TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2015-10-31

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2:50 AM

any one know what exit code 256 from tex4ht is supposed to mean? I am getting this error

tex4ht.c (2012-07-25-19:36 kpathsea)
tex4ht -cunihtf
  -utf8
  KERNEL
(/usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/tex4ht/base/unix/tex4ht.env)
--- error --- Improper dvi file
Make4ht: Fatal error. Command tex4ht returned exit code 256

It happens only on this one large latex file. It used to compile ok before. I'll try to debug it, but it is a very large file and will take me long time to find why the DVI file generated by tex4ht is not valid. I am using TL 2015 on linux. Will see what I can find more...

3:33 AM

I found the problem. It was an option used with make4ht. For some reason, when using the option --lua with make4ht on this one file, it gives the above error. I removed this option, and now it compiles with no error. Just in case someone googles this error. This is what I had before:

make4ht --lua -u -c ~/nma.cfg -e ~/main.mk4 foo.tex ...more options -d folder

changed it to

make4ht -u -c ~/nma.cfg -e ~/main.mk4 foo.tex ...more options -d folder

and now it compiles !

5 hours later…

8:57 AM

Just arriving in Oxford

@JosephWright leaving home in a minute:-)

@JosephWright but today's real news: souldern.org

9:57 AM

@DavidCarlisle :-)

!
@JosephWright on bus

@DavidCarlisle Great: I'm at Trinity. Kaveh is looking for a VGA cable :-)

10:08 AM

@Nasser can you post the source somewhere? or better, a mwe? :)

3 hours later…

12:58 PM

this note was sent to the typo-l discussion list: "Typo news of the day: Grant application rejected over choice of font". you can read the whole thing here in a posting on the *nature* web site: http://www.nature.com/news/grant-application-rejected-over-choice-of-font-1.18686
in that article, there's also a link to an article about the earlier kerfuffle over "word vs. latex". oh, dear!

@barbarabeeton oh, goodness.

@barbarabeeton oh my!

@yo' and @Paulo -- you guys be very careful about following instructions when submitting grant applications! please!

@barbarabeeton I know. Well, another thing is: recently many grant applications force you to use their system. It's no fun typing math in a HTML form with only basic formatting ...

@yo' -- math in html!?! not even mathml? that's ugly, cruel and unusual punishment. can you maybe insert an image? i think most of the granting agencies in the u.s. permit submission of pdf files.

1:08 PM

@barbarabeeton well, you usually can submit a PDF file with the scientific proposal, but sometimes you want math in the other parts like logistics or planning, and that gets tougher.

Btw, it's the reformation day today, so I'm getting ready for tomorrow's service:

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (with words)

@egreg @Paulo (I s'pose Catholics don't sing this one :-P )

@yo' -- a couple of days ago, on the radio, they were playing a recording of mendelssohn's reformation symphony. i've always enjoyed that, though it doesn't seem to be performed as much now as it was when i was young. (and it reminded me that when i was asking the difference between "berg" and "burg", i really should have known the meaning of the latter ... "ein feste burg ...".)

@barbarabeeton I had to look up Berg, and this is amusing :) I of course know what does Burg mean, parly because of the names of Czech castles, partly because of the song; in Czech it starts with Hrad přepevný -- "A fortress super-strong"

@barbarabeeton I will. :)

@yo' I can't remember it. :)

@PauloCereda :p

1:24 PM

@yo' Not with Luther's words.

@yo' -- in the u.s., "burg" is associated with towns and cities, like pittsburgh. it's also confused (?) with "borough" (i really have to look up the etymology to determine the relationship between those two). i think there was originally a fort where the city of pittsburgh is now, but most of the "boro"s were never anything else but towns. "burg" is also u.s. slang, as in "what burg did you come from?", implying a place small and insignificant.

Personally, I prefer a very skillful Word user rather than a bad LaTeX user. :) A lot of people just want to finish their texts at all costs, so they simply don't care about the potential underlying spaghetti code they might come up with, as long as the final result looks as they want. It is more acceptable for them to stick with a WYSIWYG approach rather than make them in control of every aspect of their documents. It is a sad truth. I believe using Word for people who is not committed to good TeX practices is the lesser of two evils; a bad TeX code is just as wrong IMHO. :) — Paulo Cereda 45 mins ago

Had to say it. :)

@yo' And no, we don't celebrate Reformation's Day. :)

@egreg We have all saints! :)

Oh no, I have to sing the litany again!

:)

@PauloCereda -- and that gives us the occasion to celebrate hallowe'en.

1:27 PM

@egreg ah you mean the Bach's one ? Because there is a melody by Luther, too

@barbarabeeton yay!

Which reminds me of this jewel:

@barbarabeeton AFAIK, burgh and borough has been interchanged in some Scottish towns...

When I asked what would be a perfect TeX-related Halloween costume:

Oct 30 '11 at 13:52, by Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Tape yourself to your date and go as a bad kern.

3

@yo' The melodies usually predate Luther time. Some of the texts were translated from Latin, for instance “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” that's the Latin “Salve, caput cruentatum”.

@egreg you mean the melody in the youtube vid I posted?

1:31 PM

@yo' That is Luther's, no chance it's sung in catholic churches.

@egreg and that's what I mean :-)

@yo' -- there's irony in mendelssohn's choice of theme for the symphony ... mendelssohn came from a jewish family, but was forced to convert to christianity, probably in order to be able to make a living as a musician.

I like the code reduction capability of tikz foreach to arrange all figures in a loop, instead of opening 8 subfigures. Why not use it if \captionof is possible — fmetz 42 mins ago

I don't seem to be getting the point.

4 hours later…

6:09 PM

My avast anti virus says a Tex file is infected. Anyone seen this before? I really think it's false positive

tif22pnm.exe

6:42 PM

back from UKTUG

@DavidCarlisle Indeed

@DavidCarlisle -- interesting meeting? (i gather you survived ...)

@barbarabeeton OK. There was an excellent talk on latex support for luatex.

@DavidCarlisle -- my goodness, and by whom would that have been presented?

@barbarabeeton well, me of course.

1 hour later…

7:50 PM

@JosephWright I think the delteion bot should have picked that one: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/220199/…

8:15 PM

then you google "latex reaction background" and the usual non-tex rubber related thing, lol

8:46 PM

280

A: How can I explain the meaning of LaTeX to my grandma?

Hypothetical dialogue follows. Dear <insert subject name here>, I would like to spend a few minutes talking about something cool. In fact, it's not just cool. It's amazingly cool. It's not "Albert Einstein playing guitar" cool, neither "Abraham Lincoln riding a bear with a machine gun" cool, it...

LMAO, yeah

9:26 PM

@DavidCarlisle :-)

9:48 PM

now that CTAN Halloween theme got me thinking "i must have clicked in the wrong link"

10:08 PM

@G.Bay -- i wouldn't have noticed it except for your comment. nice!

And the background seems to move with the cursos, crazy

@DavidCarlisle Interesting history lesson from the Baskerville archive

@JosephWright did someone bring that today?

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@DavidCarlisle Eddie

@JosephWright don't we have the pdfs or have they been lost somewhere?

10:15 PM

@DavidCarlisle uk.tug.org/baskerville but I have only back to vol. 3 that way

@DavidCarlisle I now have every one (there'll be a circular to members)

@JosephWright scan the older ones?

@DavidCarlisle That is indeed the plan

@DavidCarlisle I am seriously wondering if the print copies should go to a proper library for posterity

@DavidCarlisle Issue 1 includes some interesting stuff about TeX3 :-)

@JosephWright trying to recall which issue I did:-)

@DavidCarlisle Vol. 6 No. 1

@JosephWright thanks:-)

10:21 PM

@DavidCarlisle Feb. 1996

@JosephWright ouch should have fixed the toc width for VIII :(

@DavidCarlisle Some of the PDF versions are 'reconstructed': where am I looking in the real thing?

@JosephWright page 2 in the table of contents of the pdf in the above looks a little "tight"

@DavidCarlisle Print version is rather different

@JosephWright so my honour is restored? :-)

10:27 PM

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle I should probably look into scanning the lot, then like I say getting them to somewhere set up to look after them (we did have an ISSN)

@JosephWright you could publish a new issue...

@DavidCarlisle Jonathan Webley did three issues, which ended up as a 'second' volume 10 (we don't have an electronic copy of the original volume 10 issue).

@DavidCarlisle Seems the BL do hold the original run

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