TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:07 AM

@Canageek I stopped using visio when I found ipe, since ipe allows Latex directly on the dawings. Now I use ipe for everything.

Canageek

@Nasser We just used it when rearranging furniture since it had built in desks and chairs and made it very easy to enter real world measurements, move things around and snap them to walls and things

See how a room would look very quickly.

and if things would fit

Nasser

@Canageek yes. it is good for that.

Try googles sketchup also., it is very nice program, like visio in a way.

yo'

5:04 AM

@Nasser many basic linux tool needed little-to-none improvement over the years, for instance. And remember that many LaTeX packages are much more trivial than most of these tools.

David Carlisle

6:51 AM

@Nasser why do you find that strange? tex itself has hardly changed a line since 1990

egreg

7:37 AM

This is a nice user interface! \DeclareDocumentCommand{\op}{s O{\linopspacewide} m G{} G{} G{}}{...}

Joseph Wright

@egreg Eeek

@egreg We added g/G for testing, not because it was a good idea :-)

egreg

@JosephWright Note also the friendly cooperation with other packages through \DeclareDocumentCommand

yo'

@JosephWright well, it was too late anyway once beamer was around...

Joseph Wright

@yo' Indeed: that's more-or-less why I added it

egreg

@JosephWright This is the full definition:

\DeclareDocumentCommand{\op}{s O{\linopspacewide} m G{} G{} G{}}{%
    \IfBooleanTF#1%
    {\linopstylewide{#3}_{\linopsubscript#4}^{#2 #5^{#6}\linopsuperscript}}
    {\linopstyle{#3}_{\linopsubscript#4}^{#5^{#6}\linopsuperscript}}
}

Joseph Wright

7:43 AM

@yo' The point is though that it's not the same as saying 'this is generally a good idea': there's a question of how much of xparse one would carry through to a new format

egreg

I wonder how people is supposed to remember the order of arguments.

yo'

@egreg they are ordered by appearance

egreg

@yo' Just like “cast in order of appearance” in movies?

yo'

@JosephWright well, I'm afraid you need g/G sometimes for some dirty work, but the question is, should it be the standard interface...

egreg

@yo' The answer is NO.

Joseph Wright

7:47 AM

@yo' Possibly: I'm not so sure (the 'standard' LaTeX sO{}m works well, particularly if one imagines the optional argument as a keyval one)

egreg

@yo' Things like \frame{...} that can be \begin{frame}{frametitle}...\end{frame} or \begin{frame}\frametitle{frametitle}...\end{frame} are just confusing.

yo'

@JosephWright yeah, but then there's the second thing: trailing optional arguments

@egreg you know who maintains beamer ... but I think I know what he'd say: "not my fault" :-)

egreg

@yo' beamer was badly designed to begin with (with \frame{...}), then the remedy was worse than the disease.

yo'

btw, Mozart KV 365, 413, 449 is on :)

egreg

@yo' :)

Joseph Wright

7:51 AM

@yo' Yes, I'm aware of that

@yo' He would indeed

@egreg There are lessons from beamer, certainly

David Carlisle

@JosephWright terrible excuse, I'd never use that

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@yo', @egreg (@DavidCarlisle) My point is that I'm mindful of the fact xparse is in a sense an experiment: yes for LaTeX2e we have 'lots of stuff' but I don't necessarily think all of it should carry through to a new format

yo'

@JosephWright @DavidCarlisle Well, one of you'd say "a feature" and the other one "not my fault". Find some new excuses, guys. :D

Joseph Wright

For example, I wonder if expandable commands with optional arguments are really useful: they look 'clever' but the work to set them up is quite involved and they are most of the time not the best user interface

@yo' beamer is very tricky: I have no tests, lots of undocumented code, Till was clearly learning to write TeX when he wrote beamer (so a lot of it is odd), ...

egreg

@JosephWright I've used them sometimes. I can have a look as to whether the optional argument was really needed.

yo'

7:56 AM

@JosephWright (sorry, I misread you)

@JosephWright well, he built a contextual language (or how do you call it) inside the macro expansion one, so ...

Joseph Wright

@egreg I've also got a use at present in siunitx (for dealing with units that end up in bookmarks): I'm not saying I'm entirely opposed, I'm saying it is worth checking before carrying such stuff forward

@yo' Not inside beamer :-)

egreg

8

A: What is the best way to do math inside LaTeX macros?

You can use this implementation of \solvedegtan in every place TeX is expecting a decimal number, even in something like \setlength{\textheight}{\solvedegtan{60}\textwidth} Here's the code \documentclass{article} \usepackage{xparse} \ExplSyntaxOn \DeclareExpandableDocumentCommand{\solvedegta...

yo'

@JosephWright even in beamer, all these "templates" and "fg", "bg", "palette primary", ...

Joseph Wright

@egreg Yes, but that's expandable because it's fun, not because it's essential

@yo' Oh that

1010011010

8:53 AM

Heylo

What defined \linewidth within floats? LaTeX changes it and this is one of those PCs where I can't access the source `:(

egreg

@1010011010 Use \linewidth in list environments. Outside, normally \textwidth or \columnwidth are the ones to use.

yo'

@egreg \linewidth has always worked great for me in floats. It's either \columnwidth or \textwidth depending on where it is issued.

egreg

@yo' Yes, it's reset in figure and table

1010011010

9:09 AM

@egreg Hmm I'm getting weird results inside floats, figures exceed \linewidth but listings indeed seems to work well with the \linewidth

David Carlisle

@1010011010 \linewidth is set by \@(array)parboxrestore (which is used in float bozes) to the current \hsize so it should only really be different from textwidth or columnwidth in lists and parbox like things (tabular p columns, minipages etc)

wilx

10:03 AM

Hi.

So, my mini-project is almost at printable state.

However, I have it an issue with Acrobat Reader and two sided documents.

Or maybe with LaTeX and two sided documents, I am not sure.

Basically, the title/cover page should have the binding on its left side.

It should be the first visible page, first printed page.

But with report and twoside, I get the first (title) page printed with smaller margin on left, as if the first page was a left page.

1010011010

10:21 AM

@DavidCarlisle \hsize seems to change between body text and parbox... extarticle continues to mesmerize me every day

David Carlisle

@1010011010 yes of course hsize is the tex primitive line breaking length so in a parbox it is the specified width

@wilx smaller margin on the left sounds like a right hand page (outer margins are usually larger than inner margin)

yo'

@wilx yeah, correct. What's the issue? Open any well typeset book you have at hand and you'll see :)

wilx

Hmm...

@DavidCarlisle OK, I guess I am misunderstanding things. I thought inner margins were bigger because of the binding.

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