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8:31 AM
500 days consecutively on TeX.SX ... too much?
 
@ChristianHupfer Lightweight ;-)
 
@JosephWright: Well, that's true and it's not true... I have been basically inactive for half a year after my first question here... and TeX.SX was not so important for me, at the beginning ;-)
 
9:31 AM
@ChristianHupfer Acceptable. :) I used to have 3 times more before this trip to Spain. :)
 
9:41 AM
@PauloCereda How was Spain?
 
@TorbjørnT. I loved the trip! Barcelons is a fantastic city!
Still, the weather is very cold. :)
 
@PauloCereda Different perspectives I guess, I'd think of Barcelona as a warm place. Never been there though. I would have had a chance to there last month for a conference, but I was on a cruise, so I couldn't attend.
 
@TorbjørnT. Ah yes, Barcelona is way warmer than Madrid! The temperature was fine, but the thermal sensation was freezing; I got a 28C day, which is hot for us, but it was very cold due to wind. :)
 
@PauloCereda On that cruise I was on (npolar.no/en/expedition-field/n-ice2015), temperatures ranged from -21C to 0C while I was there. A little bit of wind as well.
 
9:57 AM
@TorbjørnT. Oh my, that's very, very cold!
 
Hi, I have a problem in figure dimensions in my document. I have some figures, which are Matlab results. the problem is when I edit the figures then save them , the size will change. for example, some of them appear square, some are rectangle. I would like all the figures to be in the same size (i.e., consistent). How I can do that ?
 
@barznjy Edit figures where? Matlab? What format are they in/how do you get them into your document?
 
@barznjy The saved images are in the correct size?
 
@TorbjørnT. edit the figures in MatLab, and I save it as eps format
@PauloCereda How I can control the image size when I save it ?
 
@PauloCereda On the first leg (I wasn't there then) of that cruise, temperatures dropped to around -40C at the coldest. There was very little or no wind when it was that cold though, which is a good thing.
 
9:59 AM
@barznjy I don't know Matlab, sorry. :(
@TorbjørnT. Oh my! It's so freezing!
 
@TorbjørnT. I use this

\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.58]{pictures/fig4}
\caption{system model}
\label{fig:fig4}
\end{figure}
 
@barznjy You can specifiy the size of the figure in Matlab. If I remember correctly, something like set(gcf,'units','centimeter','position',[0 0 10 5]). That will set the size of the figure (before export) to 10cmx5cm.
@barznjy I've never understood why people use scale, IMO width or height is the more natural thing to use. E.g. with width=0.7\linewidth, the figure's width will be 70% of the width of the line.
 
@TorbjørnT. Scale makes sense if altering all figures from an external source
 
@TorbjørnT. so how the above example would be in your opinion, please?
@TorbjørnT. I would be happy if someone tells me more efficient way
 
@JosephWright You're right, I can see that in some cases.
@barznjy My opinion may not always be the 'right' thing, as you just saw. What I meant though was replacing scale=0.58 with width=0.7\linewidth (adjusting the length to suit your needs of course). That doesn't really help with the consistency, other than that it is easy to set all figures to the same width. If all the figures should have the same size, then you're better off adjusting that in Matlab, as I mentioned a few comments above.
 
10:13 AM
How about keepaspectratio?
 
10:34 AM
Fedora 22 tomorrow! @cfr, @michal.h21, @yo' :)
 
@PauloCereda I think I will wait a moment, until first bugs are fixed :)
(I used TL 2012 until this March on my work computer :)
 
@michal.h21 I will wait a week in my desktop, but I will install it right away in my laptop. :)
 
@ArthurReutenauer nice. my Dad's cat once felt from 8th floor and was missing for 10 months. then she found way back home :)
 
@michal.h21 Oh my!
 
@PauloCereda but sometimes I like changes :)
 
10:49 AM
@michal.h21 \usepackage[margin=1.5cm]{geometry} -> \usepackage[margin=1.51cm]{geometry} :)
^^ That's my kind of adventure. :P
 
@PauloCereda what's wrong with that? :o
 
@michal.h21 I'm adventurous. :P
 
@PauloCereda it seems exactly same on small example :)
 
@michal.h21 :)
 
yo'
11:53 AM
@PauloCereda I still run Heisenbug, and I'm a bit scared of the update, since I have a dual boot with W8.1
 
12:17 PM
@PauloCereda What do we learn from this: Travelling to Spain has bad effects on the visits on TeX.SX! Don't do again ;-)
 
@ChristianHupfer Indeed. :)
 
1:17 PM
@egreg In regard to my question of last night
This sums it up
%\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{abcdef.cls}
\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[2014/05/01]%
\ProvidesClass{floatclass}%
\@twosidetrue%
\@mparswitchtrue%
\newif\if@restonecol%
\input{size9.clo}
\RequirePackage[paperwidth=170mm, paperheight=240mm, left=40pt, top=40pt, textwidth=280pt, marginparsep=20pt, marginparwidth=100pt, textheight=51\baselineskip, footskip=40pt]{geometry}%%8
\newcounter{figure}%
\newcounter{table}%
\def\fps@figure{tbp}%
\def\ftype@figure{1}%
\def\ext@figure{lof}%
\def\fnum@figure{\figurename\nobreakspace\thefigure}%
 
1:52 PM
@1010011010 I'll check it later: intermission between lectures.
 
@PauloCereda ; -- apostrophes correct. confirmed. (and i'm glad the cat came back, even if it wasn't the very next day.)
 
@barbarabeeton Thank you. :)
 
@PauloCereda -- keepaspectratio not needed unless both vertical and horizontal dimensions are specified, in which case the graphic could be deformed; with keepaspectratio, the most suitable dimension is chosen (i.e. the largest one that fits), and the other scaled to the appropriate value.
 
@barbarabeeton oh I wasn't unaware of it. :)
0
Q: How do I move the table to the vertically center ? , and allign figure and table together

Cagri \begin{figure}[htbp] \centering \makebox[0.5\textwidth]{\includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{figure/ch3/result_s2/book.jpg}} \qquad \qquad \scalebox{0.7}{ \begin{tabular}[c]{cc} \hline \textbf{Method} & \textbf{$\sigma$} \\ \hline method 1 & 0.0 \\ ...

Friends, let's migrate it to the main site. :)
 
2:15 PM
@PauloCereda: I already flagged it to be migrated...
 
@ChristianHupfer Me too. :) With enough votes, we can automatically migrate, since it's an internal move. :)
 
@PauloCereda: Ah, didn't know that. Thanks for keeping me informed!
@PauloCereda: By the way, I am digging a little bit into expl3 ...
 
@ChristianHupfer At least that's how I think it works. :)
@ChristianHupfer oh no! :D
 
\cs_new:Nn \ducks:n
{%
 ducks are great!%
}
 
@ChristianHupfer yay!
 
2:20 PM
@PauloCereda: I have to learn the naming scheme and philosophy still
 
2:36 PM
@SeanAllred huh?
 
2:47 PM
@ChristianHupfer Per cents?
 
@1010011010 They are not needed, actually. :)
 
@PauloCereda Is what I thought....
 
@1010011010 And the spaces will be ignored, so the output will be ducksaregreat! instead.
 
@PauloCereda: As I said, I still learn ;-) I am aware that expl3 is not meant for typesetting directly
 
@PaulGessler Bounty: looking for an answer from credible/official sources
 
2:54 PM
@ChristianHupfer ducks\space are\space great! ? :-)
 
Your expl3-based packages question
@ChristianHupfer @1010011010 Ducks~are~great
 
@SeanAllred Oh, I guess
 
@1010011010: Ah, thanks. Well, it was rather a joke than a real example
 
@ChristianHupfer naturally; the ducks namespace is reserved for official development :)
 
@SeanAllred there were no answers when I set the bounty.
 
2:56 PM
@PaulGessler Strange; I don't remember seeing it before Joseph's answer – I must be mistaken :)
 
@SeanAllred: I will use a new development branch: central_european_ducks :-P
 
@ChristianHupfer :)
 
@SeanAllred you were the first to answer, ~20 min after the bounty was set. Then Joseph came along ~20 min after your answer. :-)
 
@ChristianHupfer I only noticed after the binary bloke mentioned the code. :)
 
@PaulGessler It must have been the new activity then – I follow those tags and it was highlighted in my feed. I'm glad Joseph saw it, too :)
 
3:00 PM
@PauloCereda the binary code says: emacs is better than vi :-P
@1010011010: Your are now baptized officially as the binary bloke
@1010011010: Blame society @PauloCereda ;-)
 
@ChristianHupfer I knew it!
 
@ChristianHupfer Well, gee
Society is Paulo, Paulo is society?
 
@1010011010 sorry, I can't type a lot of zeroes and ones. :) Oh I could have used the @ completion.
 
@PauloCereda If you have one of those fancy keyboards, you could try to macro it to a key...
 
@1010011010 Indeed. :)
 
3:07 PM
@1010011010 I do have to ask though – what's with the ten-bit word?
 
@SeanAllred Have you tried going to decimal with my name?
 
@1010011010 gotcha
 
@SeanAllred The short version of the story behind that number is basically that it's a very old alias back from 99... the idea was that the evil defined the good, though whether I got that point across with this binary name is controversial to say the least
 
@1010011010 well philosophically, you can't well-define evil without a definition for good
or vice-versa
 
@SeanAllred That was the original philosophy. Though I started doubting it, my alias did not change with it.
 
3:14 PM
@1010011010 If I may ask, what led you to doubt it? What has replaced it?
 
@1010011010 The package sidenotes redefines figure and figure*
 
@SeanAllred There is no single superior vantage point to define neither good nor evil. Assuming that is correct, the elementaries can be defined arbitrarily. I chose a set more in line with my specific way of thinking, which made defining everyday phenomena a simpler task to me.
 
@1010011010 Isn't that the same thing as defining good and evil, though? Have you not defined it for yourself at the exclusion of others?
 
@SeanAllred I don't have to define it as the absence of something else.
 
@1010011010 Oh, certainly not :) Relative definitions aren't always mutually exclusive.
@1010011010 This one is though, I think, but I don't think of good as 'the absence of' evil.
Just my thoughts, of course. (The internet can be a dangerous place for these types of conversations, in my experience. I don't want to step on any toes :))
 
3:33 PM
@SeanAllred I may have phrased it a little sloppily.
 
@1010011010 It's a hard thing to put into words, certainly
@1010011010 But it's healthy to do, I think – putting it into words.
Just like any other problem, talking through it sometimes raises questions or brings answers to light that you hadn't previously seen.
 
@SeanAllred The usefulness of putting everything into words is context-dependent
 
@1010011010 How do you mean?
 
3:49 PM
@SeanAllred I should say it is deceptive. I've put deep thought into everything and everyone all my life. It has not brought me any good. I'd recommend others not to do it. In essence there is not much else to life than finding joy in the things you do (in my opinion) and thinking in my opinion hinders that goal on the level of the individual.
@egreg Thanks... I don't think I would've found that myself (don't tell me why, I always look past those things...).
 
@1010011010 Well certainly – what comes to mind when I read your message is something "dying the death of a thousand qualifications". You can certainly run yourself into the ground if you take some approaches.
 
4:23 PM
@SeanAllred The real issue is that generally speaking, nobody is looking for conversation in which thought isn't strongly devalued. The issue is that the way in which the human mind generally works is flawed. I've met little people that don't just tunnel vision
 
@1010011010 I hear that. There are many different ways of thinking about things – some ridiculous (e.g. some variants of nihilism), others not. It's a fallacy to think we can objectively measure a system under which we operate – it's a much more intricate problem to study your own existence than most people give credit to.
@1010011010 I'm by no means rejecting the idea of truth, but I am saying that everyone thinks in a different way.
 
@SeanAllred It's not so much objectivity, the problem I have is that the human mind seems to be wired to not expand its thinking behind the horizon of prolonging its own existence on the short term.
 
@1010011010 It would appear that way, but I personally find it hard to dismiss the potential for man to rise above his own inbred selfishness and help others for the sake of helping (as some of the users here stand testament in a small way). Sometimes, this swings the other way in the appalling depth of potential for depravity in men who will harm for harm's sake. I personally find it difficult to believe that these ultimately boil down to preservation of self and kin.
 
4:41 PM
I LOL'd. :)
 
@SeanAllred I tend to logically decide whether or not to dismiss e.g. the potential you speak of. I've had no reason to do so yet. Perhaps time will change it, perhaps not.
 
@1010011010 All we have the unquestionable ability to do is muddle on through life doing the best we can :)
…Trying to be the best example for others as we know how. :)
 
@SeanAllred That's precisely the thing. I look at people. I try to understand their actions. It doesn't seem to be that way.
 
@PauloCereda vvv
@1010011010 The hypocrisy (without the connotations that word brings) is certainly prevalent in human behavior – we say one thing, but then seemingly invariably do something else – sometimes the complete opposite.
@1010011010 It's a problem that all serious worldviews must address.
 
@SeanAllred LOL
 
5:36 PM
Hey @PauloCereda – what's that templating engine you used with TeX (potentially years ago)? I remember to saying something about it, but I can't remember what it was called. J…something, I think.
 
@SeanAllred For Java? If so, Velocity. :)
 
@PauloCereda I was way off, then :) Thanks!
New blog post going up soon about TeX terminology for beginners.
 
@SeanAllred My pleasure! :) There's a couple others too, but I liked Velocity better. I also wrote an answer in the main site using Cheetah for Python.
 
 
2 hours later…
7:18 PM
I wanted to star your removed message, it wouldn't let me.
2
 
Oh! I'll re-add…
 
@666: I starred yours instead :-)
 
New blog post (first in a long time): "Who's Who in the World of TeX" – a review of TeX terminology seanallred.com/tex/2015/05/25/tex-terminology.html
4
 
@ArthurReutenauer Starception....
 
@1010011010 I figured that I don't see a whole lot of 'blog post announcements' in this room so I didn't want to spam anyone :)
Open for comments/corrections on reddit redd.it/378j47 or the comments section of the post.
 
7:23 PM
@SeanAllred Very nice. Can I make some comments here?
 
@ArthurReutenauer Please do :)
 
@SeanAllred I’m not sure I would use the term plugins to generically describe packages and modules, but that’s admittedly a matter of taste.
@SeanAllred And texexec has been replaced by mtxrun for ConTeXt MkIV - I’d put the emphasis on the latter.
 
@ArthurReutenauer Thanks for the correction! I'm not very familiar with ConTeXt, obviously, but I wanted to be inclusive :)
@ArthurReutenauer And yeah, I'm open to suggestions about this. I don't like it, either
@ArthurReutenauer Am I correct in my assumption that it's similar to latexmk?
I've used neither
 
@SeanAllred And that’s a good thing. I haven’t used ConTeXt seriously in several years, but already then the recommended way was Mark IV and mtxrun - actually now I think of it, the default mode is simple called context (mtxrun can call different sub-scripts, the default one is called just context).
@SeanAllred I’m not sure you can describe mtxrun as a build system, but it’s supposed to help you run all the different programs to complete a document, yes.
 
@ArthurReutenauer Good that I don't use it (ouch) or that I included it?
 
7:29 PM
@SeanAllred That you included it your description, of course :-)
@SeanAllred I’ve never used latexmk either, but mtxrun does what I’ve always assumed latexmk was about ;-)
 
@ArthurReutenauer Actually now that I think about it, you're right. I'll move that to a footnote – it's really the only way to compile a ConTeXt document. It isn't a convenience alternative.
 
English tea, anyone? :)
 
@SeanAllred Yep. Well, you can run the TeX engine directly and make it load the correct format file, but that’s a little convoluted.
 
@ArthurReutenauer very.
 
@SeanAllred About plugins, I would just say “packages and modules”, I think.
@SeanAllred You can mention plugins as it may help some people to understand what it’s about (that’s the name OpenOffice calls its extensions, I think), but I suspect that for other people it would be more confusing than helpful.
 
7:34 PM
> Since the community using TeX is much more diverse and specialized
than any one team can hope to accommodate, the major formats define a
syntax for using packages and modules (effectively plugins) that
anyone can write and share (licenses permitting, of course).
@ArthurReutenauer What do you think of the above?
And then I just use packages/modules in the rest of the article
I do want to make this as beginner-friendly as possible – all the different terms can be overwhelming.
 
@SeanAllred I like it better, but it still uses the word plugin to define what packages and modules are, and I really think that a number of readers would find it harder to understand than module.
@SeanAllred In a computer programming background, plugin should be really clear but it feels like it would alienate people with a different background.
 
@ArthurReutenauer If you don't mind me asking, where are you from? 'Module' is seen as a tech-savvy word here in the States (particularly Maryland)
@ArthurReutenauer How curious!
 
@SeanAllred But I may be wrong.
 
@ArthurReutenauer "extensions" ?
 
@SeanAllred France, but I live in the UK. You’re right about module, package is probably better.
@SeanAllred I was going to suggest just that, actually :-)
 
7:38 PM
@ArthurReutenauer :)
 
@SeanAllred Now I think about it, it seems that’s what OpenOffice uses as well today.
 
@ArthurReutenauer It's a good thing to use the same language where it's appropriate.
 
@SeanAllred Obviously that’s an approximation, because some LaTeX packages really implement core features (that’s less true of ConTeXt modules), but for an introductory text that’s good enough.
@SeanAllred I also think that the OpenOffice people had the exact same problem to solve :-)
 
@ArthurReutenauer True :) But I think drawing the line between primitives and macros is good enough – much more than I generally hope for when helping someone on-campus with TeX.
@ArthurReutenauer User Experience is a horrifyingly complex and touchy field.
 
I think Andrew Stacey once suggested a question title like this, and I will probably ask for a canonical answer to how do I eat glue?. :)
 
7:42 PM
@SeanAllred I couldn’t agree more :-)
 
I wish @wipet were around to answer a Plain TeX question for me :(
@PauloCereda :O did he delete his profile? :(
I can't find him
 
@SeanAllred Andrew? Oh no, he's under other name.
 
@PauloCereda By the way, you'd have my upvote.
 
@SeanAllred awwww <3
 
@PauloCereda Oh, that's okay then :)
 
7:44 PM
@SeanAllred One of the things that irritates me most when discussing UI is people justifying dubious choices by the “principle of least surprise” where upon reflection it’s clear that the mean least surprise for them.
 
@Sean: actually, where's Andrew? His "new" profile seems lost too!
 
@ArthurReutenauer shakes violently That is the most annoying thing when talking to some UX folks.
 
@JosephWright: Did we lose Andrew?
 
@PauloCereda The case for the missing TeXpert!
 
@PauloCereda @SeanAllred That’s a lot better than other puns you could suggest on the name latex.
 
7:46 PM
@SeanAllred Which Andrew? Stacey? tex.stackexchange.com/users/86/loop-space
 
@TorbjørnT. Ah, that looks right :) I remember now
 
@TorbjørnT. Oh I forgot the space. Thanks. :)
 
@JosephWright @DavidCarlisle Without power supply, but this seems like new kernel business on first glance. Can you please have a look? latex-community.org/forum/…
 
@SeanAllred Yep. With principles like that I could tear apart all the packages I maintain and rewrite the user interface to my liking.
 
@ArthurReutenauer And then nobody would use it but you :)
At which point, you might as well not have written it
Which means more time for beer
problem solved
 
7:47 PM
@ArthurReutenauer Way better than my last pickup lines:
 
@PauloCereda Huh?
 
May 28 '13 at 15:47, by Paulo Cereda
me: are you a robust command?
girl: WHAT?!
me: because my heart is fragile for you. <3
girl: WHAT?!
3
:)
@JosephWright Mystery solved. :)
 
@PauloCereda Oh, that's good.
 
@SeanAllred Of course, that’s oneway to solve the problem.
 
@SeanAllred <3
 
7:48 PM
@PauloCereda I hope you didn’t forget to \protect in the end, though.
 
@ArthurReutenauer Uh-oh that's why it didn't work! :)
 
@ArthurReutenauer There's an innuendo in there, somewhere.
 
@PauloCereda The joke is by Mojca Miklavec originally, a long-term ConTeXt user, and my partner in crime for the hyph-utf8 packages.
 
@ArthurReutenauer ooh :)
I think Mojca helped me once in the tldoc mailing list; she helped me build poedit from source in my Mac. :)
 
@SeanAllred WHAT? That is really uncanny. I surely didn’t intend anything like that. I’m just talking about the need to \protect one’s macro.
@PauloCereda Sounds like her :-) Of course, puns on the name LaTeX are a godsend for tongue-in-cheek ConTeXt users.
 
7:54 PM
@ArthurReutenauer XD Whoops. :)
 
@SeanAllred wink wink
 
@ArthurReutenauer nudge nudge say no more
Then, all of a sudden, @JosephWright and @ChristianHupfer appear. :)
 
@PauloCereda Use \protected, it's better.
 
@egreg :)
 
@Johannes_B Same problem as on the MiKTeX list: needs a format rebuild
 
8:14 PM
@JosephWright Out of curiosity, why don't you have syntax highlighting on your blog?
(Also, your About page has a typo: If you ant you can)
 
@PauloCereda: You summoned your master? ;-)
 
8:39 PM
@ChristianHupfer :)
 
8:55 PM
@SeanAllred -- looks interesting; i've flagged it to read later. but one quibble ... in the first sentence you say tex is used by "physicians". well, i do know of a couple of physicians who do use it, but i'd have thought that "physicists" are more likely suspects. (two physicians have been published in tugboat; if you'd like the references, i'll look them up.)
 
@barbarabeeton XD must've been muscle memory – I work in healthcare IT :)
@barbarabeeton And that would actually be lovely :) Could be useful in the future
Once I'm settled in at this job, I'm going to push for using TeX as the PDF-export backend for our training materials CMS.
 
@barbarabeeton I got an email from someone in a school of medicine because of my TUGboat article. :)
 
9:11 PM
@PauloCereda :D
 
@SeanAllred True story. :)
 
@SeanAllred -- okay, references: three articles by dick nickalls; easiest to link from the cumulative tugboat "author" page and search for "nickalls", but this one has a very physicianly title: "TeX in the Operating Theatre: An anaesthesia application".
the second one is actually a reprint from the new england journal of medicine, and was not specifically about tex: "How to improve the chances for acceptance of your scientific paper"
 
@barbarabeeton Thank you!
@barbarabeeton Oh my, that second article goes way back :)
 
@SeanAllred -- yup. we'll pick up interesting bits from wherever we find them, and have done so for a loooong time!
 
@barbarabeeton I've been having a related conversation with a friend for a few weeks now. There is a lot of research out there (in our conversation, specific to graph theory) that simply falls by the wayside to relatively deaf ears. The sum of human knowledge is much more tangled in itself than most people think about or give it credit for. What's mildly interesting to one group of people may be significant for another.
Finding the right audience is just as important as finding the research you were meant to do.
 
9:26 PM
@SeanAllred -- the death of john nash reminded me of this. he received the nobel prize, which is quite unusual for a mathematician (there being no nobel prize for math), but he didn't receive a fields medal. only much later did his "strictly" mathematical work get recognized by the abel prize. as i've said many times, math has a long shelf life. what's seen as important now may dim, and what is now "ignored" may later become prominent. who can tell?
 
@barbarabeeton And I object to calling the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel a Nobel Prize ;-)
 
@barbarabeeton I would think there is always someone to keep the knowledge alive. Your quote of mathematics having a long shelf life is certainly very true, but it's easy for a work to be forgotten. I would bet there has been more than one 'great work' of science lost to time – perhaps rediscovered, perhaps not. I surely hope we can find out one day.
@barbarabeeton When I was a TA, I certainly introduced my students to a wide range of technologies, paradigms, and ideas in general, but I also tried to stress that none of these can last forever. The sun will set on each in time.
What matters for some is the answer to, "What comes next?".
 
@barbarabeeton Which actually makes it all the more curious than the Fields medal has such a strict age criterion.
 
Is anyone here good with floats?
 
@1010011010 i have pool noodles if that'll help
 
9:39 PM
@SeanAllred I was looking for a pun too ;-)
 
@SeanAllred Can I download some?
 
@1010011010 Not sure if I'm included in that group, but what's the issue?
 
@1010011010 En garde! thingiverse.com/thing:808648
 
@TorbjørnT. There's no issue, I just require some functionality. Is there a way to assign the height/depth of a float on page x to a dimen? Bonus points if I can also store the height/depth of the corresponding caption?
@SeanAllred The material looks really nice, actually.
 
@1010011010 Probably, but I don't know how I'm afraid.
 
9:50 PM
@Johannes_B ?
@1010011010 do you mean you want to assign the height of the float at the time it is set, and it happens to land on page x, or you want to assign the size because it lands on page x
 
@DavidCarlisle Uhhh, at first read I'd say neither.
 
@1010011010 well in that case I have no idea what your question means:-)
@egreg seen the cricket result?
 
I need to know of each page how much of it is occupied by float, so the float is placed on a page, then I need to extract the height and depth of the float stored in some register, dimen, whatever
Say a float is placed on page 5, and it has height and depth of 200pt, then I'd like to write to the aux file that the height and depth of the float on page 5 is 200pt
I only use a single float per page if that makes the situation easier (I suspect it does).
 
@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I was engaged in answering questions. Did England lose?
 
@1010011010 fltrace package puts all kinds of stuff in the log, you just want some of it in the aux, probably, although it depends also what you mean by height, typically the top float area includes stretch glue so actual size depends on teh column contents
 
9:59 PM
@DavidCarlisle Assume an empty column.
 
@egreg been out all day, just got in, but apparently it was close match, but England won
@1010011010 just modify this to output \ht\@tempboxa
\def \@cflt{%
    \let \@elt \@comflelt
    \setbox\@tempboxa \vbox{}%
    \@toplist
    \setbox\@outputbox \vbox{%
                             \boxmaxdepth \maxdepth
                             \unvbox\@tempboxa
                             \vskip -\floatsep
                             \topfigrule
                             \vskip \textfloatsep
                             \unvbox\@outputbox
                             }%
    \let\@elt\relax
    \xdef\@freelist{\@freelist\@toplist}%
    \global\let\@toplist\@empty
if it os a top float, there are similar commands that add floats to the bottom, area or float columns
 
Ah that seems what I needed, thanks
 
10:12 PM
@SeanAllred I just read your blog, your list of editors seems to be missing something:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Which?
emacs is on there – in the end, that's all that really matters. ;)
 
@SeanAllred oh actually I see you mention it later I was so distracted I read that bulleted list over and over again thinking I'd missed something:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Yes, I did that intentionally :) Just to confuse you! >:D But more seriously, drawing attention to traditionally programmer-specific (i.e. hard-to-learn) editors might make an unfavorable association.
 
 
1 hour later…
11:25 PM
@ArthurReutenauer Doing research for an article when I discover perhaps the most obscure inside joke in the opening paragraphs of one of your pieces:
> This program was written by a man, let us call him 高德纳. Oh, and we need a date, too, so let’s say 1978, thirty years ago.
 
Oh yes, I had forgotten about it.
 
That’s the Chinese name that Knuth found out for himself. I found it somewhere on his website.
 
Yep, I've read it before :)
That's how I recognized it
 
It transcribes as Gao Dena in pinyin, where the g is more like [k], and De pretty close to [do], actually.
So it’s a pretty good approximation of his name.
And of course in Chinese the last name comes first, and is usually only one syllable.
I should update that article some day.
 
11:31 PM
That's very interesting! I didn't know that about Chinese names. I did know that you were often called by your last name, but I didn't know the order swapped around (from my perspective).
 
11:49 PM
It’s the case for Japanese and Korean too, as well as Hungarian.
 

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