you get fed up just waiting for Adobe things to open?]

yo'

9:45 PM

@cfr on my machine, Acrobat Reader is fine :)

egreg

@PauloCereda What battle? :P

yo'

10:04 PM

damn, I'm already lost with l3 :(

cfr

@yo' It is a PITA on mine :(. It takes forever to start, and then it has this long indolent phase where it just kind of sulks and refuses to talk to anybody before eventually, grudgingly agreeing to spew complaints at me. (Initially, I used to think it was frozen and kill it but, actually, it just takes a long, long, long time to thaw.) May not help that it is 32 bit, of course.

@yo' l3 sufferers need a support group...

yo'

I get this error with an empty class:

Document Class: ctu1 2014-01-18 v0.1  CTU ONE
)
! Missing = inserted for \ifnum.
<to be read again>
                   -
l.2 ^^M

?

I tried twice, each time writing the file from scratch

file ctu1.cls:

\RequirePackage{expl3}

\ProvidesExplClass{ctu1}{2014-01-18}{0.1}{ CTU ONE }

ok, found it. @Joseph Please, could l3bootstrap manual show the expected date format? the error message above almost drove me ~~away from l3~~ crazy. Thanks :)

egreg

@yo' 2014/01/18

yo'

@egreg and the manual itself uses minuses everywhere, that's what confused me...

but thanks, anyways.

egreg

@yo' Maybe we could ask the team to allow both styles: ISO wants hyphens, while the LaTeX tradition is with /.

yo'

10:17 PM

@egreg yeah, or at least put it in l3bootstrap manual ;)

btw, can I make a default choice for mykey .choices:nn = ... ?

and one more thing, what is the equivalent of \ProcessOptions?

cfr

@egreg I would never think to write a date backwards with slashes, only hyphens.

@yo' If you can, let me know. I think you have to use \keys_set:nn and then process the keys. There doesn't seem to be a key .initial thing.

yo'

@cfr well, I do this:

\tl_new:N \l_ctuthesis_fontsize_tl
\tl_set:Nn \l_ctuthesis_fontsize_tl {11pt}
\keys_define:nn { ctuthesis } {
	fontsize .choices:nn = { 10pt, 11pt, 12pt } { \tl_set_eq:NN \l_ctuthesis_fontsize_tl \l_keys_choice_tl },
	}

cfr

@yo' Maybe you need l3keys2e?

yo'

@cfr what?!

@cfr seems so. However, I'll simply ask at the site, it'll be easier.

cfr

@yo' A package which provides \ProcessKeysOptions for processing class/package options using expl3 keys.

yo'

10:27 PM

ah ok, it's not so difficult :D

works like charm, thanks :)

cfr

@yo' My problem was I found that first, when I didn't want to deal with package or class options at all!

yo'

@cfr uh-oh :)

cfr

My class is currently a mixture of \def @ etc, 2e syntax, expl3 and xkeyval...

yo'

I fortunately know for a while that the right thing is interface3, and I actually have alias i3 = interface3 in my texdoc.cnf

@cfr that's something I want to avoid. My previous class (available online, I can share the link if you want) is a 30kB tex+2e monster. This one's gonna be pure l3

cfr

@yo' Can you turn the syntax off if you create an expl3 class? Mine uses TiKZ which doesn't agree with it.

Generally, though, I find it easier to change things gradually until I get the hang of it.

yo'

10:41 PM

@cfr You can, but I wouldn't do it inside the class. Maybe you can create a separate "inner" .sty with the TikZ bits and then \RequirePackage it?

@cfr but you quite certainly can \ExplSyntaxOff ... TikZ code ... \ExplSyntaxOn

Joseph Wright

@yo' Typo fixed, more complex things are down to Will

cfr

@yo' I'm processing keys for macros using expl3 syntax which then do things with TikZ.

Some of them, anyway.

yo'

as well, I think that there's a way to define a macro such that it's written with expl3 but it's bowels have different catcodes

cfr

Is int the equivalent of a counter?

yo'

@JosephWright ok, thanks anyways

@cfr yes?

@JosephWright What's the best way to file my suggestions? Should I keep them with me and then send them somewhere in bunches?

Joseph Wright

10:48 PM

@yo' I've noted it's ISO format

yo'

@JosephWright well, it's not I think ;) (ISO is with dashes, here slashes are required)

Joseph Wright

@yo' I'll think about this one

@yo' We just pass the info through to LaTeX2e

yo'

@JosephWright ok, thanks. As I say, including a remark that it's yyyy/mm/dd would be enough probably

Joseph Wright

@yo' That's what I've done

cfr

@yo' The thing is, if I didn't mix them, I'd never use expl3 because the idea of starting would be too intimidating! If I can think, 'I'm just going to figure out how to do this macro...' then it is within the realms of possibility.

yo'

10:50 PM

@JosephWright cool, thanks

cfr

@JosephWright Be nice if it would accept the hyphen version though.

yo'

@cfr and I think the other way around. I've got a new project to start, and I think I can manage to make a reasonably nice l3 code with the first try. We take a long time on the design anyways, so I have some time to master that on the way :)

Joseph Wright

@cfr We very specifically don't mess with the data here: it's just passed to LaTeX2e. The latter only takes one date format.

\protected\def\ProvidesExplPackage#1#2#3#4%
  {%
    \ProvidesPackage{#1}[#2 v#3 #4]%
    \ExplSyntaxOn
  }

cfr

@yo' Probably it depends what you're doing. I use LaTeX, but I don't have LaTeX projects. The class isn't the point.

yo'

@cfr yeah, I'm on another wave just now. Doing job for the university

cfr

10:53 PM

@JosephWright Still too bad.

Joseph Wright

@cfr We are working as a LaTeX2e package here: the LaTeX2e kernel sets the rules

cfr

The docs say to use the xparse stuff for user level macros - as opposed to \newcommand etc.? Why especially?

yo'

btw, the idea is that I use \cs_new:.. for inner macros and \NewDocumentCommand for the UI ones?

Joseph Wright

@cfr \DeclareDocumentCommand is clearly for document commands only and provides a way of tracking interfaces

cfr

I wish glossaries would stop telling me to download glossaries-welsh. It doesn't exist...

Joseph Wright

10:55 PM

@yo' Yes

@cfr Complain to Nicola!

yo'

@JosephWright @cfr Create it a file it to Nicola! ;)

egreg

@cfr Make it!

cfr

@JosephWright 'tracking interfaces?'

@JosephWright ;).

The Welsh ordinals are systematically wrong in every LaTeX bit of code I've seen, and every bit of non-LaTeX code I've seen. babel, polyglossia, datetime...

Joseph Wright

@cfr xparse commands have self-describing interfaces, e.g. som rather than \@ifstar ... \@ifnextchar ...

@cfr We also record the interfaces and these can be queried

cfr

@JosephWright OK. I don't understand, but I don't think I'm going to.

yo'

10:59 PM

@cfr If you see any definition of a macro using \DeclareDocumentCommand, you immediately know what are its arguments.

cfr

@egreg But it shouldn't complain anyway. It is not the main document language and I don't define or use any glossary terms in any non-English context. I just need a very little Greek and a bit of Welsh.

Joseph Wright

@cfr For a one-argument command it's not as obviously useful, but try anything more complex

yo'

as well, if I understand it right (@Joseph?), there's a database of all macros defined this way.

@JosephWright you mean like { s o +m o s m }? :D

Joseph Wright

@cfr We are trying to move in the direction of having a much clearer interface layer

@yo' Yes

cfr

@yo' Well, you sort of do with \newcommand, too.

Joseph Wright

11:01 PM

@yo' One open question of course is how much we want to encourage anything beyond som

@cfr No you can't

yo'

@cfr but not if you want to define both \mymacro and \mymacro*

Joseph Wright

@cfr \newcommand can do m, O{}m, mm, O{}mm, etc., not s at all

yo'

@JosephWright enourage? maybe not. Allow? Sure.

egreg

@cfr It's a subliminal message by Nicola, she wants you to make the file.

Joseph Wright

@yo' Like I said, open question (I have an e-mail to write to the team list on this, but not while we are doing heavy LaTeX2e stuff)

cfr

11:02 PM

@JosephWright There are things you can't do, but you can tell what arguments are accepted from the declaration.

yo'

@JosephWright I see

Joseph Wright

@cfr With \newcommand you have to mix interface and implementation :-(

cfr

@egreg And the one I get about glossaries-greek? She must be insane if she's sending ME messages, subliminal or otherwise, suggesting I make glossaries-greek!

yo'

@cfr You can tell me from this what arguments \correspondingauthor takes? :D

\def\author@bracket[#1]#2#3{
  % increase number of authors by one
  \advance\X@author@cnt1
  % save author's short name and full name
  \expandafter\def\csname X@author@no@\romannumeral\X@author@cnt\endcsname{{#1}{#2}}%
  % add commas in case this is not the first author and add author into all three lists
  \ifx\@cleanauthor\@empty\else
    \g@addto@macro{\@cleanauthor}{, }%
  \fi
  \g@addto@macro{\@shortauthor}{#1}%
  \ifx\@shortauthor\@empty\else
    \g@addto@macro{\@shortauthor}{, }%
  \fi

cfr

@JosephWright I understand that. I really didn't mean more than I said.

egreg

11:04 PM

@cfr She knows you want to study Greek and she wants to help.

cfr

@yo' That is not using \newcommand!

yo'

(and it's not the worst one I have done I think)

@cfr but it's using the best available LaTeX2e syntax that can do the job (i.e., \@dblarg)

and that's the point. I only want \author{T. Hejda}{1} to be the same as \author[T. Hejda]{T. Hejda}{1}, nothing more

Joseph Wright

@cfr My usual example is that you can't define say \renewcommand using \newcommand

cfr

@yo' I did not mean to claim more than I claimed. I meant what I said. I did not mean a whole bunch of other things I did not say! \newcommand etc. have severe limitations in terms of what you can do. But they are not (to me) any less clear than the xparse equivalents.

yo'

@cfr they are fine, but too limited.

@JosephWright ah yeah that one is tricky, with oo

cfr

11:07 PM

@yo' Isn't that what I just said?

@JosephWright I did not mean to claim more than I claimed. I meant what I said. I did not mean a whole bunch of other things I did not say! \newcommand etc. have severe limitations in terms of what you can do. But they are not (to me) any less clear than the xparse equivalents.

yo'

@cfr it is. I just felt the need to emphasize that they are too limited to the the job nicely

Joseph Wright

@cfr Second point is that \newcommand doesn't use \protected, which really should be used for document commands unless they need to be expandable (rare, and still perhaps an area needing refinement in xparse)

@cfr Oh, by the way, try \newcommand\foo[2][]{\showtokens{#1}}\foo[[bar]]{baz} and compare \DeclareDocumentCommand\foo{om}{\showtokens{#1}}\foo[[bar]]{baz}

@cfr Or try a runaway argument part way through the chain (these last two features were tricky)

yo'

@JosephWright well, at that time, using protected would mean going from 50 csnames down to 25 ...

Joseph Wright

@yo' No

@yo' You are thinking of LaTeX2e's \DeclareRobustCommand/\protect mechanism

yo'

@JosephWright I thought yes? you need the spaced one, don't you?

cfr

11:11 PM

@yo' I actually think they serve a useful purpose which the xparse versions do not: they provide a relatively simple interface for people who want to implement something relatively simple. If all that had been available was the xparse stuff or the \def stuff, I never, ever would have tried to do anything. Having learnt to use those made a difference. [xparse wasn't probably written when I learnt \newcommand but that's not the point.]

yo'

@cfr \DeclareDocumentCommand \mymacro { mm } {Hello, #1 and #2!}

Joseph Wright

@cfr Another open question :-)

yo'

and then: \mymacro{cfr}{Joseph}

cfr

\newcommand and friends are relatively simple. The xparse commands are not at all.

Joseph Wright

@yo' \protected\def\foo{} uses one memory location

yo'

11:13 PM

@JosephWright ah ok. I think I need to go back to the basics (and read TeXbyTopic)

Joseph Wright

@cfr They are not supposed to be: one problem with LaTeX2e is a poor separation of interfaces from 'document stuff'

@yo' Not in there: doesn't cover e-TeX

yo'

@JosephWright really? uh-oh

Joseph Wright

@yo' \protected\def\foo{bar}\edef\test{\foo}\show\test

cfr

@yo' Yes, but it took me a long, long time to figure that out - even though I had used \newcommand etc. for quite a while, and delved some way into \def and friends.

Joseph Wright

@yo' We've learnt this stuff so most people don't have to

yo'

11:14 PM

@JosephWright :)

Joseph Wright

@cfr That's a double-edged sword

@yo' I've spent quite a lot of time reading the e-TeX manual and testing stuff

yo'

@cfr so maybe the manual is not user-friendly. Because this interface is completely clear to me.

cfr

@JosephWright Well, I was not trying to do stuff in my document.

yo'

@Paulo Quack!

Joseph Wright

@cfr Perhaps I can convince you to come to the next UK-TUG meeting and we can chat about this in person :-)

cfr

11:15 PM

@yo' @PauloCereda Cwac!

2

yo'

kvááááááááááááááááááááááááááák or better: kvá+k

2

Joseph Wright

A duck!

cfr

@JosephWright Perhaps....

@JosephWright Hwyaden!

egreg

A user in Math.SE

Ducky

22 5

analysis general-topology metric-spaces real-analysis ring-theory vector-analysis ideals

yo'

@JosephWright kachna?

@egreg @Paulo, you've got a double personality?

cfr

11:18 PM

This always makes me think of these sets of cards they use to test children's language development. There is/was a shortage of Welsh speakers qualified to do this. Also, the set of cards was just a translation from the English. And that's where the problems started: not knowing 'duck' in English does not indicate the same developmental stage as not knowing 'hwyaden' in Welsh!

@yo' You must have linguistically sophisticated ducks if they can manage accents like that.

yo'

@cfr lol

cfr

@yo' Are your ducks feminine or masculine?

Or were you saying you have five genders?

yo'

@cfr by default feminine (kachna). but there is a masculine-living word for the male (kačer) and a neutral word for the young (kachně or archaic káče). Then a word for a little one (no matter the sex nor whether it's adult) is feminine kachnička

@cfr four, not five. but we have some exceptions

Anthony

11:44 PM

Hello!

A while ago I was talking to David in this room and he said to make a class I should use \LoadClass{article}\def\zzz{zzzz}- what does the backslash after def mean?

yo'

@Anthony it's part of the macro \zzz ?

David Carlisle

@Anthony it's not after \def it is before \zzz

Anthony

Oh whoops, I was thinking of newcommand.

I don't even know what \def does.

David Carlisle

I could have written \LoadClass{article}\newcommand{\zzz}{zzzz}

Anthony

Oh!

I see.