TeX, LaTeX and Friends

Paulo Cereda

12:22 AM

@egreg Cool! :)

egreg

@PauloCereda I was somewhere among the crowd behind the players.

WG-

12:44 AM

Anyone still here?

tohecz

10:15 AM

10 hours without a message -- isn't it a new record? :D

David Carlisle

@tohecz well we were trying for 11 hours but you wrecked it:-)

5

Vivi

OK, I should be sleeping, but I want to say again that I really like your comment on that question that was downvoted, @tohecz .

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle sorry, I'm just feeling lonely and homesick

Vivi

The first person to downvote did not say a word! :(

David Carlisle

@tohecz I'm sure this was the news you were looking for:

tohecz

10:18 AM

@Vivi thanks, I would also wish that people were more "tutoring" with the negative feedback

David Carlisle

India: 326-9 (143.0 overs)
England: 330 & 352-4 (154.0 overs)
India drew with England

First time England has won a series in India since 1984-5

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle damn, don't you have some well-stated game-theoretical definitions? :D

I somehow feeling asking a meta question "cricket score explained" with tags chat and duck

David Carlisle

@tohecz @egreg is quite the cricket expert these days, he'll explain it all later

tohecz

@Vivi There're many people who don't like the existence of the downvote button at all, and other people who don't like the voting system at all, e.g. Ulrike

egreg

10:48 AM

@tohecz Why the score has an & for England and none for India is beyond my understanding. Why this should be a draw either. :)

David Carlisle

@egreg India only got one go, they did not get all the England players out in England's second innings (hence the`-4` in our second innings score) so the England innings was still in play and India had not started their 2nd innings when 5 days were up and out of time, so it was a draw.

Paulo Cereda

12:48 PM

lalalalalalalalalalala

I need to be more noisy here.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda If only you had a bot to talk to, you wouldn't need us.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle <3

tohecz

1:09 PM

!!/texdef -t latex -p mathtools dcases

sometimes the macro naming conventions are crazy:

\MT_start_cases:nnnn

is it microtype or mathtools, who knows...

David Carlisle

@tohecz latex3 started a register of prefixes so perhaps in future you might know

@tohecz although given that you used -p mathtools to generate the output, I suspect it is mathtools rather than microtype

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle well, its part of \show\dcases, but microtype does a lot of work at many different places, so I wasn't sure

btw, what is the name of the width of \right. ?

David Carlisle

@tohecz nulldelimiterspace

egreg

@tohecz \nulldelimiterspace

tohecz

fuck, this i/e thing will kill me one day

David Carlisle

1:19 PM

yeh I'm faster than egreg today

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Just because the browser had problems. :)

David Carlisle

@egreg excuses excuses

3

@egreg I suppose that's why you're 105 behind today:-)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle We'll see tonight. :)

David Carlisle

@egreg actually I was a bit disappointed that I got a lot overnight as I thought I might see 66666 but I'd passed it this morning

egreg

1:40 PM

I've come to a conclusion: Opera sucks.

Joseph Wright

@egreg Opera the art form or Opera the internet browser?

tohecz

@JosephWright knowing @egreg, I suppose the latter.

egreg

@JosephWright The latter. Also the former, if you mean anything produced from 1813 (the year in which Verdi and Wagner were born) onward.

unNaturhal

Hallo!

Could someone help me with a problem about TIKZ?

I am trying to get an entity to be displayed as a dot along with some text, and to make the linking edge connect with this dot..

David Carlisle

@egreg You should try using IE

egreg

1:53 PM

@DavidCarlisle What's that? :P

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Give FF another try. :)

And please, don't use Chrome.

David Carlisle

@egreg The thing in my nighmares, presently

egreg

@PauloCereda It says that my system doesn't allow installing Firefox. And I've excluded Chrome from my list of browsers long ago, when it had the habit of updating itself without notice.

kan

@PauloCereda Why? :)

@unNaturhal this is a very vague description to be able to help you with; can you consider giving us little more details.

Paulo Cereda

@kan Google.

unNaturhal

2:05 PM

@kan I asked a question on the main site :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda I use many Google products, but not a single one that I would have to install on my computer. For instance, I once installed Picassa and after running it for the first time, it started to search and index all images in my home folder, with no way to make it stop other than closing it.

@unNaturhal if you copy-paste a http address fo the question here, a nice preview appears ;)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Exactly. Google is dangerous enough to let it live inside our machines. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda but as you surely know, FF uses google-analytics to detect malware pages, so you are trapped anyways :D

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Mine is disabled. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda and the major sponsor of mozilla is?

tohecz

2:09 PM

@PauloCereda mine not. But I came to conclusion that you cannot "hide" yourselg. In medieval ages, houses had no locks and whoever could enter your house. Now houses have locks, but many people/institutions still know how many flowers you have bought to your mom (if you paid by CC)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle NAG? :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda not exactly:-) .... Mozilla Corporation generated 66.8 million dollars in revenue and 19.8 million in expenses, with 85% of that revenue coming from Google

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle toi-meme?

btw, @David just got edited by a 206-rep user, what an embarrassment! :D

David Carlisle

@tohecz takes more than that to embarrass me:-)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle tell us :p

David Carlisle

2:19 PM

@tohecz so was it you that reviewed it?

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle nono, I only noticed that there was your last activity and then a someone else but no new answer, so I was curious

Paulo Cereda

ooh egreg will try to steal that green tick from David. :)

egreg

@PauloCereda You know that I like longer answers. ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@egreg :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda he has no chance

egreg

2:33 PM

@DavidCarlisle These low-rep users have the habit of accepting too soon and don't wait to see if a better answer comes along.

David Carlisle

moral dilemma: should I answer tex.stackexchange.com/questions/87356/tab-command-and-caption and steal the tick from egreg even though he's put the answer in a comment....

@egreg size isn't everything

egreg

Beware! lockstep's in retagging frenzy.

@DavidCarlisle Answered.

David Carlisle

@egreg OK then I even gave you 10 points for your trouble:-)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I'd have begun the \jobname answer with "My goodness! NO!"

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Epic answer. :)

egreg

2:47 PM

@PauloCereda I'm tempted to edit David's.

David Carlisle

@egreg well I believe your rep is higher than 206?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Just a bit short of 700x

David Carlisle

@egreg OK in that case @tohecz won't be concerned for my honour if you do edit.

egreg

4:25 PM

Hey! Everyone working hard? :)

Joseph Wright

@egreg Been in a meeting :-(

egreg

@JosephWright The pleasures of academic life. :)

Paulo Cereda

@egreg I'm lost inside a big spaghetti code. :)

egreg

@PauloCereda Try with some tomato sauce.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Pomodoro technique? :)

egreg

4:27 PM

@PauloCereda I suggest also some bacon to make an "amatriciana".

Paulo Cereda

@egreg ooh! :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda Don't trust an Italian for spaghetti advice, they are just imitation noodles.

/me living dangerously today

Paulo Cereda

4:41 PM

@DavidCarlisle Now you are gonna tell me to drive on the right side. :) Oh wait, we already do. :)

David Carlisle

5:12 PM

so has everyone voted twice in the book lottery? (It's not clear if the new rules allow two invalid answers)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle You can add a negative entry now. :)

4

Q: Best package for drawing dance charts

I want to draw dance step chart. Something similar to I was wondering if maybe dedicated package exists or is my only option to use "normal" drawing tools. Maybe something like Tikz? Does anyone have any experience with something like this?. What would you recommend?

charts

This question seems very nice. :)

egreg

@PauloCereda And the answer is "use Inkscape". :)

Paulo Cereda

@egreg It would be easier. :)

Follow-up question: how to design a Twister board.

Twister (game)

Twister is a game of physical skill produced by the Milton Bradley Company. It is played on a large plastic mat that is spread on the floor or ground. The mat has four rows of large colored circles on it with a different color in each row: red, yellow, blue and green. A spinner is attached to a square board and is used to determine where the player has to put their hand or foot. The spinner is divided into four labeled sections: right foot, left foot, right hand and left hand. Each of those four sections is divided into the four colors (red, yellow, blue and green). After spinning, ...

Alan Munn

5:58 PM

Does anyone know how to tell pgfplots where gnuplot is installed? Someone has it installed with MacPorts and it's not being found. I couldn't find anything in the pgfplots manual that says anything about how to configure it. (Not to mention that the pgfplots manual crashed Preview on my Mac.)

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn I found some hints on the PGF/TikZ manual, section 19.6. Apparently, the only way is to have the "correct" gnuplot in the path, or compile the temporary files separately.

egreg

@AlanMunn It's called by \immediate\write18{gnuplot -V >\pgfplots@plot@filename.vrs} so it should use the same PATH as sh (aka bash) would.

Alan Munn

@egreg So if someone can run gnuplot from the terminal, they should be able to run it with \write18? Where does \write18 get its path info from? I hate MacPorts.

egreg

6:14 PM

@AlanMunn It should. What's the PATH?

Paulo Cereda

Woohoo no-breaks FTW!

Alan Munn

@egreg No idea. It's someone who commented on my answer from yesterday about getting gnuplot to work with TeXStudio. But he's got it installed with MacPorts and so not in /usr/local. So I assume the path is /opt/local/bin prepended to the default path.

egreg

@AlanMunn I don't know. It should work if from the terminal it's possible to call it.

Alan Munn

6

A: Get number of elements in enumerate

Just put a label after the last item and refer to that in the text: \documentclass{article} \begin{document} We have \ref{last} columns, describing the user: \begin{enumerate} \item ID --- users.name \item Forename --- users\_profiles.first\_name \item Surname --- users\_profiles.last\_name \ite...

With my method, there's no way to avoid a second run to get the label right. Is there any other way? (I'm not sure it's worth it, but I'm curious.)

egreg

@AlanMunn No, unless you're willing to box the paragraph and the itemize and redo the typesetting.

Alan Munn

6:27 PM

@egreg Which is pretty crazy compared to the alternative. And most documents would have some references anyway, so the second run should be no big issue. Thanks.

Stephan Lehmke

@AlanMunn You can do it analogous to what amsmath does for equation environments: Read the environment body and count the \items.

egreg

@StephanLehmke The problem is that the number is needed before the enumerate. So also the text preceding the enumerate must be used.

Stephan Lehmke

@egreg Yes, so the (reading of the) environment body has to be moved before the first mention.

egreg

@StephanLehmke Which is crazy, since there is a much better method.

However, there can be complications with the representation of the numbers. Better use enumitem and the ref key.

Alan Munn

@egreg That's true, the simple method I gave won't work if the list is enumerated differently. (Also good writing style would require the number to be spelled out in words, which would require another package for that.)

egreg

6:45 PM

@AlanMunn Here it is:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse,fmtcount,refcount}
\makeatletter
\NewDocumentEnvironment{refenumerate}{m}
 {\begin{enumerate}}
 {\edef\@currentlabel{\arabic{\@enumctr}}\label{#1}\end{enumerate}}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\getenumcount}[1]{\numberstringnum{\getrefnumber{#1}}}

\begin{document}

We have \getenumcount{profile} columns, describing the user:
\begin{refenumerate}{profile}
\item ID --- users.name
\item Forename --- users\_profiles.first\_name
\item Surname --- users\_profiles.last\_name

@AlanMunn It works also for nested environments, of course. :)

tohecz

@egreg who's the maintainer of enumitem? Because it would be worth adding lastlabel and lastlabelvalue to the enumerate keyvaloptions

egreg

@tohecz Javier Bezos

tohecz

@egreg ok, I dont know him...

egreg

@tohecz Author also of titlesec, titletoc, titleps and presently maintainer of babel.

Alan Munn

7:38 PM

@egreg Thanks. This still requires 2 runs, though, right?

michal.h21

8:07 PM

hi all, I think this question can be closed

0

Q: tex4ht not working on Mountain Lion?

I am trying to get tex4ht to work on Mountain Lion. The problem is that when I run htlatex, I am told that ! LaTeX Error: File `tex4ht.sty' not found. This is in spite of the TeXLive Manager telling me that tex4ht is installed. Can someone please help.

tex4ht osx

op had only some problems with his package manager

egreg

@AlanMunn Yes, of course. The alternative is ridiculous. :)

Alan Munn

8:23 PM

@egreg Shall I add it to my answer or do you want to add your own?

egreg

@AlanMunn I leave the choice to you.

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn how paranoid is your texmf.cnf ?

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle Probably not very. I assume you're referring to my "let pdflatex run with --shell-escape" answer.

David Carlisle

% Enable system commands via \write18{...}.  When enabled fully (set to
% t), obviously insecure.  When enabled partially (set to p), only the
% commands listed in shell_escape_commands are allowed.  Although this
% is not fully secure either, it is much better, and so useful that we
% enable it for everything but bare tex.
shell_escape = p

@AlanMunn ^^

@AlanMunn well not so much an answer as a question I just noticed here in chat, is there spme context from a question on site?

Alan Munn

3

Q: Help with installing gnuplot in MacTex and using it with LaTeX

I have to draw a lot of PDF and CDF graphs in my document/presentation and in order to do that I installed gnuplot. In order to install gnuplot I took the following steps: 1- Download the sources from : gnuplot sources then put the folder gnuplot-4.4.3 on my desktop 2- $ cd /Users/.../Desktop/gn...

tikz-pgf gnuplot

David Carlisle

8:38 PM

well for me (stock Texlive 2012) gnuplot is not enabled in shell_escape_commands = \
bibtex,bibtex8,\
kpsewhich,\
makeindex,\
mpost,\
repstopdf,\

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle I'm hunting around on my system and I can't find anything that allows gnuplot either. When you pass an explicit --shell-escape to the pdflatex commands, does that override the p option set in the texmf.cnf? Because gnuplot does work on my machine via pgfplots.

Certainly I've never messed around with texmf.cnf myself. So mine is a pretty stock TL 2012 too, albeit via MacTeX.

egreg

@AlanMunn If you pass -shell-escape you allow any program to be run. Provided it exists in the PATH, of course.

Alan Munn

@egreg Ok. That's why it works. So a safer solution is to add gnuplot to my local texmf file. Do I need to copy the entire list from the master texmf.cnf or can I just add an extra shell_escape_commands = line?

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn dunno, do whatever egreg says

egreg

@AlanMunn I usually suggest to define a "user command" with shell escape enabled, so that one doesn't run always with it, but only when it's really needed. I wouldn't add gnuplot to the safe list; but the machine is yours.

If you add an entry shell_escape_commands to the "personal" texmf.cnf file, it replaces the value in the main one, so it must be complete.

Alan Munn

8:52 PM

@egreg Hey I live dangerously and always run with --shell-escape. That was the default for TeXShop for the longest time. So in TeXShop and TeXworks it would make sense to have an engine for --shell-escape.

@egreg That's what I assumed, given the form of the command.

egreg

@AlanMunn Definitely a different engine, for me.

Alan Munn

@egreg The problem with all of these solutions is that for brand new users this is all a bit daunting. Of course they also might fall for the MWE that includes \write18{rm -rf ~}

I'll suggest to Dick Koch that he add some --shell-escape engines to the default list. I think I need to learn to use arara @PauloCereda

unNaturhal

9:08 PM

Good evening :)

Alan Munn

@unNaturhal Hi.

Joseph Wright

@unNaturhal Hello

unNaturhal

@AlanMunn @JosephWright Hullo :)

egreg

@AlanMunn What do you say about the enumerate question?

Alan Munn

@egreg Since your solution is quite separate (and requires a differently named environment) it would probably be better as a separate answer.

egreg

9:20 PM

@AlanMunn OK

Alan Munn

@egreg I was going to add the conversion to words part to mine independently. For most uses the simple \label/\ref solution will be sufficient anyway.

unNaturhal

Could someone provide me a resource about creating thesis with tex? I have a book, but it talks about articles.. :/

Joseph Wright

@unNaturhal Much the same, really

@unNaturhal Start with the content you need

@unNaturhal Where in the world are you? The US is known to have picky thesis rules, places like the UK much less so

David Carlisle

@JosephWright This is usually the hard bit.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Well yes, but the same problem applies to any document

David Carlisle

9:35 PM

@JosephWright true

unNaturhal

@JosephWright I'm in Italy..

Alan Munn

9:48 PM

@unNaturhal If you have no fixed requirements, then the main thing is to use a class that is designed for book length documents. Personally I like memoir but others like the KOMA classes. Both of these classes are extensively documented and provide almost everything you need to adjust things to your liking with a minimum of fuss. See:

47

Q: What are the strengths and weaknesses of KOMA-Script and memoir?

To make a professional book layout, many people suggest to use either KOMA-Script or memoir. Let me know the strengths and weaknesses of each please.

koma-script memoir

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn That's where my tool shines. :P

Wait for the new manual. :)

And TL integration.

BTW, 3,5h of power shortage. :(

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Yes, indeed. Sorry to hear about the power. I hope the internet withdrawal symptoms are now under control.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn I'm OK now. :) I have a no-break installed in my router, so I could run at least more 15 minutes of sweet sweet internet, unless of course a bigger problem. I have two backup routers and a spare wifi AP. :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Beware of power shortages, red wine, and not using Latex.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz I was listening to my iPod last weekend and the VoiceOver replied "low battery" when I asked for the song name. I think I got Apple-trolled.

4

Stefan Kottwitz

9:56 PM

@PauloCereda I could give you a link which fixes that.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz I'll bite. Which link? :)

Stefan Kottwitz

Let me have a look in my bookmarks.

@AlanMunn LMAO

@PauloCereda Found it: goo.gl/g4qwL

Paulo Cereda

9:59 PM

@StefanKottwitz LOL I swear, I was expecting that. :)

I tried once to rick roll Marco, but GEMA tricked me. You Germans are safe.

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Once I wrote a question about how to do this with LaTeX means (hyperref, pdf features, obfuscated code). I just did not post it.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Therefore my next (not posted) question was for meta about a list of omitted, i.e. not posted questions - could be a funny top list.

Kind of recursion then. TeX capacity exceeded.

egreg

I think I saw a chicken!

3

Alan Munn

10:19 PM

@egreg Are you sure it wasn't a duck?

egreg

@AlanMunn You're right, ducks and chickens are very much alike. And robins too.

Alan Munn

@egreg Not to mention penguins and emus.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn And araras. :)

Brent.Longborough

@StefanKottwitz LOL "Blocked in the UK". Rickroll FAIL. Censorship rules!

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough OMG James Bond strikes again. :)

Brent.Longborough

10:28 PM

@egreg Was it called Silvio, and was it squawking?

Alan Munn

2

A: Who Wants to Win a LaTeX Book?

7

Brent.Longborough

@PauloCereda Strike in the sense of golpe, or strike in the sense of greve?

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn LOL

@Brent.Longborough golpe, I think. :)

By the way guys, if you watch Skyfall, beware of the spoiler alert: M dies.

:P

Alan Munn

@Brent.Longborough After the Heineken debacle, greve might be more appropriate.

Brent.Longborough

@AlanMunn LOL Choke...

Paulo Cereda

10:33 PM

@Brent: I was telling @Alan the other day how brainstorm is known in some regions of Brazil: toró de pa[r|l]pite :)

Brent.Longborough

@PauloCereda I always used to use tempestade cerebral

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough boo! :)

egreg

@Brent.Longborough Don't pronounce that name here, it's very dangerous.

Brent.Longborough

@egreg Corococo

@PauloCereda Just grabbed my numbers. 51 - a good idea!

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough LOL

Brent.Longborough

10:38 PM

@PauloCereda And 133. No-one will ever guess where that came from

egreg

@Brent.Longborough Did you see him in the last days? Somebody thought to a mummy.

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough Hm I don't know this reference. :)

Brent.Longborough

@egreg His botox shows...

@PauloCereda It's a well-known number in the mainframe world. 132 is the width of the line printer, and 1 is for the (vertical) skipping and spacing control character

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough Wow!

egreg

@Brent.Longborough Yes. But he has a new fianceé.

Brent.Longborough

10:41 PM

@egreg Non mi lasciare, o speme de vendetta!

0

Q: Embossed and debossed text

Can one produce embossed and debossed text in LaTeX? (E.g. using Tikz.)

tikz-pgf typography effects

Where's @AlanStacey when we need him?

Paulo Cereda

@Brent: I'm eating some castanhas de caju right now. Want some? :)

@PauloCereda Nom

13

Q: Letterpress effect through PSTricks or Tikz

I have already typed in the META section of the website a post addressing the question as to how the letterpress (or engraving-like) effect in the headers of the site had been achieved. I know it can be done with vector graphics GUI-driven software (such as Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator and those...

tikz-pgf pstricks

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough Don't you like them? :)

@egreg Carreras with hair! o.O

Brent.Longborough

10:44 PM

@PauloCereda Too much. That was Nom as in Lolcats

egreg

@PauloCereda He's been young. :)

Brent.Longborough

@egreg Bravissimo

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough ooh! :)

egreg

@Brent.Longborough Not my genre, though. Too dramatic.

@Brent.Longborough The radio had "Laudamus te" from the Great Mass in C minor, K427 (which is the same as "Lungi le cure ingrate" from "Davidde penitente" K469).

Brent.Longborough

@egreg Hrn. I must confess I came to opera late in life. A tendency towards Monteverdi, a bit of Mozart, even a bit of Puccini...

Paulo Cereda

10:49 PM

Penitenziagite! :)

egreg

@Brent.Longborough I can't stand Puccini. Nor Verdi, by the way.

Brent.Longborough

@PauloCereda Have you read Foucault's Pendulum?

@egreg Oh, sorry for that. Bellini?

Paulo Cereda

@Brent.Longborough It's in my "to read" list for at least four years. I won't read that soon. :)