TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2011-11-11 (page 1 of 2)

Paulo Cereda

12:00 AM

@AlanMunn I'll try to visit a place like this. I love hiking.

Happy one year birthday, TeX.sx! :)

(This time is for real, right?)

@YiannisLazarides All in TeX? Impressive. :)

Yiannis Lazarides

@AlanMunn I started with a simpler page that had a nice black and white photo with hitler etc... hence the name:)

It would make for a good torture test for LaTeX 3 coffins! But this is all LaTeX2e

@Paulo yes! just finished it. I got a few pages like this trying to get a photo book class developed.

Paulo Cereda

Yiannis Lazarides

12:16 AM

@PauloCereda This looks good. Here, I added some more pages in the photo-book crocodoc.com/6uLSj95

Paulo Cereda

@YiannisLazarides Awesome. :) I like the layout. :)

Yiannis Lazarides

@PauloCereda Thanks! Not as god as your drawings:)

Paulo Cereda

@YiannisLazarides Thanks! I need to learn more. :)

@Yiannis: do you plan to upload this class to CTAN? :)

Yiannis Lazarides

@PauloCereda I am not too sure yet, it will need a bit more work, I want to try and use it for a while before uploading, I will post sections as answers when questions come up.

Paulo Cereda

@YiannisLazarides Ah I see. It's a great work. :)

Gonzalo Medina

12:32 AM

How many users there were here one year ago when the site went public?

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina Not too sure I joined maybe a month before that and it was a bit quite, I would say about 30% from what is now.

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina Let me check the Data explorer. :)

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides So the site started with a good number of users. I had expected that number to be smaller.

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina It is just a guess, it was advertized well on the main page, it seemed quite active from the beginning though.

Paulo Cereda

A quick look at the data explorer showed me the following:
- # of users registered in 2010: 1967
- # of users registered in 2011 (to dump date): 4961

Total: 6928 users. :)

Yiannis Lazarides

12:41 AM

@GonzaloMedina You good with Tex what you use it for?

@PauloCereda I was close with my guess:)

Paulo Cereda

@YiannisLazarides Indeed. :)

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides Nice layout! Although, if I might say, I don't like much the layout for the three figures on the last page. Perhaps they will look better if they were aligned? I don't really know, it's just my personal opinion.

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina I posted two links, you mean the one with the fun in america? It still needs a bit of work, but is a page spread, you need to view it two up.

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides Thanks. I use it for every document that I write. Exams for my students, papers, letters, presentations for my courses, my wife's CV...

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina Thanks! It is always interesting to hear how people use it.

Gonzalo Medina

12:49 AM

@YiannisLazarides Yes, that's the one. But, again, I was only making a comment based on my personal taste.

@PauloCereda Thanks, Paulo. And good work guessing, @YiannisLazarides!

Paulo Cereda

:)

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda I ran into an annoying problem today with my Mac. I had a bunch of pdf files whose names I needed to randomize for an experiment. The some of the file names were in Portuguese and had accented characters. When I did "ls > filelist.txt" in terminal, and then opened the file in TextWrangler, the accented characters were screwed up. I tried reopening the file with a different encoding, but that just made it worse. Do you have any ideas?

Canageek

1:17 AM

@AlanMunn Write a shell script that randomizes the names without putting them into a program?

@AlanMunn You could save each name to a variable, then rename the file using a random variable.

Alan Munn

@Canageek These are kind of killing a fly with a bazooka type solutions. With a such list and Excel I can randomize in two clicks. With a one regex I can convert the list into a tex document which includes each pdf into a single document. While I could do that with a script, I doubt it would be faster.

Canageek

@AlanMunn It also depends on how often you are going to be doing this, and how many files you have. If it is only a few, might I recemend the one, true way, the polyhedral die? #dndNerd

Alan Munn

@Canageek Yes, that's always the case. As for the polyhedral die, today I'd have needed a hexecontahedron.

Canageek

1:34 AM

@AlanMunn They make d100, though they are nearly unusable. Just use d% (ie 2d10) and reroll over 86. Then do this for a long time... ;)

@AlanMunn Does TextWrangler support UTF8?

Alan Munn

@Canageek Yes, and that's its default encoding. The issue seems to be what happens the output of the ls command.

Since I was in a hurry, I just changed the filenames to avoid the problem, but it's a bit odd.

Canageek

@AlanMunn Very odd. Oh, your a Mac user. Can't help.

Alan Munn

@Canageek Yes, that's ok. If Paulo comes back he may have some suggestions.

Canageek

@AlanMunn <Insert obligatory joke about uninstalling OS X here>

Alan Munn

@Canageek Heh heh. Don't worry I'll get to the bottom of this, and all will be right with the world. :-)

Joseph Wright

7:57 AM

Birthday party

4

egreg

8:07 AM

@JosephWright I've to go for a test; but by 9:45 UTC I should be free (and the students very busy). :) Let's party!

Martin Scharrer

Happy Birthday TeX.SX!

Schweinebacke

8:29 AM

@egreg: Many thanks for so often editing (and improving) my answers. I'm sorry, that my English is so insufficient, but hopping that it will become better while using it.

Martin Scharrer

8:40 AM

@JosephWright: We should have a birthday message, shouldn't we?

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer I guess so: anything in particular in mind?

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright No, just go ahead.

I'm still not feeling a 100% so I have trouble coming up with something in English :-)

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer A blog post?

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright No, I meant a system message on the site.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn (I'm really sorry for the delay) Alan, I had similar problems with my Mac terminal. My ideas: check if the "Wide glyphs for Japanese" (Japanese?! Yes...) option is ticked in the window settings, and if the encoding is set for "Unicode (UTF-8)". If everything fails, may I suggest a terminal app I've been using for some time? It's iTerm. That app is great, but again, I need to ensure UTF-8 is selected. >>

Martin Scharrer

8:51 AM

But a blog post isn't a bad idea either!

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn: Another way is to edit either ~./profile or ~/.bash_profile and add the following line export LC_ALL=’en_GB.UTF-8’ or other locale you use. You can list the available locales by typing locale -a.

Happy birthday!

/me does the birthday dance

We need to sing songs about typesetting!

Paulo Cereda

9:16 AM

Speaking of blog posts, mine is ready. When should I publish it?

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Go for it

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Now? :|

Err... isn't the announcement missing the 'year' word? /me blushes

Those fellows at Gaming.sx scare me:

22

Q: Can I permanently kill important people?

In Morrowind, it was possible to permanently kill NPCs who were involved in the main story. This would result in a message basically informing you that you had broken the word and to reload a save if you want to make progress. In Oblivion, this was changed so that important NPCs were "knocked o...

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda No, this makes sense in English ("I am 34" <=> "I am 34 years old")

Paulo Cereda

Ah sorry. :) Not even 8am here and my English skills already fail. :)

Brent.Longborough

@Paulo, whenever you ask yourself "is my English good enough?", never forget to ask yourself, at the same time, "is their Portuguese good enough?"

Martin Scharrer

9:30 AM

@JosephWright It reads funny for me as well, but my brain is still used too much to German grammar.

Paulo Cereda

@BrentLongborough Ah. :)

Brent.Longborough

@Martin: Do you find you think in a different manner when you think in English from when you think in German?

Martin Scharrer

@BrentLongborough Well, something I really think in English, which is actually a little strange

Brent.Longborough

@Martin: I don't think that's strange; but I find that when I'm thinking in my second language (Portuguese), not only are the words different (obviously), but that the actual ordering of the thoughts and logic is different, too.

Martin Scharrer

@BrentLongborough Could be, language should have a big influence on the thinking process.

Brent.Longborough

9:41 AM

@Martin: Yes, I think word order is significant in this.

Martin Scharrer

I once heard that the Russians are so good in math because their language is so complicated :-)

Brent.Longborough

BTW Happy Birthday, TeX.sX, and thanks for all the help!

@Martin: or is it that their language is so complicated because they're mathematicians??? (;->}

Paulo Cereda

@Martin: I tried to learn numbers in German. It went fine... while n < 10 . :)

Martin Scharrer

@PauloCereda Eins, zwei, drei, ...

egreg

@PauloCereda Then zehn, elf, zwölf, ..., zwanzig, ein und zwanzig, ... Ouch!

Martin Scharrer

9:53 AM

I learned Norwegian a little while working as an coop student in Norway. They change the pronunciation of "7" a lot! "7", "17", "70", "77", three different ways!

egreg

But there's always "four-twenty-seventeen" (in another language, of course).

Martin Scharrer

@egreg Oh yeh, I also hate it that the units digit comes before the tens.

123 => (ein-)hundert-drei-und-zwanzig

instead of hundert-zwanzig-und-drei or so

("drei" = 3, "zwanzig" = 20, "und" = "and")

egreg

@MartinScharrer It used to be the same in English, but they changed habit.

Martin Scharrer

@egreg Old-German and Old-English were very similar, indead.

egreg

@MartinScharrer Characters in Dickens's novels use "three and twenty". I also found it in Conan Doyle.

Martin Scharrer

9:57 AM

I hate it when Germans tell you phone numbers in 2-digit notation! You always have to skip and remember the current number and wait for the next!

drei .......... und-zwanzig!!!

ARG!

I then already typed 3!

egreg

@MartinScharrer It was worse with old telephones, those without a keyboard.

Paulo Cereda

"I will not buy this record. It is scratched." :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda :-)

Martin Scharrer

@PauloCereda: Here is another funny SX question: economics.stackexchange.com/questions/437/…

Brent.Longborough

@egreg: not to mention four-twenty-*and*-eleven

Paulo Cereda

10:11 AM

@MartinScharrer Oh my! Popcorn. :)

Brent.Longborough

@MartinScharrer: I hate the Anglo-Indian habit of using "double" and "triple" in phone numbers, as I have neither a double nor a triple key on my phone!

Martin Scharrer

@BrentLongborough Double-Oohh

In Ireland they write the 7 like in the computer font, we Germans always put a - in the downwards line. They then write a 1 as single line |, while we do really a short / followed by a |, which looks like an upright 7 for them!

I almost didn't got paid my first month income because of that!

N.N.

Happy birthday TeX-SX!

Brent.Longborough

@MartinScharrer: I learnt to cross my sevens a long time ago, don't remember where or how, but it still raises some eyebrows here in the UK.

Paulo Cereda

Ah I know a joke of crossing the seven, but it won't be funny in English. :P

Brent.Longborough

10:22 AM

@PauloCereda: Então conta em português..

As I live in Wales, I also cross the Severn

jonalv

/me finds himself needing \subsubsubsection. Should probably not write 2.3.1.1.1 in the margin... :/

Brent.Longborough

@jonalv: \paragraph ?

jonalv

yea, really need a small headline on top of the paragraph though and not on the same line I think. But that shouldn't be so difficutl I hope :)

Brent.Longborough

@jonalv: I have this awful tic: ~\\

Pig Cry

Happy birthday TeX-SX!

jonalv

10:28 AM

so why the "~" ?

Paulo Cereda

OK. :) It was a priest who told me this joke:
'Por que o número sete tem um risco no meio? A origem é bíblica. Moisés falou ao seu povo: "Amigos, recebi 10 mandamentos. Eu os lerei agora, de forma aleatória, para que vocês os conheçam." E começou a ler, aleatoriamente. "Número 1: não levantarás falso testemunho. Número 2: Honrarás pai e mãe..." E assim por diante. Ele estava quase terminando, quando disse, "Número 7. Não cobiçarás a mulher do próximo." O povo se entreolhou, até que alguém gritou para Moisés: "Moisés, RISCA O SETE!" ' :)

Brent.Longborough

@jonalv: to avoid "There's no line here to end"

jonalv

@BrentLongborough hm I am not sure I understand why we would get that. (ah there is tab complete for names, nice:)

Count Zero

@PauloCereda: nice one :D

Brent.Longborough

@PauloCereda: Let me help: "Moses reads the 10 commandments he's just received from God to his mates; #1 Thou shalt not bear false witness etc... ; gets to number 7 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife"; his mates look at each other, then someone at the back says "Moses, cross out the seven"...

Paulo Cereda

10:33 AM

@BrentLongborough Great! LOL

Yiannis Lazarides

Happy anniversary guys; to all that helped answer my questions a big thank. To all that up-voted my answers another big thanks you. To all the mods a bigger thank you:)

2

Paulo Cereda

5

egreg

@MartinScharrer Once I risked to be sent back to Italy when trying to enter the USA in Chicago: who wrote the expiry date on my passport didn't fully close the circle in the "9" of 2009 and the officer at the airport said he read a "4", so the passport had expired.

Yiannis Lazarides

@PauloCereda @MartinScharrer @BrentLongborough I always cross my sevens, are there people that don't?

Brent.Longborough

@jonalv: I think it's something to do with vertical mode vs horizontal. One of my many pontibus asinorum

@YiannisLazarides: The great majority in the UK. But then they're not keen on garlic, either, go figure (:-)

@YiannisLazarides Hear hear!

egreg

10:39 AM

@BrentLongborough pontes asinorum

Do you know what's the "real" pons asinorum?

Paulo Cereda

(12 people in chat)

Yiannis Lazarides

@BrentLongborough ... not to mention their lack of skills in coffee making! The arabs write their six like an uncrossed seven, the seven like a V so much for arabic numerals that came from India:)

Patrick

13 :)

Brent.Longborough

@egreg Isn't it Euclid's theorem about the base angles of an isosceles triangle being equal? BTW, Google Translate apologises for my rusty Latin, which I haven't used in anger for over fifty years...

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Oh my, that was close!

Brent.Longborough

10:43 AM

@YiannisLazarides Too right, I think the only people who make coffee worse than the Brits are the (North) Americans

jonalv

so, I know I have starred questions from time to time but why is it so difficult to view which ones I have starred? Am I just blind?

Paulo Cereda

@egreg: rep cap is close! :)

jonalv

(oh, also, how do I find my starred questions?:)

egreg

@PauloCereda Yes, but I managed to convince a higher rank officer that it would have been nonsense renewing the passport just for one month instead of the usual five years.

@BrentLongborough Oh, my Latin is about as rusty as yours. But I often talk about pons asinorum. Yes, it's the theorem on isosceles triangles. I usually talk to high school students about the proof by Pappus, which is a strike of genius.

jonalv

\o/ I found them. :)

Paulo Cereda

10:49 AM

@jonalv Go to your TeX profile and look for a "favorites" link.

Oh I wasn't fast enough. :P

Brent.Longborough

@egreg +1 for "higher rank

@egreg Is that the one where he just picks up the triangle and turns it over? I always thought that using 3D was cheating, myself.

Martin Scharrer

@egreg Wow, are these dates still written by hand?

egreg

@BrentLongborough Yes, but it doesn't really use 3D, just the fact that to compare two triangles you have to set a correspondence between their vertices, and you can choose whatever correspondence you want; the rotation is just a visual tool, but it's not necessary.

@MartinScharrer Don't tell me! Probably not any more.

Martin Scharrer

@egreg Now you need anyway a digital-enabled passport with your fingerprints to enter USA

Your old one will still be accepted, though, but new ones must have it.

But they take ALL your fingerprints anyway!

Brent.Longborough

@MartinScharrer (Blasphemy warning) Nothing wrong with writing by hand! TeX only comes second, after calligraphy!!!

Martin Scharrer

10:56 AM

A little crazy the Americans ...

Brent.Longborough

@MartinScharrer Thank God, I no longer need to visit "His Own Country"

Paulo Cereda

My handwriting looks like hieroglyphs. :P

Brent.Longborough

@PauloCereda Are you a doctor?

Martin Scharrer

@BrentLongborough lol

Paulo Cereda

@BrentLongborough Worse! I'm a computer guy! :)

Brent.Longborough

11:03 AM

@PauloCereda Me too!, but I like my handwriting, idiosyncratic but not illegible...

Gotta go walk the dog... C U later

Paulo Cereda

11:45 AM

New blog post:

Stack Exchange TeX Blog: Sheet music with LilyPond and Frescobaldi

Paulo Cereda on November 11, 2011

LilyPond is a music engraving software. According to the website, “it brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts.” I always rely on it every time I have to write a score. It’s quick, powerful and – of course – with a beautiful output.

Unfortunately, LilyPond is not so easy for the newbie when more features are needed. The advanced stuff might take a while to figure out what’s going on. Besides, not everybody is fond of a terminal window. Thankfully, there is Frescobaldi. This awesome software is is named after Girolamo Frescobaldi, an Italian musicia …

3

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Great post

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Thanks! :)

@JosephWright Sorry for the bad version of "Happy birthday". :P

Ant

12:00 PM

@PauloCereda I was already having difficulty pronouncing TeX.sx, and now you tell me that it has exactly two syllables?! :-)

Joseph Wright

@Ant I'd say "tech dot ess-ex"

Paulo Cereda

@Ant I have no idea how to pronounce it! :) I had to divide it, otherwise the metric of the song wouldn't match. :)

@Joseph: we'd love to hear a clarinet version of the song, please. :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda I'll see what I can do over the weekend :-)

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright yay, thanks!

Patrick

@PauloCereda Nice blog post. But isn't copyright law prohibiting the publication of this song? I got to leave, so I can't do any researches, but I vaguely remember this.

Joseph Wright

12:13 PM

Happy Birthday to You

"Happy Birthday to You", also known more simply as "Happy Birthday", is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person's birth. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records, "Happy Birthday to You" is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." The song's base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages., p. 17 The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which was written and composed by American siblings Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. Patty ...

Paulo Cereda

Uh-oh. I guess I need to change the song.

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda It's pure trolling, really, which is a shame

Copyright and licenses are a pain, but we are stuck with them.

8

Q: Using ConTeXt Commercially ...

This webpage, http://tex.loria.fr/formats/context/base/readme.pdf, and many others explicitly state that ConTeXt must not be used for some purposes; e.g. competing with Pragma ADE. However, the source code is GPL(ed), which explicitly states the exact opposite! What is the real usage policy of ...

context licensing

Paulo Cereda

12:39 PM

@JosephWright I'll come up with a new song, don't worry. :) (Unfortunately, I won't be here in the afternoon, but I'll handle it ASAP.)

doncherry

I'll post the "Show off your LaTeX skillz" question soon ... any last-minute suggestions, ideas, improvements?

18

A: Celebrating the birthday of our {TeX} site

Contest suggestion Show off your LaTeX skillz Show off the LaTeX knowledge you've gathered over the years, include things that a more-or-less everyday document can benefit from. two-page (A4 oder letter) document Should mainly be text, but content doesn't matter -- feel free to show the most ...

@PauloCereda Is it ok to use your pretty picture in the question?

Paulo Cereda

@doncherry Sure! Go ahead. :)

I'm still traumatized with copyright issues. :P

doncherry

b/c of happy birthday? yeah, that's really a silly one.

I just thought we could make the contest question CW so we don't have crazy amounts of rep assigned? Contestants will still get badges and the top ones prizes.

Paulo Cereda

Anyway, my next song will be awesome. :)

@doncherry Great idea.

doncherry

Alright. The Cthulu worshipping madman question is now the top-voted question, together with "CV templates" ... :D

I just typed in the title "Contest: Show Off Your LaTeX Skillz [TeX.sx birthday]" and got a system message "The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed." -- smart stackexchange!

jonalv

1:04 PM

@egreg forgot to write you name in my comment. But please see tex.stackexchange.com/questions/34469/… when you have a sec :)

egreg

@jonalv Look at the edited answer

Gonzalo Medina

In the main page there's this text: "TeX.sx is one today: come over to chat for the party!". Maybe the word "year" is missing?

doncherry

@GonzaloMedina see chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/41?m=2405081#2405081

But I agree there might be better wordings, e.g. "TeX.sx turns one today [...]"?

Gonzalo Medina

@doncherry ah. It can make sense, but I still feel that adding "year" could be better. But I don't know, I'm not a native English speaker.

and... where's the party?

egreg

1:24 PM

@GonzaloMedina It's here!

Joseph Wright

@GonzaloMedina Sigh - I've changed it

@egreg I've turned your 'answer' into a comment on tex.stackexchange.com/questions/34472/…: I hope this is okay

The mod powers bypass the length limit :-)

If you want it leaving as an answer, I can reverse this, of course

egreg

@JosephWright No problem; maybe you can also cut the first bit.

Martin Scharrer

I just figured how to do "Battlestar Galactica" corners (45degr cut): Just rotate it 45degr, clip it rectangular and then turn it back -45degr, then clip the extra space which got added.

Well, having a lower level clipping command for this would be of course better.

I maybe add one for rounded corners.

Joseph Wright

1:42 PM

@MartinScharrer The problem is that building them up is hard. Tikz does most things by combining low-level operations for that reason. That said, you just need to do the same as for a rectangular clip but work out the clip box (except for pdfTeX: there I guess some specials are needed - can be worked out of course).

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright BTW, should the XeTeX commands not also work for pdftex?

egreg

We have the 58th fanatic: Torbjørn T.

Andrew Stacey

@PauloCereda: So who's in the US? I see no copyright infringement.

Anyway, the Norwegian version of Happy Birthday is infinitely better than that lousy American one.

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Everything that is literal direct will work as a \pdfliteral. The only issue is those two content q instructions, as they are set up the driver to save the current position.

You'd probably want to use \pdfsave and \pdfrestore for the q and Q operations

By the way, the XeTeX code should work for dvipdfmx as well

I'll look at how Tikz does this

Count Zero

becoming fanatic on a TeX.SX birthday!... what a nice coincidence :)

Yiannis Lazarides

1:51 PM

@doncherry Suggestion the limit of 2 A4 pages should perhaps be modified. Firstly A4 is not a good typographical size; how many books do you see printed in A4? Secondly can I typeset it in tiny? You see what I mean?

Andrew Stacey

Hurra for deg som fyller ditt år!

«Hurra for deg som fyller ditt år!» er ein norsk fødselsdagssong skriven av Margrethe Munthe. Hurra for dig som fylder dit aar! Ja dig vil vi gratulere! Alle i ring omkring dig vi staar og se, nu vil vi marsjere, bukke, nikke, neie, snu os omkring, danse for dig med hop og spret og spring, Ønske dig av hjertet alle gode ting! Sig mig saa, hvad vil du mer! Høit vore flag vi svinger. Hurra! Ja, nu vil vi rigtig feste! Dagen er din, og dagen er bra, men du er den allerbedste! Se dig om i ringen, hvem du vil ta! dans en liten dans med den du helst vil ha! Vi vil allesammen svinge os saa glad...

doncherry

@YiannisLazarides Good point. So ... maximally 4 pages, any format? I chose A4/letter because I considered the normal format for academic papers.

Andrew Stacey

Formatting's lost ... bleugh. And I've just realised that that's the nynorsk version.

Yiannis Lazarides

@doncherry I think any reasonable format for what one submits. You might have someone wanting to submit a poster! I think maximally four pages is ok.

Ant

@JosephWright Ta - to be perfectly honest I don't think I've ever had occasion to pronounce it, I just liked the implications of the Lilypond syllable breaking. "When you sing it to your computer, the terminal should become slightly moist..."?

doncherry

1:57 PM

@YiannisLazarides I'll make it "max. three or four pages plus title page, ToC, LoF, index, etc."

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright LuaLaTeX seems the pdftex driver of graphics, which makes sense.

Yiannis Lazarides

@doncherry I think is fine! In any case if anyone runs out of space, they can increase the page size or decrease the size of the font:)

doncherry

0

Q: Contest: Show Off Your LaTeX Skillz [TeX.sx birthday]

What's going on? TeX.sx turned one on Nov. 11, 2011. This contest is part of our celebrations. This question doesn't meet the normal question form requirements on this site, but it is considered an exception, and was approved of on meta. What's the task? Show off the LaTeX knowledge you've g...

typography decorations fun

Suggestions still welcome.

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Yes: for the LaTeX3 drivers, we've called this pdfmode to make that clearer

doncherry

@Mods. Could you make this question CW please?

Joseph Wright

2:07 PM

@doncherry Done

doncherry

@JosephWright Thanks.

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright: I just added clipping support to the XeTeX driver of graphics. However, currently it calls an internal macro of adjustbox, but this could be moved to the driver.

Andrew Stacey

@doncherry: I think that you should discourage comments on the actual question itself. If there are any, they're likely to be fairly irrelevant. Either direct comments here (chat) or to a meta question (either that original one or a new one (if so, start it yourself)).

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright I might post something under our two names on comp.text.tex

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Fine with me

Martin Scharrer

2:12 PM

@JosephWright: Thanks. I'm just going over your recent changes. Is content q closed by a literal direct Q correct?

doncherry

@AndrewStacey Good idea, done :)

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Bear with me a while. I've worked out the PDF mode case without using the primitive xform stuff, and wonder if there is further implication available for the XeTeX driver!

doncherry

Is there anything like the meta-tag featured for the main site, and if so, would it be appropriate for the contest?

Joseph Wright

It seems that the pdfTeX case is easy to handle without xforms:

\setbox<box>=\hbox{%
  \pdfsave
    \pdfliteral{<as before> re }%
    \pdfliteral{W }%
    \pdfliteral{n }%
    \usebox<box>
  \pdfrestore
}

@MartinScharrer Yes, you have to match q and Q operators

There is a matched pair 'hidden' in the content business

The pdfTeX code does not work with XeTeX when you convert the specials: very odd!

You'd use the pdfTeX code here for an arbitrary clip, as opposed to a rectangle: I may go with this for LaTeX3 as it's more general

(The content q stuff is about cancelling the 'hidden' Q, so the layer is set up appropriately)

I should add that all of these literals can be run together unless some TeX intervenes: I've kept them separate for ease of reading

Torbjørn T.

2:31 PM

@AndrewStacey While it is the nynorsk Wikipedia, the lyrics aren't nynorsk, but probably the original, as the language is older, more akin to Danish. Anyway, on the bokmål Wikipedia, to which there is a link in the left margin of the page, you'll find a bokmål version.

Martin Scharrer

2:56 PM

@JosephWright I was just asking about hte content vs. literal direct

Google groups is funny: "Found the following email addresses: Gin@base.bb"

@JosephWright: groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.text.tex/pOR3Zv39TUA

@JosephWright Thanks! Say, could the W n not just added to the first \pdfliteral?

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Yes, as I said I've separated them out for readability

I'm reading the pdfTeX manual on \pdfliteral to see why there is a difference in behaviour in transformations. It seems it'd deliberate (and welcome!)

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright Ah, sorry, I overlooked that.

@JosephWright Yes, indeed, I like the pdftex behaviour much more than the one of xetex

Joseph Wright

@MartinScharrer Most PostScript-generating routines do a similar thing (so each moveto and lineto has a line on its own)

@MartinScharrer The manual has a lot to say about it. You can put stuff at the page orgin, apparently. I'm going to try it out for future reference!

wh1t3

3:21 PM

Happy birthday guys! :)

and gals

egreg

3:44 PM

Hi lockstep!

How's the weather in Vienna?

lockstep

@egreg Sunny (during the day), but rather cold. Seems appropriate that the Christmas markets open tomorrow.

egreg

@lockstep I want to come to Vienna, but this is not the right season. It would be because of the Christmas markets, but not for the bike. :(

lockstep

@egreg If your trip to Vienna gets closer, notify me.

Werner

@lockstep Christmas sales here in Canada start shortly after the Canadian Thanksgiving (2nd Monday of October)... so around beginning November.

We're not even out of the "pumpkin woods" just yet, and the bells start ringing for Christmas sales!

egreg

@lockstep I will.

lockstep

3:54 PM

@Werner Congratulations for reaching 20k -- you're the 14th trusted user.

Werner

@lockstep Thanks! Just today!

I'm low on the trusted totem pole.

...at the bottom today... ;)

@lockstep: You were also the first recipient of the Reviewer badge yesterday, right?

I just figured out how that works.

egreg

@Werner Great!

lockstep

@Werner Indeed. :-) But it worked only because I had in fact reviewed many questions before and upvoted a lot of them -- I basically "re-reviewed" them yesterday.

The "Review" page is indeed much more useful than before, now that already-reviewed posts are hidden.

Werner

@lockstep Yes. I always browsed through the review section, but never clicked the "review question" or "review answer" button. My tally was always zero. :-|

egreg

Also Ulrike became a trusted user! Paulo you should send your credit card number also to her. And, of course, to Werner!

Werner

4:02 PM

@lockstep Yes. Also, it randomizes the available/listed reviews.

lockstep

@Werner You can turn off randomizing.

Werner

@egreg That's what trust is all about! :)

@lockstep Ahhh... found it.

egreg

@Werner Yes, we all have Paulo's number.

But where is he when we need him?

Werner

@egreg I'll wait for that in the mail then. ;)

@egreg He's probably doing up another graphic for the LaTeX Skillz/Pizzaz "tournament". :D

lockstep

7:38 PM

@doncherry And they both have a score of 99. Which of them will become tex.sx's first "Great Question"?

Gonzalo Medina

7:50 PM

Hi, @YiannisLazarides

Sony

Song Sung Blue, Everybody Knows one!

TeXShop LaTeX Template contains the following DeclareGraphicsRule.

\DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png}

(Those who wish to know what this means can read Matthew Leingang's answer to this question. http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4979/convert-gif-image-to-png-on-the-fly)

There are 20 posts containing "tiff" in Graphic Design SX. Apparently, print designers use tiff files.

I searched TeX.SX for the word ".tif". There are 10 posts containing ".tif" None of them, possibly except one, asking a q…

Yiannis Lazarides

@Gonzalo Hi! Just visiting to see how the party is going!

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides: no idea about the party. Are you going to participate in the contest?

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina I am thinking about it. I don't like the format too much, but I think is a good idea.

@GonzaloMedina How about you?

Gonzalo Medina

@Sony since .tiff is not natively recognized, images in that format need to be converted to a valid format (.png for example).

Sony

7:56 PM

@Gonzalo ... But, do a lot of TeX people use .tif files?

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides I think it's a relly nice format with a lot of potential. No I don't think so... I don't have anything really worthy to show and don't have time to start doing something from scratch.

@Sony No idea. I've never used .tif files, but I can't speak for other people.

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina It shouldn't need too much work, I have an idea for you:) There was a post of mine where I recommended to use the grid package for lecture notes, it seems it hit a cord, why don't you write a small package for setting it up for lecture notes? I am thinking to write something about special page layouts.

Alan Munn

@YiannisLazarides You could post your hitler.pdf. (Perhaps with a changed name.)

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides Sounds interesting. What do you have in mind with "setting it up for lectures notes"? (Just a general idea).

Yiannis Lazarides

@AlanMunn Hehe! I already changed the name:) although it is quite memorable!

Gonzalo Medina

8:06 PM

@AlanMunn Yes, I told him to do so too. Are you too going to participate in the contest, Alan?

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina I was thinking you will have to define a couple of environments, and add a few definitions for exercises, answers etc, class name, assignment, date etc, mostly to preset it for the user.

Alan Munn

I think I'm like you. I'm quite utilitarian in my use of LaTeX; I use it every day, but for very practical things. Just yesterday I generated slides for an experiment. It allowed my to quickly produce a series of pictures and create a randomized order. But it's not pretty, just useful.

And the main class file I maintain is a thesis class for my university. I'm proud of the class, but the formatting requirements of the university are awful.

Yiannis Lazarides

@AlanMunn I use LaTeX for mostly reports. My interest lately in picture layouts is that I am trying to automate some drudgery work for Operating and Maintenance Manuals.

Gonzalo Medina

@YiannisLazarides: I see. It sounds doable and I like the idea; I'll think about it.

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina I am glad you liked it, go for it. I think the value of the competition would be to get a good number of participants and not who is going to win it (probably someone with a TikZ submission).

Gonzalo Medina

8:17 PM

@YiannisLazarides hehe... yes, the "TikZers" are probably going to wow the audience.

Alan Munn

@YiannisLazarides Yes, tikz has such sex appeal. It's by far the most popular tag in terms of votes, I would bet.

Gonzalo Medina

By the way, a quick question: how do you @AlanMunn and @YiannisLazarides pronounce TikZ?

Yiannis Lazarides

@GonzaloMedina @AlanMunn Can't get my head to grasp it fully yet. I pronounce it teek zet:) It is a great package.

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina I pronounce it "tick zee". I noticed that Stefan pronounced it "ticks" in his TUG presentation. (Ironically, (because I'm Canadian, and we don't say 'zee' in other contexts I say "zed" for "z", but that sounds odd in this context for some reason.)

Gonzalo Medina

Well, and I pronounce it something like "teek zeta"...

Alan Munn

8:23 PM

@GonzaloMedina Not to be confused with tzatziki :-)

Gonzalo Medina

@AlanMunn :-)

It's the first time I don't see @PauloCereda here.

What's the correct procedure with a duplicate question once it has been acknowledged as such by the OP? I always vote to close it, indicating the duplicate, but should the question also be flagged?

lockstep

@GonzaloMedina IMO, flagging is superfluous if you have enough reputation to cast a closing vote.

Canageek

8:38 PM

Happy birthday to TeX.SX!

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina I don't usually bother to flag unless there's something urgent. It will generate close votes fairly quickly.

Gonzalo Medina

Makes sense. Thank you @lockstep and @AlanMunn.

lockstep

Here's a question where the added table-of-contents tag will (hopefully) prevent duplicate questions:

1

Q: How to use a longtable with only one entry in the list of tables

I'm using longtable to spread my table over three pages. Unfortunately the caption is also added three times to the list of tables. Is is possible to have it displayed only once?

table-of-contents captions longtable

Gonzalo Medina

And what about you, @lockstep? Are you going to participate in the contest?

(I'm talkative today)

lockstep

@GonzaloMedina Good question. :-) I'm fairly obsessive with regard to micro-typography and things like line spacing and margins, but my layout changes aren't of the "added pizzazz" type, so to speak.

Canageek

8:52 PM

@lockstep microtype is evil; Now I notice all the books I have that aren't set using margin expansion and such.

ONE MORE VOTE

dances around in glee

One more vote and I will be the first person to get a 100 vote question on TeX.SX

Also I have another 'How do I make this prop' question, but it isn't as hard to crazy. I still expect to see some cool answers though.

lockstep

@Canageek Ahem ... no. Sorry. Otis earned the very first "Great Question" badge only half an our ago.

Canageek

@lockstep Damn. Congrats to him though! @Otis Congrats.

@lockstep Well, I'm still going to be asking if a censorship package exists.

lockstep

@Canageek As your "Cthulhu" question has gained upvotes and stars (for being favourited) much faster, it is still possible that you'll earn the very first "Stellar Question" badge.

Canageek

@lockstep I do think my idea of 'How would I create a D&D character sheet in LaTeX might be too specific though'

@lockstep I view myself as having gotten lucky more then earning it, so I'm planning on dumping some reputation into bounties as soon as I can find a question people can't answer off the top of their head.

Alan Munn

@Canageek ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚❚

Canageek

9:01 PM

@lockstep So as to give it to those who have actually earned it

@AlanMunn @lockstep Actually the only thing I'm annoyed about is that it made the front page of Metafilter, my favourite website, and I missed it.

Gonzalo Medina

@Canageek ctan.org/pkg/censor

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina That's what I just said. :-)

Canageek

Well, that was easy. blink I was NOT expecting this to already exist

I need to stop asking such things in here, so that I can upvote you people :P

@GonzaloMedina @AlanMunn Now I have to ask the HARD version of the question involving randomization.

Alan Munn

@Canageek Which question are you talking about?

Canageek

@AlanMunn The one I'm planning for when I have time to make props again.

Stefan Kottwitz

9:15 PM

Hi Paulo!

Paulo Cereda

Hi @Stefan!

Sorry guys, I had a busy afternoon. :)

What did I miss?

@Gonzalo: I'm back! :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda How about some candles around the {TeX} logo for the blog ;-)

for a birthday post which somebody might still write ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz Sure! I'll work on it!

BTW, I have a nice replacement song!

Stefan Kottwitz

I guess time was too short and we haven't got confirmation for SE prizes for contests yet

anyway announcing something?

with prizes yet to decide, if at all?

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Well we were comparing pronunciations of "tikz". As of now, I think we have as many pronunciations as people who responded.

Paulo Cereda

9:25 PM

@AlanMunn Cool! Mine would be "Tick!"

I mean, Ticks!

lockstep

Only one vote to close missing:

0

Q: Multiple 'List of Tables' entry for single threeparttablex type table that spans multiple pages

I have a single table that spans three pages using threeparttablex/longtable. The table: \begin{ThreePartTable} \begin{TableNotes} %Items here \end{TableNotes} \begin{longtable}{} \caption{Caption Text} \endhead \endfoot \endlastfoot %Table information here. \la...

tables table-of-contents longtable

Stefan Kottwitz

@lockstep closed

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda and @AlanMunn So now we have #pronunciations=#(people who responded)-1?

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina Yes. We have two votes for "ticks" I think.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda Which song?

Paulo Cereda

9:36 PM

@GonzaloMedina Give me a minute, you'll see it. :)

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda (clock ticking)

Hi, @AndrewStacey.

Alan Munn

@AndrewStacey In case you haven't checked, there's a proposed edit to one of your answers by a new user. It looks reasonable, but I think most of us who saw it thought it would be best for you to approve it or not.

Andrew Stacey

@TorbjørnT: A-ha! Thanks. What we really want is the music because we keep singing it every time we go to a birthday party, but we never get it right, so we want to practise a little.

@AlanMunn Looked okay so I approved it (Thanks for telling me - I often skip checking that). Though if the nodes have large amounts of text then the routine would need some serious tweaking to cope with spacing them out correctly.

Andrew Stacey

9:53 PM

@GonzaloMedina: That's a new spelling of my name! (I've corrected it now)

Gonzalo Medina

@AndrewStacey I'm terribly sorry! How did I spell it? and where did I misspelled it?

Andrew Stacey

@GonzaloMedina It was in your answer on the arrow in the equation where you used the \tikzmark macro. You spelled it "Staycey", which isn't too bad!

I see that Gaming are trying once again to steal our thunder and have their own party today (blog.stackexchange.com)

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