TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:48 AM

@egreg Buonanotte! :)

2:44 AM

I have a great idea for a latex book. I am just not good enough to do it. In all the latex books I have, none of them do this in any good way. Here is the idea: The book will be just full of small complete examples how to setup different things. On the left side will be the result, and on the right side will be the code. That is all.

Many times I want to do something, and I spend so much time looking for example like it. If there was such a book, or web site, that will be help. It will be like a handbook, or catalog type book. But it has to be extensive and covers many different variations of the same thing to make it complete.

2 another items that htlatex does not support for HTML: minpages and multicol :(

user1460166

3:36 AM

hi, anyone here?

Stephan Lehmke

just us mice

user1460166

thanks

Could you please help me do something as it is very urgent

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 Does it have to do with music typesetting?

user1460166

I want to add header to all my pages in the document but its not working

0

Q: Header in Latex

I'm trying the below script to make a header but its not working and this is very urgent if anyone could help me. \documentclass[conference,letterpaper]{IEEEtran} \usepackage{fancyhdr} \setlength{\paperwidth}{215.9mm} \setlength{\hoffset}{-9.7mm} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0mm} \setlength{\textw...

header-footer

I've tried this script but nothing appears

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 Have you seen the answer by @gonzalomedina?

user1460166

3:47 AM

yes

but not working

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 Works for me also. Maybe there's something wrong with your setup? Are you getting error messages?

user1460166

nope

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 I'm afraid as long as nobody can reproduce your problem, there's no means to help.

user1460166

can you try his solution with my script in my question, as this is a conference template I can't just remove it

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 Gonzalo is using the conference template.

@user1460166 Setting headheight to 0 is absurd if you want a header.

user1460166

3:59 AM

but all the other settings he removed was in the conference template I downloaded

Stephan Lehmke

@user1460166 Sorry, but that's just not the way it works. Gonzalo gave you a working example to start from. Please find out what exactly needs to be added (by systematic experimentation) to make it stop working. Then you have the basis for asking a precise question.

@user1460166 Maybe the conference template doesn't allow you to use a header.

nutty about natty

5:59 AM

@DavidCarlisle David, where should I put this chunk of code? Into the preamble, or right before the "offending" chapter begins?

Nasser

any one here uses latexml? I have simple question on it.

It seems to work well, except when I use some packages it does not know about. Like it does not handle verbatim, multicol so far.

I installed it on Linux latexml (LaTeXML version 0.7.0)

michal.h21

6:40 AM

@Nasser this is not surprising - CSS columns didn't exist when tex4ht was created. And of course, it is really impossible for tex4ht to support all of thousands LaTeX packages, commands and environments. Especially in the case when they produce something what doesn't have equivalent in HTML. But it should be possible to configure both multicol and minipage to your needs with \ConfigureEnv and some CSS code.

Nasser

6:58 AM

@michal.h21 sure. I understand. It is struggle though to understand some simple things about htlatex. Like why this code

\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{p{1in}|p{7in}}
dfkjadfkljds;afkjdsf;kldjsf;lkdsjafkldsjflk;dsjfadsl;fj
dfkjadfkljds;afkjdsf;kldjsf;lkdsjafkldsjflk;dsjfadsl;fj
dfkjadfkljds;afkjdsf;kldjsf;lkdsjafkldsjflk;dsjfadsl;fj
&
dkfjdasklfjsd
\end{tabularx}

does not make a table of first col smaller than the second. it is always the first column is very wide.

it is driving me crazy :)

The problem really is that the mapping from Latex to HTML seems to be always somewhat distorted. What I see in PDF does not always match what is on the HTML page. Like the above simple example.

I know it is very hard problem, this latex to HTML conversion. It is like magic for me.

michal.h21

@Nasser yeah, I was looking at that issue and it is hidden really deep, I think tables handling is one of most mysterious thing with tex4ht. probably easiest is to fix such issues with some CSS

@Nasser yeah, because sometimes what seems simple is in reality pretty complex.

Nasser

@michal.h21 I am now just playing with latexml to try it out. It seems OK so far, but many packages are missing. But I think this is matter of just finding missing ones and installing them from here trac.mathweb.org/LaTeXML/browser/trunk/lib/LaTeXML/Package

I was impressed with dlmf.nist.gov it was generated by latexml.

but I just started playing with it few hrs ago. Wanted to try it out.

Nasser

7:22 AM

@michal.h21 You might like to see this book. It mentions tex4ht and latexml and the whole issue of converting latex to other formats. link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11786-010-0024-7.pdf

David Carlisle

@nuttyaboutnatty nowhere I was just showing it,that is the standard definition from book class.

@Nasser I suspect it simply ignores the widths (which is often the right thing to do) as the page size is typically completely different the model was converting existing latex files, not as you are doing writing a file for dual use from the start, in the latter case it is much easier to come up with sensible interpretations for col widths

@Nasser that is being used to convert the arxiv archive with quite high (but not 100%) success rates

Nasser

@DavidCarlisle, I found also latexml ignores the widths given. I run the same example on latexml with similar result as tex4ht

I am learning latexml now. But very HARD to find any simple instructions to follow ! Like how to install latexml packages from trac.mathweb.org/LaTeXML/browser/trunk/lib/LaTeXML/Package it is amazing that no one explains things in simple terms any more. Or may be I am just getting old. I do not know ;)

David Carlisle

@Nasser as I say it's probably a deliberate decision in both cases (although both could be configured differently) almost everything about the table models of tex and css/html are different so it is hard to come up with a natural mapping from one to the other.

@Nasser latexml hasn't so much end user doc, it was originally an internal project to produce the DLMF at NIST, but it's an impressive system.

Nasser

yes, it is. But no one seems to use it. I find ONE post on it at stackoverflow. ONE post only :)

I think I am the third person outside NIST who is using it now

There is a mailing list here trac.mathweb.org/LaTeXML that I just joined. waiting approval. Maybe I can ask some basic questions on it.

If latexml does not work, I'll give up, and will go back to using Microsoft word :)

interesting free PDF paper here philpapers.org/rec/KOHTTA called "transforming the arxiv to XML".

from the above "Unfortunately the LATEX language mixes content and
presentation" I think there is truth to that !

michal.h21

7:39 AM

@Nasser yeah, I don't think configuring LaTeXML would be easier than TeX4ht. And with tex4ht, at least content, if not documenrt structure is saved

Nasser

@michal.h21 on one file I have, latexml needs these:

Conversion complete: 2 warnings; 4 errors; 4 missing files[lmodern, verbatim, fontenc, fancyvrb]

so I need to find these and installing them, somehere, somehow.

michal.h21

@Nasser it depend's on style of everyone, you can use pretty structured macros, or some direct formatting instructions.

Nasser

but it is FAST actually. Faster than latex2html and htlatex. I think this is becuase it does not generate .png files. it uses mathml.

michal.h21

@Nasser tex4ht is slow because it runs latex 3 times. but with make4ht, you can create make file to run it only once. and you can use mathml with tex4ht too

Dominic Michaelis

Hello I want to try the following: when i label something which got an explicit name beside the standard name like for examlpe in \begin{Theorem}[Fundamental Theorem of Algebra] ... I want that when i use a \ref (or a \cref) that the link looks like Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (Theorem x.y)

David Carlisle

8:13 AM

@Nasser well not exactly, Michael has had a succession of students working on it and extending it as they worked through the arxiv archive of latex documents, but I don't think Michael or Bruce (who wrote all of it originally) are going out of their way to advertise it. Users can be such a pain:-)

@Nasser you don't need html customisation for most packages (or just make an empty one to silence the warning) You don't need to use the same fonts in pdf and html, so you don't need lmodern, you definitely don't want to move the crazy world of tex font encodings over to html so you don't want fontenc and if you write verbatim.4ht or fancyvrb.4ht into google the first hit in each case is a file you just need to copy.

@DominicMichaelis nameref i think will do that

Dominic Michaelis

9:29 AM

not with the default settings :D

Paulo Cereda

@egreg: happy St. Anthony's day! :)

egreg

@PauloCereda The weather is very good! Last year's procession had to be cancelled for heavy rain. :) More than 100000 visitors are expected, according to the newspaper.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Yay! :)

mozartstraße

10:42 AM

David Carlisle

10:53 AM

@mozartstraße new name, one of your old faces?

mozartstraße

11:13 AM

@DavidCarlisle :-)

ach

Is there a good discussion of the benefits (and drawbacks !) of extra leading (double spacing, one-half spacing) that anyone is aware of ? CMS, some website ? I would like to convince my supervisor of the evils of double spacing, and this would aid in that purpose

mozartstraße

I wonder how you get money to live while you are always online here almost everyday?

David Carlisle

@mozartstraße don't confuse an open firefox tab with actually being here:-)

mozartstraße

11:47 AM

@DavidCarlisle :-)

David Carlisle

12:34 PM

!!/battle

@PauloCereda hmph Psmith never there when you need him.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Oh wait. :)

!!/battle

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 215 vs. 220 David. So far, David is winning.

ooh close call! :)

David Carlisle

12:51 PM

@PauloCereda yes good job egreg is out partying, that's why I wanted Psmith before he got back:-)

egreg

!!/battle

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 215 vs. 230 David. So far, David is winning.

egreg

It should be 230, now. ;-)

David Carlisle

oops he got back:(

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Isn't this sportmanship?

David Carlisle

12:52 PM

@egreg it's not cricket

ach

Tex.SE is serious business

egreg

@ach Definitely.

ach

Oh, btw @egreg you don't happen to have a good reference I can use to explain the evils of double-spaced text ? I am having a fun time trying to convince my supervisor.

egreg

@ach What about showing him/her two pages? One single-spaced, the other one double-spaced.

David Carlisle

@ach is this for a paper or for your actual thesis (in the latter case there are often rules to be followed and what it looks like isn't highest priority)

ach

1:00 PM

the problem is, he thinks it looks better double spaced

it is, indeed, a thesis

egreg

@ach Show him Botticelli's "La primavera" and some rubbish painting.

ach

@egreg he thinks doublespacing looks clearer / better. In addition, the argument that 'well double spacing just looks like a thesis* has been made

which I dislike

@DavidCarlisle it's at Oxford, in fact

David Carlisle

@ach where's that?

egreg

@ach Well, cars used to have high wooden wheels so they looked like cars.

David Carlisle

@ach hmm you might need to check they almost certainly do have rules. A single spaced thesis is probably a bigger crime than walking on the grass, and prevent ever getting a degree....

ach

1:03 PM

@DavidCarlisle there are pages of rules, and then, at the very end, the clause "or, in the manner of a well presented book"

David Carlisle

@ach when in doubt, always draft a get-out clause:-)

ach

@egreg do you know the musical fiddler on the roof

there's a song, "Tradition"

that describes the situation quite well

at Oxford :)

egreg

@ach Prepare one version for your supervisor and one for you to enjoy.

ach

@DavidCarlisle My strategy will probably be to ask if I can submit a properly typeset version after corrections - if the examiners want a 1.5 or 2x copy so be it

@egreg probably the best solution, yes

but it makes quite a difference for page breaks, float positioning, etc. I guess that's just life !

egreg

1:16 PM

@ach I wouldn't bother with page breaks and float positioning for the doublespaced version: if they want junk, so be it. ;-)

ach

:)

egreg

@ach I wasn't referring to the contents of the thesis, of course. ;-)

ach

Well, that just seems I am being awkward on purpose :).

egreg

@ach During my LaTeX course I always tell the students that their thesis should be as readable as possible: somebody has to read it! The better we set our text, the easier will be for the examiners to do their duty.

ach

@egreg I agree, but when I pointed out that books are not double spaced it was put to me that this was to save printing cost (!!) and that one typically would not read a whole book in one go as one would a thesis.

what can I say

some people have their own opinions

David Carlisle

1:22 PM

@ach when I started my phd my supervisor told me where to find the university rules but remarked that his own thesis had been around 8 pages long, if you prove a good enough result they couldn't fail you no matter what....

egreg

@ach And some opinion is simply wrong.

egreg

1:40 PM

!!/battle

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 230 vs. 245 David. So far, David is winning.

!!/fortune

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Here is your fortune: Watch out for low flying ducks.

Marco Daniel

2:24 PM

@PauloCereda: Updated the rule makeindex

Paulo Cereda

@MarcoDaniel Oh no! :) What happened?

Marco Daniel

@PauloCereda makeindex rule has the fixed extension idx.

A new package: github.com/marcodaniel/lengthconvert

:-)

egreg

2:44 PM

@MarcoDaniel Why using clists? I'd use sequences. IMO the "precision" should use an integer variable, which can better catch input errors.

@MarcoDaniel Did you think to a property list for associating long names to symbols?

Marco Daniel

@egreg clist: I think I am the only one who uses this list ;-) -- To precision: Good point ;-) -- I will change it.

I need this macro for another package

@egreg Do you mean instead of using a meta key?

egreg

@MarcoDaniel In any case, shouldn't the lists of units be global rather than local? Or perhaps constant.

@MarcoDaniel There's a lot of code duplication, I think.

Marco Daniel

@egreg Indeed. E.g. the calculation step.

@egreg precision: fixed; duplicated: reduced; local list: fixed

Jake

@MarcoDaniel Nice! Feature request: Feet, miles, metres, kilometres, furlongs (but I guess that's not the use-case you had in mind?)

Marco Daniel

@Jake My first request ;-)

tohecz

2:58 PM

Hello everybody!

Nasser

3:25 PM

I see a tag for XML and tag ofcourse for Latex. Does this mean one is allowed to ask questions on LateXML in here?

cgnieder

3:36 PM

@ach True, nobody would ever do that. Books are not meant to be read after all! Or wait: what if they are? ... People have strange opinions

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle: I'm trying to find out if EA has a cricket game for Xbox. :)

David Carlisle

!!/cricket

Paulo Cereda

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last cricket results:

- Leicestershire 142/3 * v Northamptonshire 567/7
- Middlesex 27/1 &  175/10 * v Yorkshire 390/10
- Durham 267/10 &  18 * v Warwickshire 209/10
- Essex 273/10  v Lancashire 185/5 *
- Hampshire v Gloucestershire 242/5 *
- Kent 8 * v Glamorgan 378/10
- Nottinghamshire v Derbyshire 306/6 *
- Sussex 201/4 * v Surrey
- England 256/7 * v Sri Lanka

Our cricket expert David might explain these results later on.

@DavidCarlisle Give M an Xbox. :)

Nasser

if one installs TexLive 2013, does it also come with TexLive-science? (for things like algorithms package) or does one have to install that manually afterwords? Worried about version problems.

Torbjørn T.

@Nasser You can choose what to install, the default is everything in TeX Live, I believe.

Nasser

3:47 PM

I just installed texlive-science using sudo apt-get install texlive-science and found problem. I am using debian TexLive package as well.

@TorbjørnT. but if default is everything, why it was missing then on my Linux mint box? I did install tex-live debian package before? It was missing the algorithms2e.sty and googling around found I need to do more installations...

David Carlisle

@Nasser The usual recommendation is to install a vanilla texlive from tug rather than the repackaged linux distribution versions (only problem is persuading your OS package manager that you do have tex in that case)

Nasser

I should make a new VM now, install new Linux, and install TexLive from TUG and not touch debian texlive stuff again.

Torbjørn T.

@Nasser I was referring to the TUG version, not the one in Debian/Ubuntu repos.

Nasser

@DavidCarlisle good idea. But when as most users, start using linux, they use sudo command with install to install stuff. They do not know that there is TUG and another texLive. This is a big mess.

Why not have just ONE version of texlive, and one place, instead of different packages on different linux versions and so on. someone needs to have a meeting with all the linux distros and sort this mess out.

tohecz

@Nasser do not use the Debian-based packages, it is quite a source of problems. Install from the tug.org website, you can choose the full install.

David Carlisle

3:54 PM

@Nasser Not really (a) most users just use article class and cm fonts and a distribution from 1995 will work fine. (b) Most users of the linux distro version have everything they need or can get it using yum or apt-get or whatever. It is only people who hang arond sites like this who get worried that they have last year's version of a package.

Nasser

texlive on debian package manager screen:

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle I solved this by installing the official one (in /usr/share/texmf), then install the official one (in /usr/local/texlive) and then give /usr/local/bin larger priority than /usr/bin

Nasser

David Carlisle

@Nasser Either way it's not really a "mess" and a lot easier than getting a large tape of the unix tex distribution, compiling it from source and then trying to add additional latex packages by using JANET ftp from the aston tex archive or from the states via a JANET/internet relay (which involved at least a day to fetch anything)

Nasser

@DavidCarlisle it is really more than just this. It is the idea of using software engineering right. There should be one version, one source, and one known fixed places to install something from. This mess extends to Linux itself as well. Too many different versions of same thing all over the place. Any way, getting off topic, so I'll be quite and just use TUG's texlive

David Carlisle

3:59 PM

@tohecz Yes I do something with cygwin, cygwin's tex is installed somewhere and I hav ea tug cygwin texlive in front of it in the path.

@Nasser it's like saying there should be one linux not debian and fedora and ubuntu and .... one linux package system not yum and apt-get and whatever, saying it would be simpler doesn't actually make it happen. Perhaps everyone should use Windows, or a Mac or PS/2 or something. Life's complicated:-)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle Comodore64 FTW :D

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Xbox!

Nasser

@DavidCarlisle I am talking about the same NAME coming from 2 different places. If debian texlive was NOT called texlive, then it is OK. if it was called debianTex for example. fedora has different name from mint. I am talking about calling something the same name, when it is different somehow. Any way, I do not think having 100 different flavors for Linux is a good thing. Or for any software. Users do not really want 100 different choices of one thing, just one good to use.

Paulo Cereda

@Nasser The problem is: packagers usually do not own the app they package, so renaming might cause serious problems with licensing.

ach

But @Nasser isn't this the case for all packaged goods you might get via apt-get ? It is just quite evident in TeX distros because of the pace of updates - but you would have the very same problem with any other software

@cgnieder books are made so they can be put on the shelf and look good

cgnieder

4:14 PM

@ach Ah right! I always keep forgetting that :)

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TeX, LaTeX and Friends

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends