I had an idea this morning for a blog entry: a guide on installing packages from CTAN and other places (like Github, Bittorrent, ...). Apparently many people have still issues with DTX and INS files.

I could start with one blog about CTAN and then add to it.

@MartinScharrer Please start with 'first check your TeX package manager'!

@JosephWright Good point!

Is there a size limitation on blogs? Should I go for smaller entries or for one or two big ones?

@MartinScharrer There's no formal limit, but really long posts are hard to read. So I'd split them up - this also makes a nice way to keep a flow of posts. You can write them all at the same time, then set them to appear automatically

Shall I release @PauloCereda's post?

@JosephWright Go ahead. With the paragraphs added it looks much better.

Do we have an official point on using US or UK English or can anyone do it like he wants?

@MartinScharrer I think "author's choice" - I'll use UK, other's I guess will use US conventions

@MartinScharrer I think @PauloCereda's post gives a good idea on length - I would not want a single post much longer than this, at least without there being code blocks or images

Th US/UK thing also applies to quotes - I've used UK (single) quotes, Paulo has used US (double) quotes

@JosephWright I would say so. Longer text would really need some images etc.

Does wordpress supports multiple pages for a post? You know the "[2] [3] [4]" buttons at the end.

in the html tab, use <!--nextpage-->

@RebeccaChernoff Thanks!

@MartinScharrer Really long posts tend to suggest that the material should have been split

Should blog posts be kept in there original form and new stuff be published as a follow up blog post or should they be extended?

@JosephWright Ok this kind of answers my last question as well.

@JosephWright: We should add a link to the meta post of the blog to here and vice versa. So it is easier to jump from one to the other.

Blog page on Meta.TeX.SX

Cool, we can haz images for the next entriez! I thought of putting the "It can work!" scene from Gene Wilder on Young Frankenstein... =P

Or this one: youtube.com/watch?v=gENVB6tjq_M

@JosephWright: btw, thanks for revising and publishing my entry. =)

@MartinScharrer Normally people read blogs like newspaper articles - revisions will therefore tend to be missed. So in general I'd favour new articles over revsions

There's a comment asking about the site abbreviations: tex.blogoverflow.com/2011/07/welcome-to-the-tex-sx-blog/…

Personally, I'd favour 'TeX.SX' over 'TeX.sx' as it emphasises the abbreviation nature of the ending. However, the feeling seems to be for lower case here

Anyone want to comment, beyond 'we seem to have standardised on .sx, probably as it matches TeX nicely but also as it does not imply any link to Sweden'

@JosephWright I vote for TeX.SX also (actually, I vote for TeX-SX but of the two options given I'd go for the former).

@AndrewStacey I can certainly see the logic to TeX-SX: what we do need is a common position on this. Other thoughts?

@AndrewStacey I now have to agree. an .sx ending looks to much as a top level domain.

How is: TeX.sX !? :-)

TeXsX ?

We seem pretty definite on 'SX' in some form, not 'SE'. As the ending is clearly an abbreviation, convention demands capitals. So it comes down to 'TeX.SX' or 'TeX-SX'. Other sites all use a '.', so we should probably go with that

Shall I edit what we have?

@JosephWright I wasn't fully serious. :-) I'm fine with 'TeX.SX'. Feel free to edit.

Personally, I like SX, though I see sx to be more appropriated. Since TeX needs to be spelled as it is (capital T, lowercase e and capital X), sx breaks the caps lock party.

@MartinScharrer TBH they do look a clone army. =) I need to find a good image.

OK, again. We have a new potential contributor: Raphink. (meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1444/…)

Isn't there some feature in wordpress that means we only see the first paragraph of a post on the main page? I like being able to scan down quickly to see "abstracts" of posts.

@AndrewStacey That can be set as an appearance setting - we can alter that if people prefer it

@AndrewStacey Hm I think we need to manually add the Read more WP tag in the article.

Oh nevermind, I didn't know about the appearance setting.

@PauloCereda I'm testing this out now - perhaps I've got it wrong (can't seem to find the appropriate button!)

@JosephWright I did think that there was something that had to be added to the article as well (something like <!-- more -->), but as I've said elsewhere I've no experience of WP.

@AndrewStacey I'm not 100% sure. I suspect that there is a theme-based setting to use the excerpt rather than the full post on the main page.

Ah ha: plugin 'Auto Excerpt everywhere' will do this

Also dailyblogtips.com/homepage-excerpts-wordpress-plugin, but I can't find this in the WordPress directory

Can we get a mathematics plugin? I'm guessing that MathML won't be allowed (since - as far as I know - it takes a little modification of the base code to make wordpress XHTML-compliant), but some sort of rendering would be nice. In the absence of MathML, MathJaX would be nicest.

(@RebeccaChernoff: I guess that previous message was aimed mainly at you)

Hm MathJax Wordpress integration seems pretty smooth.

@AndrewStacey Surely we don't want that, on the same basis that the main site does not do this. The blog is about TeX, not about maths, and we're much more likely to want to post code than output. If we do want output rendering, QuickLaTeX (www.holoborodko.com/pavel/quicklatex/) might be better, as it is (a) turned on selectively and (b) uses real LaTeX for rendering.

@JosephWright Good point!

@MartinScharrer, @StefanKottwitz I've added a first draft for a 'birthday' post. Would you take a look and see if it looks okay.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mathjax-latex is installed on the blog network, but since I saw it wasn't enabled on the site I didn't enable it on the blog. If it suits your needs I can just click the enable button.

@RebeccaChernoff Joseph is completely right: it shouldn't be on by default. However, I can think of a few occasions where I would like to be able to put mathematics on the blog. Is there some way that some sort of mathematics plugin can be used that can be turned on for specific posts?

It's my understanding that the plugin I linked does just that, hrm.

I guess I didn't verify though, lemme see

I guess one possible solution is to set up MathJaX to not recognize LaTeX, but only MathML.

yeah, on the cstheory blog if I view a post where they've used it, I see the scripts referenced.

on another "regular" post, the scripts are ommitted

Does anyone else have the problem that the WP blog isn't remembering me? I always click on the "remember me" but it never does (after closing and opening my browser). Also my browser doesn't remember my password, though I'm sure I told it to.

@RebeccaChernoff So what's the syntax to switch it on? And what happens on the "main" page where every (recent) post is displayed? (Incidentally, how do we get it so that the main page just displays summaries?)

use the more code for the summary

read the plugin page I linked, it talks about the syntax

it's included where it is needed, so on the homepage if a recent post has it, it'll be used.

@RebeccaChernoff "more code"? I'm a WP novice! Re MathJaX: I'd actually have it off always on the main page. On MO we do this and it makes the experience so much nicer than on MSE.

you'd need to play with whether the syntax in the post but not the summary means it gets left out on the homepage

there's a button for more on the editor toolbar I think.

I think it is <!--more--> without looking

(: what does it add to the post?

In the left of the spell checker.

@RebeccaChernoff <!--more--> =)

\o/

@RebeccaChernoff I see that if I want to disable MathJaX then I can put the [nomathjax] tag so it'd be interesting to see if, on the main page, there's a post with MathJaX and [nomathjax] which one won.

dunno, does it talk about how it overrides?

I bet nomathjax would win

We could also define some different delimiters, instead of $ ... $.

@JosephWright: So what do you think about MathJaX with the "easy turn-on and off-ability"?