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12:00 AM
I have to run; day has come to a close at the office.
 
@Werner apparently there was some football or cricket or something on the TV slowing him down
@Werner night
 
@DavidCarlisle He he... excuses excuses.
@DavidCarlisle Good bye/night.
 
How are those marks called when the section or chapter name appear in the headline?
 
@Qrrbrbirlbel running head usually
 
@DavidCarlisle I'm quoting you on that :)
 
12:07 AM
In typography, a page header (or simply header) is text that is separated from the main body of text and appears at the top of a printed page. Word processing programs usually provide for the creation and maintenance of page headers, which are often the same from page to page, with merely small differences in information, such as page number. In publishing and certain types of academic writing, a running header or running headline is a header that appears on each page. Typical running heads in a book might consist of the book title on the left-hand (verso) page, and the chapter title on ...
 
What should happen to the link in chapter marks (“running head”) in for example the book class? — Qrrbrbirlbel 1 min ago
 
12:17 AM
@Qrrbrbirlbel nice idea :)
 
@cmhughes Thanks. Though, I am a little suspicious why this doesn’t kill the actual hrefs to sections too. But apparently they are already expanded or use an internal macro or are built totally different. :)
What the?
I like your solution more cmhughes', but it gives me the following error in vim `Do not use @ in LaTeX macro names. "\@secondoftwo". — puk 1 min ago
 
@Qrrbrbirlbel er, not really sure what that's about...
 
@cmhughes I haven't participated in any editor wars … until today! ;)
 
@Qrrbrbirlbel lol :) well, we all know that @DavidCarlisle is a loyal vim user- that's the secret to his 100k :)
 
12:32 AM
Apr 12 at 16:40, by David Carlisle
user image
 
@DavidCarlisle lol! I'm going to try something similar in emacs- if I'm not back in a minute, I've become lost
 
@cmhughes You'll see that was in response to Paulo's emacs attempt a couple of comments higher:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle I don't even have emacs installed- I wonder if ubuntu will let me have them installed side by side; at the very least I would hope for an easter egg in the log file :)
 
12:46 AM
@cmhughes Note the image: I had to ssh to another machine to use vim:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle lol- I have just installed emacs - just for fun you understand :)
 
@cmhughes M-x doctor
 
@DavidCarlisle er.... ? the M stands for 'meta' yeah?
 
@cmhughes yes or esc then x if you haven't a meta/alt/whatever key
 
@DavidCarlisle ok, second emacs session coming up :P
@DavidCarlisle I feel like I'm learning to walk :)
 
1:08 AM
@cmhughes: traitor! :)
 
@PauloCereda don't worry, I was just doing it for fun- I don't think I would ever step away from vim
 
Apr 12 at 16:37, by Paulo Cereda
user image
 
@DavidCarlisle That was definitely 99% not me. :)
 
2:08 AM
Hey guys, does anyone know how to draw a box in TikZ? I'm trying to modify a code and I'm having difficulty with a box. I have managed to understand how to make hisparcbox and a circle but how can I make a rectangle? input/.style={draw,thick,circle,fill=yellow!20}, I would like to change that to be a box
Can I just do input/.style={draw,thick,box,fill=yellow!20}?
Nevermind! Got it! :)
 
 
5 hours later…
7:34 AM
!!/battle
 
@Bugbusters I guess Psmith is still sleeping
 
@topskip Yes. I know. :-)
 
7:53 AM
Heya, very quick question
Is there any class where the spacing between the title of the document and the body is smaller than the article class?
 
@N3buchadnezzar Don't know, but you can modify the spacing in article, is that an option?
 
Yeah, I saw a post about that. But i feel that would be quite hackish
*eg inserting \vspace{-length} inside the author field or something.
 
@N3buchadnezzar I didn't mean that kind of hack, but to redefine how much space is inserted by \maketitle. I.e., add the thing below to the preamble, and change the \vskip to your liking.
\makeatletter
\def\@maketitle{%
  \newpage
  \null
  \vskip 2em%
  \begin{center}%
  \let \footnote \thanks
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%
    \vskip 1.5em%
    {\large
      \lineskip .5em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par}%
    \vskip 1em%
    {\large \@date}%
  \end{center}%
  \par
  \vskip 0em}
\makeatother
@N3buchadnezzar The \vskip in the second to last line, that is. I just copy-pasted that from article.cls.
(That is, the default value is 1.5em.)
 
Ah =)
 
8:10 AM
@PauloCereda My code is moving to GitHub: texdev.net/2013/04/25/moving-from-mercurial-to-git
 
@JosephWright GitHub is 'the place to be' it seems. (A couple of typos in the third paragraph by the way, 'gut' and 'lokked'.)
 
8:24 AM
@cgnieger: Happy Birthday.
4
 
@TorbjørnT. I don't like the issue tracker at github very much. I hope that will improve. But I can't really tell what I am missing. I have used trac a lot.
 
In my question
66
Q: Why does TeX Live "require" yearly updates?

Daniel E. ShubEvery year TeX Live provides a new version. My recollection is that soon after a new version is released, the old version's tlmgr stops fetching updates to packages. They provide upgrading instructions with the disclaimer This procedure is not bullet-proof, or especially recommended There i...

the comments provide some information that was new to me about how binaries are handled in TeX Live, in particular the biber binary. Is it worth asking a secondary question that has been answered in comments as a new question?
 
@DanielE.Shub If it's answered, why bother asking a new question?
 
@topskip because I didn't think comments were the right place to ask/answer questions. I also thought they were indexed and searched differently.
 
@DanielE.Shub true: the comments are not the right place to ask, but if you've got an answer, everything is fine, isn't it?
 
8:37 AM
@topskip having the information in the comments is fine with me. I was thinking more about preserving knowledge for other users who might be interested.
 
@DanielE.Shub This site is not about saving knowledge. It's only about sucking answers out of other people's brains.
@DanielE.Shub You could ask eightball as soon as @PauloCereda is here if you should ask a new question.
 
@MarcoDaniel Thanks! It's a good day for it: the sun is shining :)
 
@topskip (and @DanielE.Shub) Yes but SX generally is very schizophrenic about that. Some times (and some users) think of it that way (I must admit I do mostly) but some people think it's an evolving wiki of stored knowledge and put a lot more importance of duplication removal and answering (or more often, closing) the unanswered etc. Fortunately the mechanisms tolerate both viewpoints reasonably well:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Actually I use it as a notebook with a good full text search to find my previous answers when I need them.
 
@DavidCarlisle you think of it that way because most of the time you are having answers sucked out of your brain
 
8:44 AM
@TorbjørnT. Fixed
 
9:28 AM
I'm pleased to announce the first gold tag badge for Werner in Congratulations, @Werner
4
 
TL2013 install time: 07:19, aka Welcome to Czech Scientific Network :)
 
hey guys#
 
@Sven 'lo
 
I have a problem that is weird to explain and weirder to reproduce
I have 2 environments to write a documentation in latex, both connected with a git repository. yesterday I started at the first and wanted to continue at the second
I tried to build my source with Sublime Text 2 and its Latex Plugin (and Miktex), but it produced some errors
after an hour I went back to my first environment with Sublime Text still open, hit build and my pdf was generated, while showing the same errors
I tried again and every time my pdf in sumatrapdf was refreshed with the correct content, altough sublime text was showing me some errors
can someone explain to me what happened here?
 
9:50 AM
@Sven I don't want to sound harsh, but you would be very fortunate to find someone understanding your problem here in chat. It sounds complicated to reduce your problem into a way that is postable as a question on the site, but I think it is better to do so.
 
well I just figured out the pdf is even created in my second environment
so it boils down to:
why does the generated pdf gets updated, even if latex produces errors?
 
@Sven Because LaTeX is made in such way that every page is output instantly after it's finished
 
but the pdf is complete and not interrupted in the middle?
 
@Sven if your setup uses \batchmode or \nonstopmode then latex doesn't stop at an error it carries on as if you had hit return so it does typically produce a document uless the error is so bad it can't do anything.
 
@DavidCarlisle no, both commands can't be find in my project
it's a template, so I didn't write it myself, only changed it to my purpose
 
10:02 AM
@Sven there are commandline switches that do the same
 
it seems to me that every time \clearpage is used, latex is trying to add a file which can't be found ("LaTeX Error: File `' not found. [\clearpage]"
but I couldn't find the relevent source yet
 
@Sven I would expect that build my source with Sublime Text 2 and its Latex Plugin (and Miktex), calls latex that way (most such IDE do so they can parse the log file at the end and provide help of some sort
@Sven well obviously latex doesn't normally do that so remove stuff until it stops doing that and then look at the last thing you removed.
 
what does \clearpage do exactly? clear the remaining space and append the footer?
 
@Sven Not exactly, It sets an infinite penalty to trigger the output routine (and the output routine then makes pages does its float stuff etc)
 
where can I start deleting things? :D
btw, I tried to ask a question: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110628/…
but I can see thats it's difficult for you without a clear reproducible and compilable example
 
10:28 AM
@Sven you have seen that page? meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/228/…
 
@cgnieder: Happy birthday!
 
@PauloCereda Thanks! :)
 
Startup idea: come up with a name. Prefix it with "cloud". $$$$$. What does our product do? I dunno, just throw more money at me.
CloudTeX. :)
 
kan
10:55 AM
@Andrew just answered an easy one. :)
+1, however. :)
 
11:08 AM
Is it possible to make an animated pdf with tikz =
 
kan
I wonder what is wrong with this one: I get a bold number for the item that immediately follows a subsection* command:
\documentclass{amsart}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item
\item
\item
\item
\item
\subsection*{Computer Problems}

\item
\item
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}
 
I guess noe using subsection INSIDE an enumeration
 
kan
@DominicMichaelis then, there must be a warning to that effect no?
 
why do you want to make something like that it is totally strange
 
@kan Why do you want a warning? You already crossed the border. :P
 
kan
11:16 AM
@DominicMichaelis I was being lazy. I could break the enumerate and have a resume and all, but that is elaborate and this works.
@PauloCereda Heh, there is nothing wrong there!?! :)
 
It's like the sign in @egreg's office: "Use \ensuremath at your own risk. Tresspassers will be shot."
 
@Kan you should break the enumeration cause it messes up with the margins doesn't it ?
 
kan
@DominicMichaelis Oh, wait!
It ate a number!
 
@kan I presume that the "Andrew" here is me (I got some notifications meant for another "Andrew" yesterday). If so, my defence (not that I think I need one) is that my answer was written after the questioner commented "I am very new to latex and am not sure how to implement what you have both suggested into my script."
 
kan
11:21 AM
@AndrewStacey Hey! I was joking, obviously! And, I was not looking forward to your defending it. I was thinking of another funny reply from you, I swear.
 
@DominicMichaelis Also tex.stackexchange.com/questions/39001/… (There are some questions on the site regarding TikZ and animations.)
 
@kan If it worked you wouldn't be asking about it.
 
kan
4 mins ago, by kan
@DominicMichaelis Oh, wait!
Sigh: "It ate a number". I realised that much later. So, I was really asking an idle question/
 
12:13 PM
@PauloCereda :)
!!/battle
 
!!/battle
 
@egreg Oh hold on, I need to enable the bot. :)
 
@egreg I thought you were going touring today?
 
@DavidCarlisle I'm going in a few minutes, probably.
!!/battle
 
!!/battle
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 375 vs. 200 David. So far, egreg is winning.
 
12:18 PM
@DavidCarlisle I had to straighen up something after your big exploit of yesterday. ;-)
 
@PauloCereda It's just so easy with bounties: I had to get 350 yesterday with none on offer:-)
 
what the fck? it's high noon and you got 375 reputation already?
 
@DominicMichaelis bounties:-)
 
@DominicMichaelis Just cashed some credit. :)
 
Lars Madsen is awesome.
I did a test with a user called

briáæøålongbriáæøåvv

(but no UNC paths involved)

makeglossaries works fine via CLI
:)
 
12:24 PM
sometimes my lazyness is helpfull
 
Wow! @DavidCarlisle reads my answers and even spots formatting issue!
 
@egreg I expect formatting issues in your world as "overfull hbox ... 10^{-20} pt to wide"
 
@egreg I know it's a bit tricky for you to highlight an entire block, I try to help when I can.
 
@DominicMichaelis Yes, I try not having those horrible overfull boxes. I'd like to set \hfuzz=.000001sp if it were possible. ;-)
@DominicMichaelis I can stand such a wee adjustment. :P
Is "You get what you deserve" a valid answer to this?
4
Q: Odd vertical gap with multicol, scrreprt and parskip=half

The CompilerI'm having a weird vertical gap in one of my documents, which only is there when I use multicol together with \documentclass[parskip=half]{scrreprt}. Minimal example \documentclass[parskip=half]{scrreprt} \usepackage{multicol} \begin{document} \begin{multicols}{2} \subsubsection{title}...

 
12:39 PM
once i tried to kill an overfull box by reformulating my paragraph
bad luck i did have 2 paragraphs with the same beginning and rephrased the wrong one -.-
@egreg don't tell me he startet a new section inside a table
 
@DominicMichaelis No, inside a multicols; the problem is using parskip=.... Nobody can enter my office who uses a non zero parskip.
 
the default value is zero isn't it ?
 
@DominicMichaelis Yes, usually 0pt plus 0.1pt to give TeX some room for maneuvering when a page is difficult.
 
oh great then i can visit your office ? :D
 
@egreg so do you allow users of such a default in your office? :-)
 
12:48 PM
@DavidCarlisle Those can come in, but are told to remove the plus as soon as possible and to compute the page height so that it contains an integer number of lines.
 
@egreg ... and add a stretch of baselineskip to dozens of places ;)
 
@egreg ... integer number of lines, and make topskip correspond to baselineskip amd pray your math isn't too big and... :-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Producing a good looking book requires manual intervention and personal judgment. Machines make it just a bit easier than in your famous picture.
 
@egreg you mean David's famous \begin{picture} ? :D
 
@egreg Yes, people should read Frank's notes in TLC where he gives the figures for how many page breaks were manually adjusted. (Some rather large percentage:-)
 
12:57 PM
@tohecz I was thinking to this
206
A: How can I explain the meaning of LaTeX to my grandma?

David CarlisleIt does this but it uses a computer and so requires less manual labour. (image from Wikipedia)

 
@egreg I know, and I considered it a good joke with the second non-intended meaning ...
 
@egreg 206 votes and two gold badges for 30 seconds work seeing if wikipedia had a nice Gutenberg era print:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle And no gold badge for me.
 
1:13 PM
@PauloCereda /hug
 
@tohecz awww <3
 
@PauloCereda You got 1 didn't you?
 
@DavidCarlisle Gold? Oh! You were right. Sorry.
 
@PauloCereda I got 2 :-)
 
1:47 PM
@DavidCarlisle two? really? oh dammit, they're never removed :-/
 
@tohecz yes Grandma made sure she accepted an answer with half the votes so I got a populist badge:-)
 
@egreg: With the current version of LaTeX3 I can't use an optional argument of \kant. The following shows the odd behaviour.
\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage{kantlipsum}
\begin{document}
\kant[2]
\end{document}
 
kan
@MarcoDaniel The empty options looks supsicious. But, I am no expert.
(for the class, I mean)
 
2:06 PM
@kan This is no problem.
 
@MarcoDaniel I've observed some strange behaviour of \lipsum[1-10] when I installed the last TL on my boss' PC
 
@tohecz Is the catcode of [] changed? :-)
 
@MarcoDaniel who knows ... but other optargs works like charm
 
@MarcoDaniel I blame the soup.
:)
 
@PauloCereda LOL
Or It's a new bug by PSMITH
 
2:14 PM
!!/eightball Are you buggy, Psmith?
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: no. And don't be mean to David, he is my friend.
 
@DavidCarlisle , i have problem about draw to graph ...
@DavidCarlisle, i have problem about draw to graph ? How to draw graph with LaTeX especially with Tikz,
 
@HirWanto I know nothing about tikz, why ping me:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle i'm sorry , i am new users and don't know about it
 
2:31 PM
@HirWanto: Hello, welcome to the chatroom!
 
@PauloCereda ..ya thank you very much
 
!!/cricket
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last cricket results:

- Cambridge MCCU 140/7 * v Middlesex 438/4
- Leicestershire 181/10  v Leeds/Bradford MCCU 165/10 &  145/5 *
- Derbyshire 256/10  v Nottinghamshire 186/3 *
- Durham 237/10  v Yorkshire 57/3 *
- Gloucestershire 192/10  v Northamptonshire 319/8 *
- Hampshire 500/9  v Worcestershire 45/1 *
- Lancashire 22/1 * v Kent 244/10
- Surrey 351/10  v Sussex 83/1 *
- Zimbabwe v Bangladesh 242/4 *
- Somerset 214/4 * v Warwickshire
@DavidCarlisle: Oh no, Cambridge lost again!
 
@PauloCereda and how do you know from the chiphers that they lost? You can read that yet-to-be-discovered "Cricketish"? :D
 
@tohecz I have absolutely no idea! :)
A shot in the dark.
> (It's sorta like sed, but not.  It's sorta like awk, but not.  etc.)
Guilty as charged.  Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.
             -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com>

paulo@alexandria ~$
 
:)
 
2:48 PM
:)
 
3:01 PM
For a strange coincidence, this fortune cookie sounds like something @DavidCarlisle would suggest me:
This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "randchar".  This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound.  It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.

paulo@alexandria ~$
 
@PauloCereda No game not over:-)
@tohecz It's easy Cambridge MCCU 140/7 * v Middlesex 438/4 Middlesex batted first got 438 runs then declared then cambridge were batting (*) and had got 140 for 7 men out, they actually got 157 before they were all out (157/10) so that means both teams have had one innings then they both bat again for a second innings.
 
!!/battle
 
@DominicMichaelis Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 390 vs. 230 David. So far, egreg is winning.
 
!!/battle Andrew Stacey, Paulo Cereda
 
@AndrewStacey Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 390 vs. 230 David. So far, egreg is winning.
 
3:15 PM
@PauloCereda Just a thought ... didn't work, I see.
!!/prove the Riemann hypothesis
 
@Andrew there is only a single battle :D
 
@AndrewStacey Psmith, the TeX bot: I'm deeply sorry, old chap, but the command prove does not exist.
@AndrewStacey oh I can work on that! Maybe ID based, not username. :)
 
!!/answer the Riemann hypothesis
 
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

Riemann hypothesis (mathematical problem)
The nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function zeta(s) all lie on the critical line Re(s) = 1/2.
(for all)_(n, n element Z&&n!=0)Re(rho_n) = 1/2
Hilbert's eighth problem
RH
Smale's first problem
formulation date | 1859  (154 years ago)
formulator | Bernhard Riemann
status | open
Re(rho_n) = 1/2
It has been verified that the first 1×10^13 nontrivial zeros of the zeta function lie on the critical line.
prize offered for solution | $1 million (open curly double quote)Millennium Prize Problem(close curly doub
 
10^13? I am sold. It 's enough accuracy for my practical purposes
 
3:22 PM
@percusse but this has no practical purposes so it's not enough and you don't get the money:-)
 
!!/answer meow.
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

meow  (English word)
1 | noun | the sound made by a cat (or any sound resembling this)
2 | verb | cry like a cat
3 | interjection | - The cry of a cat. - Said in reply to a spiteful or catty comment.
mee'ou  (IPA: mi\:02c8a\:028a)
me-ow  (4 letters  | 2 syllables)
1873  (Victorian era)  (140 years ago)
miaow
meows  |  meowed  |  meowing
mew  |  miaou  |  miaow  |  miaul
cry  |  emit  |  let loose  |  let out  |  utter   (total: 5)
allow  |  avow  |  bough  |  bow  |  brow  |  chow  |  cow  |  disallow  |  disavow  |  endow  |  hao  |  how  |  lough 
 
ooh I just got an email from The Powers That Be saying I reached 100k:-)
12
 
@DavidCarlisle I only need the first 3 terms :) Put me in the textbooks now
 
I heard the following on a radio interview yesterday:
*Interviewer:* How many unexplored underwater caves do you think there are in the world?
*Guest:* I would have to say, "Infinite".

WTF? Now as a linguist, I'm all for natural language definitions not matching with technical definitions, but this seems beyond the pale, especially since the guest has a BS in Finance and an MBA! I guess he thinks it means "too many to count".
 
@AlanMunn But the first infinity is countable so "too many to count" must mean the second infinity. Let's assume the continuum hypothesis, so this means that the number of caves is the cardinality of the continuum. So we can put it in one-to-one correspondence with the real line. Err ... what was the proposition again?
 
3:30 PM
@AlanMunn Cave surfaces are theoretically fractals :p
3
 
@percusse This :D
@percusse with the only problem called non-zero atom size ;)
 
@tohecz emphasis on the theoretical part otherwise infinity is a finite quantity :)
 
@percusse So you count subcaves as caves? In that case, every cave contains a continuum of subcaves and therefore the guest is correct.
 
@AlanMunn 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2. :)
 
@percusse !?!?!?!?! Infinity is never a finite quantity! You can decide that it doesn't exist, of course. But you can't declare it finite.
 
3:32 PM
@AlanMunn As for your concern: 1) The person is not a professional journalist who should be precise and should not make such mistakes in live chat. 2) It is a bit stupid question from the interviewer, hence a bit stupid answer :p
 
!!/answer Is infinity finite?
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

infinity
An unbounded quantity greater than every real number.
Infinity, most often denoted as infinity, is an unbounded quantity that is greater than every real number. The symbol infinity had been used as an alternative to M (1000) in Roman numerals until 1655, when John Wallis suggested it be used instead for infinity.
Infinity is a very tricky concept to work with, as evidenced by some of the counterintuitive results that follow from Georg Cantor's treatment of infinite sets.
 
@PauloCereda be quiet, we're being philosophist!
 
@AndrewStacey It's a concept afterall. If physical realities enter, infinity is not a consistent definition.
 
@PauloCereda Where are you getting this rubbish?
 
@tohecz My bad. :)
@AndrewStacey The so called know-it-all Wolfram Alpha. :)
 
3:33 PM
@PauloCereda Ah, that explains it. I blame the sauce in this case.
 
!!/answer y'-y=0
 
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

y'(x)-y(x) = 0
first-order linear ordinary differential equation
y(x) = y'(x)
y(x) = c_1 e^x
 |   |  |   | y(0) = 1
  (sampling y(0))
 
@percusse Still !?!?!?! on that one. What is inconsistent about infinity?
 
What happens when an infinitely large force is applied to an immovable object?
Feynman: Make an experiment....
 
!!/fortune
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Here is your fortune: Confucius say you have heart as big as Texas.
 
3:34 PM
@percusse gotta love that guy! :D
 
@AndrewStacey Well there must be a never ending process or nonexistence of an upper bound on anything, depending on the context
But that's nowhere to be found in the physical reality which approximates the things we know about
 
!!/answer Do you know Lady GaGa?
 
So it's a shortcut to say well beyond any sensible number....
 
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

Lady Gaga  (musician, etc.)
full name | Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
date of birth | Friday, March 28, 1986 (age: 27 years)
place of birth | New York City, New York, United States
American pop singer-songwriter with international popularity, her first album reaching number one on the record charts of six countries
Famous for outlandish sense of style in fashion and in performance
Names as inspiration glam rock artists David Bowie, Elton John and Queen, as well as pop singers Madonna and Michael Jackson
 
@percusse I'm thinking about infinity. I assert that I am real. Therefore infinity is a real concept.
 
3:37 PM
o.O
 
kan
@percusse Well, I think, if there is anything to be said, it is this: infinity is needed for consistency.
 
@AndrewStacey Touché or touchè depending on the side you are taking the limit :)
 
@percusse Now you're confusing the concept of infinity with the symbol which appears in statements of the form "As x -> infinity then 1/x -> 0" where I will agree that the "infinity" simply means "as x gets big".
 
@AndrewStacey You know, all projects of our company are very complex; besides their real part, they have the imaginary one, too.
 
I am, therefore I... ooh a penny!
 
3:39 PM
@AndrewStacey Typical example. Can we determine the duration of the flight of the arrow in the sentence "The arrow flies"? That's one context.
Where do parallel lines meet is another
 
@percusse Forever alone lines. :)
 
What's the size of the universe (well abuse of question) is another
 
@tohecz Just for you: youtu.be/4DQG6WJ8qe0
 
@percusse and they meet in infinity. Why? Because if you do a good projection, their projections meet in a point on which the infinity is mapped
 
kan
@percusse depending on where you live. I bet Coxeter could see the projective world.
 
3:40 PM
It's mostly compactification yes but sometimes we use it for truncation too
 
@egreg Thanks!
 
In non-Euclidean geometry, the Poincaré half-plane model is the upper half-plane (denoted below as H), together with a metric, the Poincaré metric, that makes it a model of two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry. It is named after Henri Poincaré, but originated with Eugenio Beltrami, who used it, along with the Klein model and the Poincaré disk model (due to Riemann), to show that hyperbolic geometry was equiconsistent with Euclidean geometry. The disk model and the half-plane model are isomorphic under a conformal mapping. Metric The metric of the model on the half-plane :\{ \langle x, y ...
In geometry, the Poincaré disk model or Poincaré ball model, also called the conformal disk model, is a model of n-dimensional hyperbolic geometry in which the points of the geometry are in an n-dimensional disk, or unit ball, and the straight lines consist of all segments of circles contained within the disk that are orthogonal to the boundary of the disk, plus all diameters of the disk. Along with the Klein model and the Poincaré half-space model, it was proposed by Eugenio Beltrami who used these models to show hyperbolic geometry was equiconsistent with Euclidean geometry. Metric If...
 
@percusse What? In Euclidean geometry then parallel lines don't meet. They certainly don't meet "at infinity". In Spherical geometry then they do meet, and quite often, but definitely finitely. If you compactify Euclidean space then you could make them meet, but choose the Stone-Cech compactification and they won't.
 
Someone call the fire department, please. :)
!!/fencing
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last fencing results:

- Stadium to re-open to the public for the first time since London 2012
- Sailing supremo appointed to lead UK Sport on road to Rio
- REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE BF COACHING COMMITTEE
- BRITISH SCHOOL TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS RESULTS
- CAMBRIDGE OPEN AIR VENUE AMMENDMENT
- BRITISH FENCING BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT
- COMMUNITY SPORT AND RECREATION AWARDS
- 2013 BYC - FINAL LISTS OF QUALIFIERS
- MARS Milk Fund
 
@PauloCereda no need for that, w'all are phoenixes :)
 
3:43 PM
:)
 
@AndrewStacey If we are talking about math I'm no match for you. I'm talking about the concept of infinity and why we need it. Not the actual manipulations that reveal the need for it.
My point is that there is no single concept. There are many depending on what you try to include in the manipulations.
 
That's what I mean by compactification (I think I've misused it in this context)
 
@percusse Right, the word "infinity" is overused. But the original context in this discussion was of quantity, in which "infinity" does have a proper meaning.
 
@AndrewStacey Yes but it's @tohecz fault :) if we are theoretically speaking, there are infinitely many subcaves once you invoke the word fractal (otherwise it's not fractal).
 
3:48 PM
tex
 
@percusse If we have infinite caves, that means that, at some point, we have... a Bat-Cave?! :)
nananananananananana Batman
 
(I just thought I'd mention it ^^^)
 
@PauloCereda Only if you allow monkeys use TikZ.
 
@percusse Oh.
 
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. The relevance of the theory is questionable—the probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is so tiny that th...
 
3:50 PM
can be closed TL (finite number of votes needed) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/110702/…
 
read one sentence of my homework and already found an tex mistake gee that is really joyless
 
Instead they can use \texttt{}
 
@percusse No need for fractals. Let C be a cave and assume wlog that it's "mouth" lies in the x-y plane and that the cave extends into the positive z-direction. For t >=0 let C_t be the intersection of C with the half-space {z \ge t}. Then there is some positive non-zero epsilon such that for 0 \le t \le epsilon, C_t is a cave. Since C_t is not the same as C_t' for t \ne t', the number of caves has the cardinality at least of the continuum. QED
 
My brain hurts.
 
@AndrewStacey But that's a temporal cave. You can't count that as one. My infinity is bigger than that since the number of caves is greater than one :P
oh man here we go with the cardinals.....
@AndrewStacey You know that I'm a mechanical engineer right ?
heheh
 
3:57 PM
I think I need to backfire with my TCS hat.
 
@percusse Well, I was proving a lower-bound. Note that the cardinality of caves is the cardinality of the subcaves of a single cave. The number of maximal caves in the world is finite as maximal caves cannot overlap and must be of size bigger than some minimum value (say, the separation between hydrogen atoms in a hydrogen molecule - just to have a lower bound).
 
kan
@percusse that's still not good enough. Did you have uncountably many caves?
In the other case, I am at a loss to see what it is that you want to prove.
 
@AndrewStacey you forgot banach tarski ? :D
 
@AndrewStacey For each C_t I have fractals on the cave wall. :)
@kan Nothing. Just having some mental exercise.
@AlanMunn You see what you have done? Even the jokes should be disciplined and typeset beautifully.
 
@tohecz The interviewer is a professional journalist, and generally a great interviewer. But I agree the question is kind of lame.
@percusse I know. I should have known better to throw this piece of flesh to the mathematician sharks. ;)
 
4:06 PM
!!/eightball Is the infinity finite?
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: no. And don't be mean to David, he is my friend.
 
@AndrewStacey Sorry I've been a bit slow responding to all your comments. But the linguist in me says that "too many to count" means "too many for one to count" (as in you'd die before finishing); so you don't need the second infinity for this...
 
!!/eightball Are there infinite caves?
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: yes, definitely.
 
4:20 PM
!!/eightball how do you define a cave ?
 
@DominicMichaelis Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: outlook not so good.
 
@Paulo your bot is trolling me
 
@AlanMunn My kids have a saying for this: "I can count up to 100 really quickly!" "Really, go on then." "One two skip a few ninety-nine a hundred". The other thing that springs to mind is the Flanders and Swann song that starts "Before you lose your temper, count up to a hundred ..."
!!/answer what is a cave?
 
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

cave  (English word)
1 | noun | a geological formation consisting of an underground enclosure with access from the surface of the ground or from the sea
2 | verb | hollow out as if making a cave or opening
3 | verb | explore natural caves
4 | interjection | - (British public school slang) look out!
k'eyv  (IPA: k\:02c8e\:026av)
cave  (no hyphenation)  (4 letters  | 1 syllable)
1220  (High Middle ages)  (793 years ago)
1707  (306 years ago)
Old English  |  Old French  |  Latin
 
!!/answer what is a infinite cave ?
 
4:23 PM
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

infinite  (English word)
1 | noun | the unlimited expanse in which everything is located
2 | adjective | having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude
3 | adjective | of verbs; having neither person nor number nor mood (as a participle or gerund or infinitive)
4 | adjective | too numerous to be counted
5 | adjective | total and all-embracing
(5 meanings)
'infuhnuht  (IPA: \:02c8\:026anf\:0259n\:0259t)
in-fi-nite  (8 letters  | 3 syllables)
 
@AlanMunn And I appear to have started something similar in this answer:
3
A: How to Label a Heuristic Proof

Andrew StaceyThe following defines a new proof-like environment in which the proof title is temporarily changed to "Heuristic Proof" (despite my own reservations of the use of the word heuristic in these circumstances!), implementing lockstep's idea from the comments but in such a way that the original proof ...

!!/answer what is Plato's cave/
 
Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

Plato S  (Moon feature)  |  Cave  (Mars feature)
 | Plato S | Cave
size | 6 km  (diameter)  (solar system rank: 12048th) | 8.4 km  (diameter)  (solar system crater rank: 3821st)
feature type | associated feature | impact crater
location | Moon | Mars
(rank determined from catalog of USGS named features)

Plato S | 53.8°N, 14.9°W
Cave | 21.6°N, 324.3°E
 
@PauloCereda Should've gone to the SEP, then.
 
@AndrewStacey :)
 
!!/eightball should i do my experimentalphysics homework ?
 
4:33 PM
@DominicMichaelis Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: you need to use emacs.
 
I'm interested in the linguistic fact that the person who presumably knows some reasonable mathematical version of 'infinite' would be happy to use that word to describe something which for all intents and purposes he must know to be not infinite. (Clever proofs to the contrary notwithstanding.)
 
@JosephWright: Do you have the power of fixing Clemens' username in the starred message? :)
 
@PauloCereda I can unstar it, edit the original then I guess people can restar it
 
@JosephWright Ho. :) Leave as it is then. :)
@JosephWright: You moved quite a lot of stuff to GitHub. :)
 
@PauloCereda Yes: biblatex stuff will be done today or tomorrow, leaving only siunitx to take a bit longer
It's not so hard
 
4:51 PM
@Joseph: speaking of migrations, I wonder how you guys would react when I talk about some crazy ideas for the L3 project. :P
 
@PauloCereda :-)
 
@JosephWright I'm serious, Frank will kill me. :)
 
@PauloCereda I need to catch up with L3 work, I could help him.
 
@DavidCarlisle Oh no!
 
@DavidCarlisle :-)
 
4:58 PM
Nobody likes me. :(
 
@PauloCereda Do tell us about the ideas
 
!!/eightball do you like @PauloCereda?
 
!!/eightball do you like @PauloCereda? @DavidCarlisle Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: no. And don't be mean to David, he is my friend.
 
@PauloCereda ^^^^
 
@PauloCereda Oh, Psmith, you are a rotter!
 
4:59 PM
@JosephWright Expect a long email. :)
@DavidCarlisle Hey!
@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: outlook not so good.
 
I've finally uploaded the duck PDFs to Lightning Source. If there's an error in the proof I shall sob. Or possibly utter some unladylike words.
 
@NicolaTalbot Do authors of childrens' books know unladylike words?
 
@DavidCarlisle Well, I also write crime fiction, so I could put on my crime writer hat to utter the unladylike words and then switch back to my children's writer hat.
 
@NicolaTalbot That's OK then (but let's hope it won't be needed)
 
@DavidCarlisle :-)
 
5:06 PM
@NicolaTalbot :)
 
@PauloCereda The little hat-wearing duck will soon be unleased upon the world!
 
@Nicola where ?
 
@DominicMichaelis Hopefully in your favourite book store as from next month. The book's home page is at dickimaw-books.com/fiction/kids/duck
 
The duck is sweet but that why do you have a flushleft ?
 
5:22 PM
maybe children don't like LaTeX
 
@DominicMichaelis Whereabouts is the flushleft?
 
Back from the (short) tour. I bought a new helmet.
 
@DominicMichaelis I did a book reading at a primary school last month and they asked me how I produced books. It was a little difficult explaining LaTeX to them.
@egreg Where did you tour?
 
@egreg Yay! Which colour?
 
@NicolaTalbot Just around my town: Treviso, Venice and the country between Venice and Padova.
 
5:24 PM
 
@PauloCereda Black
 
@DominicMichaelis Oh, there. I'd forgotten that. Flush left works better for narrow boxes. Also, the text inside the book is flushleft as that works better for children's books where the font is quite large.
 
I hope, that I am not rude/offensive here trying to support @tohecz:
@ThorbjørnRavnAndersen I strongly agree with tohecz. The way you argue here needs a source. Nobody would have complained, if you’d inserted some word(s) like “probably” or “I am convinced”. And BTW I feel your comment a bit rude/offensive. — Speravir 6 mins ago
 
Unfortunately there was no parking in Venice, so I got back immediately. You probably know that today is St. Mark's feast, so a big day for Venice.
 
@JosephWright What do you think about this username: stackexchangespambot – or more important what do probably the Powers that be think about such a name?
 
5:33 PM
@Speravir I think you're right. Without a reference it the last sentence does read like a forceful opinion. It would be interesting to know barbara beeton's response. Wouldn't she know that kind of thing?
 
@NicolaTalbot She should at least have much more insight/knowledge.
 
@Speravir I should've pinged her in my last comment. @barbarabeeton do you have any insight on the above?
 
@NicolaTalbot The pinging could fail, if she was too long absent from chat. Then we would need a moderator here …
 
@Speravir Oh, okay. Got to go now. Bye.
 
kan
5:50 PM
 c_1 = y(1)

   c_2 = (y(2)-y(1))/(x(2)-x(1))

   c_3 = (((y(3)-y(1))*(x(2)-x(1)))-(y(2)-y(1))*(x(3)-x(1)))/((x(3)-x(1))*(x(3)-x(2))*(x(2)-x(1)))

c_4_prime = (y(2)-y(1))*(x(4)-x(1))*(x(4)-x(3))/((x(3)-x(2))*(x(2)-x(1))) + (y(4)-y(1))*(x(3)-x(1))*(x(3)-x(2))/((x(3)-x(1))*(x(3)-x(2))) - (y(3)-y(1))*(x(4)-x(1))*(x(4)-x(2))/((x(3)-x(1))*(x(3)-x(2)))

  c_4 = c_4_prime/((x(4)-x(1))*(x(4)-x(2))*(x(4)-x(3)))
At this time, this does not look nice, does it?
 
@kan I'd read the entire "War and peace" instead of trying to follow that. ;-)
2
 
@kan if you got a parenthesis fetish it is awesome else it is not ...
 
@egreg In the original, I suppose. :)
 
kan
@egreg :) Really, I am thinking along similar lines.
 
@PauloCereda My Russian is not that good.
 
kan
5:54 PM
All of this can be done in principle.
Is there a column editing mode in emacs?
I want to add data and I'd find this helpful.
 
@kan org mode?
 
kan
@egreg No, the major mode I am in is LaTeX mode.
 
I think to be allowed to study physics one should have a math master and before someone is allowed to study math he should learn some years LaTeX
 
kan
@DominicMichaelis We have a course called Writing of Mathematics.
 
i am so pissed of reading all time 2,123123 where it should be 2{,}123123
 
kan
5:59 PM
(in my first year at college)
 
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