TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:04 AM

pgfplot seems a little strange. options added to {axis} do not affect the addplot, and one much be explicit by addition the options to the \addplot itself:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.4]
  \begin{axis}[anchor=center,domain=0:2*pi,mark=none,smooth]
        \addplot (\x,{sin(deg(\x))}); \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.4]
	\begin{axis}[anchor=center,domain=0:2*pi]

I thought the options (mark=none,smooth) on the axis itself will do it. But no, I had to put them on the \addplot itself. a little strange.

Paulo Cereda

@Nasser Personally, it makes sense to me. :) It's a plot property. :)

Nasser

@PauloCereda I guess this makes sense when I think about it. May be to allow one to add more plots on same axes, each with different property.

Paulo Cereda

@Nasser Matter of taste and usage. :)

yo'

@Nasser well, you can want to have boxed plot with a smooth line over it and a messy line too :)

Nasser

But it accepted these options on the axes? And there was no warning and no error. I guess it just ignores options that it does not know what to with them.

yo'

12:13 AM

@Nasser because it's difficult to make a system of properties that are all properly used.

Nasser

@yo' well, when I write a function that takes options and such, I would first have a pass to check that all options given are valid for this function, if not, will return an error. But many programs do not check all of these things. too much work I guess. Maple and Mathematica also sometimes do this. I can call a command there with option it does not know about, and it just ignores it.

David Carlisle

@Nasser you are writing as if there is a compiler with functions that return things, this is TeX, it's a macro replacement language, sensible error recovery is virtually impossible

yo'

@Nasser but you have zillions of functions that share almost the same set of options and are coded together. And you even have options to a single command which do nothing in one context but do something in another one

Nasser

but the problem, like in this example, is that a user could be using options, which are not valid for one command, and they would not know, because there is no error, and then wonder why it is not working.

yo'

@Nasser that happens

but as I say, it's not just complicated to catch it. It's close to impossible

David Carlisle

12:20 AM

@Nasser ever tried going \begin{figure}[hello nasser] ?

yo'

@DavidCarlisle that's a nice one, yeah :D

David Carlisle

@yo' I've changed that for 2015, if we ever get it out:-)

yo'

much better than \begin{tabular}{hello nasser}

@DavidCarlisle oh no! I use it for placing comments in my code! /kidding

David Carlisle

@yo' I'm expecting to find out how many people have used H without loading float.....

yo'

@DavidCarlisle make H default to: Dear user, you're a failure.

David Carlisle

12:23 AM

@yo' or I'm sorry, I was young at the time

yo'

@DavidCarlisle and I wanted to save 2 csnames.

David Carlisle

@yo' actually for the float [] argument I don't recall trying to save space I think we just never noticed that it never checked, the code basically came from latex2.09, we just added ! handling. Leslie's book has a quote somewhere to the effect that the amount of error checking is correlated to the weather in seattle at the time he coded the feature..

5

yo'

hey whose was the other star?! :D

Paul Gessler

@yo' that was me (lurking, just got back from doing the dishes :-) )

yo'

@PaulGessler ah ok :D

Paul Gessler

12:28 AM

Is there any better way to do this than what I've proposed?

0

A: How to expand row height while using long text in multirow?

Here is one approach, using a p column (from the array package) of the specified width (8 cm) to replace your \parbox and \multirow construction. The rest of the cells to the side are placed in a nested tabular aligned to the [t]op, with the spacing around the outer column zeroed for consistent ...

yo'

@PaulGessler who knows, maybe yes. Anyways, it smells to me as a misused table for a list

@DavidCarlisle the funny thing is: with TeX you simply don't need to check, \csname handles it nicely :D

egreg

@PaulGessler Not using \multirow? ;-) Good night.

yo'

@egreg nighty night

Nasser

here is a maple example, where it also does not check for options it does not know what to do with them. Same as latex.

Paul Gessler

@egreg I didn't use multirow... ;-) 'night!

Nasser

12:34 AM

I used mikyMouse as option, and no error.

yo'

@Nasser but here it's not the same. Try \tikzset{ bla./style= mikyMouse }

or \usepackage[mikyMouse]{geometry}

Nasser

@yo' I get Package pgfkeys Error: I do not know the key '/tikz/bla./style', to which you passed 'mikyMouse', and I am going to ignore it. Perhaps you misspelled it. \tikzset{ bla./style= mikyMouse } so it still ignored it and that is what Maple did. But at least tikz did generate a warning message, which is good

yo'

@Nasser ah sorry, ./ should be /. as in: \tikzset{ bla/.style= mikyMouse }

you should get: I don't know mikyMouse

Nasser

I wish there is a course that teaches latex and tikz and all of these things. I would take it. It is easier to take a course in person to learn these things. I never saw any place that give course in these topics.

I've seen lots of places that give courses in indesign and autocad and MS word and such around.

Paul Gessler

12:49 AM

@Nasser seriously: the documentation for TikZ and pgfplots are some of the best I've seen. I picked it up little by little, just searching the doc when I ran into something I couldn't do. This takes time, simply because the feature set of these drawing packages is huge. Don't get disheartened; you'll get there. :-)

yo'

@Nasser my university has one, but it's tough to make such a course. Similarly to any programming, you have soo much varying level of knowledge

@PaulGessler the manual is very long, difficult to navigate (simply because it's too long) and has a long learning curve in using it. The index is difficult, too

Nasser

@PaulGessler I know, but latex and tikz is about programming. Just like there are programming courses in c/java/c++ etc... even though lots of manuals around. It helps to learn things faster when in class and can ask questions.

Paul Gessler

@yo' true, but I can't think of a better way to do it. The fact that I can click on most any command and get to its introduction/definition instantly largely solves the index problem.

@Nasser that's what TeX.SX is for! :-)

yo'

@PaulGessler but the index is bad: you have dozens of subitems, the PDF ToC doesn't have letters (nor sub-letters), which makes it even worse.

Nasser

@PaulGessler yes, but it is not really the same as taking a course, with a teacher that can explain things in front of you on the black board and you ask questions, etc...

it does not have to a university. May be few latex/tikz experts can set up such a thing, and charge per person some fee. May be a 1 weeks class, or such type of thing.

David Carlisle

12:59 AM

@Nasser uktug run latex courses (I think normally Joseph and Nicola give them) egreg gives a latex course at his university as far as I know. trouble is actually preparing a course is hard work and most people don't want to pay as they can come here and get help for free (or to c.t.t or just google) very few people have succeed in making a living from that kind of work

Nasser

1:30 AM

@DavidCarlisle maybe we need to make latex/tikz/etc.. more popular in the market place then?

indeed.com/jobtrends?q=indesign%2C+latex%2C+html5&l=

yo'

@Nasser how much of "latex" is sex industry?

Nasser

@yo' these are job skils (indeed.com) I do not think the latex cloth with go there, but I am not really not sure. good point.

yo'

@Nasser if you click it, you'll see that in the first page, only 2 or 3 are LaTeX, the rest is latex.

Paul Gessler

@yo' one of the position descriptions may be written by a certain PLOS ONE paper author: Administrative Fellow - Able to work in a latex burdened environment. haha!

Werner

6:05 AM

@DavidCarlisle: A tabularx environment is processed multiple times (perhaps only twice...). How do I know which cycle I'm in?

@DavidCarlisle: See this question:

0

Q: tabularx processes its body multiple times; how do I know which cycle am I in?

Assume that I enjoy setting my tables using an \itemized coding structure: \begin{mytabular}[.5\textwidth] \item head1 & head2% <-- header row \item abc & def \item ghi & jkl \end{mytabular} The idea is that I always have the first row being a header row, with subsequent rows representin...

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