@AlanMunn -- re the "do it for me" question, apologies for getting carried away. i should have commented here, if at all. i agree with you that "do it for me" is the real bottom line, which we don't answer.
A quick question hopefully: I think I bought a new mac. I installed MacTeX (full version) and it was all good. Except somehow smflatex package is not installed.
I remember this working off the box. So I am not sure what has changed.
I'd be happy if you guys have thoughts... I can post to the main site too if this is not too obvious.
I tried the following fix too: tlmgr install smflatex
TeX Live 2016 is frozen forever and will no
longer be updated. This happens in preparation for a new release.
If you're interested in helping to pretest the new release (when
pretests are available), please read tug.org/texlive/pretest.html.
Otherwise, just wait, and the new release will be ready in due time.
tlmgr: package repository ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet (verified)
tlmgr install: package smflatex not present in repository.
tlmgr: action install returned an error; continuing.
@kan smflatex is part of MiKTeX but not part of TeXLive (probably because of licence issues). So you will need to manually install it in your local texmf folder instead.
@kan If you haven't already got a local texmf folder, you will need to create one. It should be located in ~/Library/texmf and needs to have various subdirectories. The .cls and .sty files go into ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/smflatex. The .bst files need to go into ~/Library/texmf/bibtex/bst/smflatex. Finally if you compile the .tex files you can put them in ~/Library/texmf/doc/smflatex and they will be found by texdoc. See tex.stackexchange.com/q/8357/2693 for more.
@egreg thanks for the kind remarks. There is no way to have a variable scope set to the package itself? I mean: I had to do the global assignments because I set values in a function and get in another one (I need to go global then, right, since the variable is set in another group?). Also: I'm really struggling with consistent spacing as I feel there's no suitable IDE for either expl3 or l2. @DavidCarlisle is emacs better in this way?
@ChristianHupfer no, but since you were complaining, I'd guess I'll remove you and cite DEK which certainly has taught something to me :)
@Moriambar Remember that scope in TeX has nothing to do with macros: \def\foo{\def\baz{a}}\foo\show\baz to see this.
@Moriambar Scopes are created by \begingroup/\endgroup or { ... }, so most of the time local variables are what you want. Packages are just collections of macros, so there is no such thing as 'only within a package'.
@JosephWright thanks. I think I'll need to rework some code. Next version will be focused on that
@JosephWright incidentally: any suggestions about an IDE (if such exists)? I'm using TeXworks, it works but it's clear it's not created for programming with LaTeX
@JosephWright I agree with you when one has to write down documents. Regarding the code it would be nice to have automatic brace pairing and auto-indenting, a common feature of most IDEs for normal mainstream programming languages
@JosephWright I do not request autocompletion/Intellisense regarding variable, I think it would be too much to ask for such things as LaTeX
@JosephWright I agree with you on that: I had the same problem with LyX. Started using the common tools, ended up writing LaTeX code. But that is for document, that is different :)
@Moriambar I haven't looked at the code but " I had to do the global assignments because I set values in a function and get in another one" different functions doesn't necessarily imply they are in different groups, although of course your function bodies may include a group, in which case they may be...
@Moriambar there have been a couple of attempts at l3 modes for emacs I'm not sure of the current state, I don't do any serious l3 programming at the moment so I just use the standard tex mode (auctex)
@cfr Likely one for Frank (as he/Chris wrote NFSS): other than 'case' the general feeling has been that the axes are relatively sensible at present (and 'case' is tricky as it's partly handled at the input level).
@cfr Possibly a model closer to OpenType attributes might be more appropriate nowadays, of course: one issue is the 'L3 in 2e' business, i.e. whether to entirely break existing docs
@cfr I'm sure @egreg and @DavidCarlisle have some views on this: probably one to raise on LaTeX-L (ages ago Will did convert the existing code to expl3 but changed some stuff and I suspect we need to do it from scratch)
@daleif but what you want is a version of r that has an end-delimiter without a start so you don't need the . but r{}; doesn't work. So I think the answer is no, unless @egreg or @JosephWright have a suggestion
@JosephWright I actually read the manual just now before replying to @daleif to check the syntax for r, but read r and R then stopped before getting to u...
@AlanMunn -- most (not all) comments deleted. i left a couple of early ones, one of them really off topic, but silly -- mild grumble about time zone (dis)advantages.
@cfr small caps has been an issue from the start. We did half consider having an additional axis lowercase/caps-and-smallcaps/uppercase but adding an additional axis massively increased the amount of data that would need to be saved for each family and complicated the substitution rules that needed to be set up given that (at the time) most families couldn't fill most slots. it's true that now there are more fonts available, and more tex memory available to handle them....
@JosephWright to be had --- I'm quite sure this is the first time I see it used by a Briton :-)
btw, many people are travelling to TUG this week, right? I suppose @barbarabeeton @JosephWright @DavidCarlisle and surely others. Well, have a good journey!
@JosephWright I expect it would be that a properly designed format would have abstracted such things away in advance so changing the primitive should affect only a few core developers and not impact end users.
@yo' -- not a bicycle. actually, we'll be meeting him at the frankfurt airport and will be on the same plane from there. he's been to bachotex before, so we're counting on him to keep from getting lost.
@egreg The problem came to me with vectors. lol I think making them bold is the best option. But then that makes variables upright not italic, against standards
@CarLaTeX Well to be fair, I think they mean a detailed document dealing with those specific problems. And the TikZ manual itself isn't very helpful when it comes to tree drawing.
@Moriambar Emacs is one huge collection of tricks. It will also be frustrating, but in the end it is one of the most powerful editing tools. One word of advise, when you get the hang of it don't wait several years before learning making your own macros in it. Took me way too long before I got started writing my own editing macros.
A strange question a user gave me a few weeks ago: is it possible to move a footnote to the next page? It can be broken, but can it actually be moved to the next page? The user is designing l-h spreads with a lot of footnotes on the left hand page.
@Moriambar One thing you have to remember using emacs: It could take over your coffee machine and have the coffee ready and done the moment your alarm clock goes off in the morning.
@Moriambar well, for our new user I don't recommend using Emacs, because as a beginner it is a scary unforgiving tool. But as I do most of my work editing what others have written, I still wonder why other editors still haven't copied a lot of the features from Emacs and extensions like auctex.
@Johannes_B nice. But I just need a simple text editor, that resembles as much as possible an IDE for editing my package.
@daleif as I said, I don't need some witchery trick, but I find both TeXShop and TeXworks lacking what I think it's necessary in an IDE. As long as I edit text they're fine, but when I write packages I get frustrated and messy if I don't have an IDE (tells the person who's written all of his graduation work in C using nano)
@Moriambar -- emacs has an excellent built-in tutorial. that's how i learned. with a pencil and paper at hand to make notes (which i didn't need after a week or so) it was practically painless.
@Moriambar I'd like to learn them both (emacs and vim) and then decide which is better. I started with emacs, I'm at a very beginner's level, of course, but if I managed to use it I'm sure you will without problems!
@egreg hehe. Any suggestions on the question I posted earlier. I'm guessing splitting the footnote into mark and text and using after page on the later might work.
@CarLaTeX well, I think that vim requires a lot of time. It may payoff, but I've no such large amount of time. First impression with aquamacs: syntax highlighting sucks, I don't understand a thing. But seems to keep good spacing :)
@daleif I don't use the dtx format
@barbarabeeton Great, thanks. I'll look into it. It seems nice, except the syntax highlighting for l3. @egreg do you know how to do something about it?
@egreg Ahhhh. Ok. I was about to say, is there a type of book that isn't improved by footnotes? Even the bible I had when I still went to church had them.
@Moriambar I'm a Windows user, hence I don't have acquamacs. I chose a dark theme and the highlighting is delicate (I have some problems with my eyes and the bright light annoys me...)
@Moriambar Step 1) Light your computer on fire. Step 2) Wash the ashes in holy water. Step 3) Scatter the ashes to the four winds. Step 4) Get a PC and install Mac or Linux.
Or just run emacs from the command line and see what happens
@DavidCarlisle yes for many reasons, but mainly because unfortunately I'm a programmer and unfortunately on a win machine for work. That combination has become a second nature. What is "C"? certainly not "capital C". I'll see the rest later
@JosephWright Having a disagreement with my boss. He wants to shortten Angewandte Chem. Int. Ed. to Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., but Angewandte isn't in ISO 4. (Ditto Inoganica Chimica Acta)
@Moriambar For what it's worth, what I thought would be useful for an Emacs beginner (about a decade ago): stackoverflow.com/questions/311221/… -- I guess I forgot the first part, the notation that "C-h" means "hold control key and press h" etc. (That's what the tutorial you get with C-h t starts with though.)
@TorbjørnT. That is unpractical for several reasons: I type ~90% of my text in Italian for example. Even at work I have to comment in Italian every line of code. And I used an Italian layout for the latest 30+ years. Besides: alt+shift+è is not that complicated. You do that with one hand. I think an editor fails if I have to change my layout to make the most of it
@JosephWright Using things that everyone just knows makes it harder when programming things (as I'm sure you know), whereas if everyone just had a giant list or formula you could just all code against that, write regex on that, etc
@Moriambar Right, depends on use case. I probably write more English than Norwegian, in fact. But I also have Caps Lock mapped to switch keyboard layout, so switching between the two is quick and easy.
@Canageek What are you doing with Acta Cryst.? The 'official' line is to have extremely long names, but most people would just go with Acta Cryst. A and so on
@Moriambar You can definitely have Emacs do absolutely anything on any keystroke :-) You can hit Esc X (or Alt+x) followed by global-set-key, then the key you want (for typing brace) and then some command that will insert brace, and then it will stick (till you quit Emacs). You can save this and put it in your session for later. Look at the superuser link that @DavidCarlisle gave you; that will probably help.
@Moriambar Control ≠ Command on a Mac. If you're using Acquamacs you can configure which keys do Meta by language and what the Option key does (either Meta or composed characters).
@Canageek I meant something like a thesis or report: for publication you do have to go with the standard. You'll get away with what you like for Acta but you will have to go withAngew. for Angewandte
@Moriambar Ah, ok. No, this is not how Aquamacs does things. This allows the Command key combinations to interact with the program and the OS as they normally would.
@Moriambar Yes and no. This way you can interact with Acquamacs like a regular Mac program, using Cmd-O for open, Cmd-W for close etc. If Cmd were mapped to control then none of this would work that way. (Since Control-O ≠ Open in Emacs).
@JosephWright really, citations need to be overhauled. Why does it still list city of publication? What if the book is POD? What about books that have multiple cities of publication?
@Canageek Journal referencing styles go back along way: I wonder how you react to stuff from the 19th century :) (Fewer journal => very informal abbreviations)
@Canageek Well I'd say 'not really': as the versions-of-record are printed and don't bear a DOI, you have to be able to look them up the same way you always could, by hand
@Canageek Part of the fun: looking stuff up in print was more enjoyable than electronically (and you sometimes found stuff by accident that was useful)
@JosephWright I've mixed feelings about this. On one hand, we already have a redundant amount of information there. You don't need author for example. All you need for a full citation is journal, volume, page number. That is a unique identifier. Database term is a key I think, been a while.
@Canageek Yes, but there's also the business that when looking over a ref. list it's handy to be able to see what is cited (look for 'key' papers, etc.)
What is it called when experts think they only know a small part of a topic and amateurs think they know almost all of a topic?
