TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2011-09-19

« first day (323 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (4600 days later) »

2:10 AM

@Mike Renfro: That's an interesting answer,

33

A: Why are there no alternatives to TeX, or, why is TeX still used?

(My apologies in advance for any "too long; didn't read" sentiments -- if you only read one thing out of this, make it this link: Best Way to Start Using LaTeX/TeX?) My Non-Expert Background: I started using LaTeX around 2002 to help engineering students at my university write their M.S. these...

I mean.

I personally think this is a good question. Though it was closed...

Guys, will Mike see this message even if he has never been on chat?

2:45 AM

Hmm, in the context of that closed question, one of the striking things about TeX/LaTeX/TikZ for is how good everything looks. Better than anything else, in my experience. For example, there are other drawing programs besides TikZ/PGF, but in my experience none of them hold a candle in appearance. I wonder why.

2 hours later…

4:30 AM

Dumb question. Since xetex and luatex seem to be complementary, why not merge them?

3 hours later…

Martin Scharrer

7:28 AM

0

A: Avoid splitting of itemize lists by floats?

Is a page break involved? Try placing the figure after the itemize list.

Answers his own question an hour later with a guess!!? Ts ts

@FaheemMitha There are some fundamental differences in approach. XeTeX is pretty focussed on addressing certain issues, whereas LuaTeX is a lot more general. More importantly, XeTeX uses system-dependent code for font loading, whereas the entire LuaTeX philosophy is system-neutral.

@MartinScharrer Very odd: I guess you've said something in a comment.

Martin Scharrer

@JosephWright Was that me or did had SX just loading issues?

I couldn't save my comment edit for over a minute.

@MartinScharrer Seemed OK here, but I was only reading

Martin Scharrer

8:10 AM

Ok, TeX.SX deeds done. Time for breakfast!

1 hour later…

9:34 AM

Friends, I'd like some help on improving this answer:

0

A: What is happening in Chat rooms?

Let me see if I can address these elements: Our chatrooms allow you to paste StackOverflow links and direcly display a preview of the question or question. It's what Faheem did, you can see the title and body of the question, together with Mike's picture and the number of votes this question r...

9:52 AM

@Raphink: one day I'll take more time to answer your questions. I like them :)

@Patrick: haha, well I'm just trying to implement something nice :-)

Ah, @Herbert's answer about setting color by name is great :-)

@Raphink and I am serious with my answer to this question tex.stackexchange.com/questions/28883/…

just create a colored box behind your text and this is the highlight

Or do you have something different in mind?

Ah! You mean a colored box behind !

how do you set the width of the box then?

@Raphink w,h,d = node.dimensions (start,end) (if memory serves me right)

after that, convert this to the postscript points

You have the width of the text in the post_linebreak_filter

that's the width of the whole line, no?

9:58 AM

Just be sure you put the pdf_literal whatsit before the text, so the text is visible

@Raphink you can set the last node at node.dimensions()

That doesn't have to be end of the line

hmmm ok

I'll have to have a look at that

that sounds interesting

It's easier than you think

I guess

but I'm setting colors as options for now :-)

thanks to Herbert's answer

so that people can choose colors

switching to kvoptions

10:29 AM

@JosephWright : But you can't use both, and sometimes you might want functionality from both.

@FaheemMitha I am pretty sure one day LuaTeX implements all of the XeTeX functionality (polyglossia etc.)

Someone said something reasonable about TeX Live and Ubuntu: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-base/+bug/712521/…

4

@Patrick : Ok.

@NN Would be my approach, I think

@JosephWright yes, it makes sense

10:42 AM

I was actually thinking that in relation to a beamer bug comment last night!

@JosephWright It will mean less work for the packagers too

@NN Let's hope that the Debian people will accept this approach. But I don't believe they will.

Are there other examples of such an approach in Debian?

@egreg In that case, let's hope Ubuntu does it different

Simple solution: repackage TL under a non-compatible license! Then Debian will no longer come with it in the main repositories. Then someone just has to write a wrapper around tlmgr and stick it in a "community maintained" repository, just like they do with things like the flash installer or the MS core fonts.

@AndrewStacey Given all the effort made to get TL to have a compatible license, this seems pretty unlikely :-)

10:49 AM

21 points to go until I get everyone's credit card numbers again!

@JosephWright You mean that my hackish-and-completely-unfeasible-solution won't work? But that's the only type of answer I know how to provide!

@AndrewStacey And you posted so many of those that you're soon a trusted user? ;)

11:09 AM

@Patrick so I should have boxes that are the width of the text to higlight, right?

@Patrick but then if I stop the color after the text, the text will be colored, too, so should I add the node with "Q" right after the long box?

11:20 AM

@Raphink Just draw the "box" with PDF commands. It is not a TeX box, but a rectangular area filled with a color (see appendix a of the PDF spec).

@NN Having so many sockpuppets helped. (Though I was a bit put off when one of them reached 20k before me)

@Patrick like the boxes for the single letters or the overfull lines?

@AndrewStacey haha

@Raphink There is no need for q .. Q except when you change the fill / draw color which is almost always the case. But the box dawing command

@Raphink see github.com/raphink/impnattypo/blob/master/impnattypo.dtx#L357

:-)

@Patrick alright. This inserts a box before the letter. If I made this box larger, it would appear behind the text without pushing it?

11:26 AM

The pdf_literal has no effect no typesetting ...

ok

I shall try that then

In the meanwhile, here is the result of the current code on a book: r.pinson.free.fr/calvary/pdf/charismanie_interior.pdf

entire matching words are in red, sequences of chars are in orange

see p.34 for example (as in, pagination)

or p.67

@Raphink cool!

now it should be quite straightforward to do the same at the end of line

processing from last_node backwards

but I also should fix the little issues

:)

@Patrick for now, the fact that words might not really appear in the PDF like you said is not a big deal, this feature is a draft mode feature anyway, it's deactivated for final rendering

12:18 PM

*starts singing* One more point to go, one more point to go-oh. Then I will have 20k. One more point to go!

time for a bounty?

@Patrick: It seems the dimensions are not the same in node.dimensions and PDF. I'm expecting that my nodes will be something like "40" in PDF dimensions, but node.dimensions returns 2585036.

oh, it's in scaled points

:)

@AndrewStacey There you are!

@AndrewStacey Grats!

Now you have to dance too!

*am dancin'*

12:33 PM

\o/

@AndrewStacey yeah

@Patrick got the boxes :-)

@Raphink and don't forget to convert between TeX's point (sp) and PostScript points

@Raphink something like sp / 65782

yes I did @Patrick :-)

now my only problem really is to insert these boxes at the beginning of the line...

I can only insert them after the first node currently

user image

Any tip on how to make that image less clutterish?

@AndrewStacey Paulo has to send another time his credit card number.

12:45 PM

@Raphink w = node.new('whatsit','pdf_literal')... and then w.next = line.head, line.head = w, node.slide(line.head)should be enough. I almost never use node.insert_*.

@AndrewStacey Great answer about the equation numbers: you beat me by a minute. :)

@Patrick: Great, thanks! Why won't this work with insert_before?

It will work with node.insert_before() if you get your arguments right :)

ah!

:S

and that's not node.insert_before(line,line.head,w) ?

@Raphink The first argument is the head of the list. It is not the line argument, but line.head. The second and third are correct. But remember to use the return value!

12:51 PM

I don't understand why I need the return value

@Raphink I am not 100% sure about the first arg, but 100-\epsilon %. So close to 100%

hehe

Because if you insert something before the first node, the head moves one node to the left

I thought the first argument was a node list in which the second argument had to be listed

there is a new head then

12:52 PM

I'm going to need a new head soon, anyway

:)

Note that I prefer to code this in Lua 100 times over TeX

I have to do some experiments with that and then I can tell you for sure

ok :)

thanks

@Raphink Then we'll have to call you Worzel (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worzel_Gummidge and in particular the second (proper) sentence).

12:54 PM

I go one step further with my XML publisher: I create every node manually, even all the glyphs and the glues.

So there is no TeX involved anymore (in the classical TeX sense)

@NN Ouch! Shorten the gaps at the left-hand end so you have room to widen the gap between the "W" column and the "R" column. That's my immediate reaction.

@AndrewStacey I don't get it

@Raphink He could swap his heads to suit the task at hand. (Mind you, it didn't often do him much good.)

ah

@AndrewStacey that would help. or change my formalization so that it I end up with nicer diagrams

It's a bit better now:

user image

1:15 PM

@Patrick r.pinson.free.fr/calvary/pdf/charismanie_interior.pdf

1:31 PM

@Raphink i.stack.imgur.com/4YOHA.png - a little bit too short in the second line

@Patrick yes?

yes, I don't know why

but at least the feature is here :-)

@Raphink but otherwise: absolutely great!

@Patrick I'm quite happy with how Lua allows to implement complex stuff :-)

count me as a luatex convert

(I'm guessing ConTeXt is the next step?)

@Raphink Well, I have moved from ConTeXt to plain LuaTeX (and even to the no-TeX I have mentioned above) - I love to have complete control over my output

no-TeX?

1:43 PM

I read the text from an XML file and create glyph/glue nodes manually and call tex.linebreak() afterwards. So I never use TeX's input engine and don't have any problems with catcodes.

interesting

although I'd consider XML to be worse than TeX

for human beings

My text comes from a database, so no human being :)

And tables are just a collection of boxes and glues together, no TeX table code involved

ok

And now to fix the homeoarchies :-)

Now someone replied to the comment about TeX Live and Ubuntu and it's not pretty: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-base/+bug/712521/…

@NN well he's not wrong either. Quite a few packages depend on tex to build documentation, and they cannot do so without depending on Debian/Ubuntu packages.

Now as a matter of fact, most docs in packages need very few TeX features, so it's ok to use an old version of texlive for that.

2:02 PM

@Raphink So it's not possible for Ubuntu to enable tlmgr?

You guys don't like Debian packaging?

Oh I certainly do

Indeed

(I'm an Ubuntu core dev)

I'm hoping Nobert and co get Tex Live 2011 done sooner than later, but it must be a Herculean task.

@Raphink: but not TeX stuff, right?

Hmm, wonder if he needs testers.

2:07 PM

@FaheemMitha I had a look at their thing, and I gave up, no time for this

@Raphink : Ok.

and I need an up-to-date texlive

@Raphink Do they have a public repos?

@FaheemMitha if I had some time, I'd try to automatize the package generation and provide them on a ppa, but right now, I don't think I can find time for that.

@FaheemMitha there's an svn with a TL2011 branch

no idea if it's functional

@Raphink : No problems with the local install then?

@Raphink : svn? yuck.

2:10 PM

@FaheemMitha I've never had a problem with the local install

@Raphink Same experience here: a 'vanilla' install of TeX Live direct from TUG seems to be the best way to go if you need up-to-date stuff

That said, I'm mainly a Mac and Windows user, so my Linux experience is more patchy

@JosephWright I like to see updates to my packages from time to time :-)

@Raphink Well quite: I update every day :-)

You upload new packages every day, too ;-)

@Raphink Well, I'm involved in quite a few LaTeX projects. I suspect Heiko beats everyone else for updates (hyperref really burns through version numbers!)

(Heiko = Heiko Oberdiek, a regular on c.t.t but not at present on TeX.SX)

2:20 PM

ok

I'm not on c.t.t

1 hour later…

3:24 PM

@AndrewStacey: congrats! (sorry for being late)

3:40 PM

@Raphink : Looks like Nobert is going at it solo right now. I'll try to remember to test his packages. His message (linked above) sounds quite peeved. And I'm a good bug reporter.

yep

I don't know if it's me or if there's more and more users and less and less devs in open-source

@Raphink Bound to happen if you're successful: Stallman's vision of 'everyone is a developer' is simply unrealistic

right

3:57 PM

@Raphink What's you main development interest?

@JosephWright in general?

@Raphink Yes: you mentioned you do Ubuntu 'stuff'

Yes, I got into open-source development through open-source some years ago

since then, I became a sysadmin and my interests changed a bit (more towards automating systems, configurtation management, etc)

and then lately I began translating & editing books, so I'm more interested in TeX/LaTeX ;-)

ohloh.net/accounts/raphink

probably says best what I like to hack :-)

@Raphink does 'core Ubuntu developer' mean you're working for canonical?

@Patrick nope. Quite a few of the core-devs are Canonical employees, but it is not my case.

4:16 PM

@Raphink I also noted this.

4:30 PM

@Raphink I don't think the absolute number of devs decreases, but the scope of open source development increases.

@Caramdir Probably depends on the area

@JosephWright Sure. But this seems to be particularly true for TeX. Just compare the goals of LaTeX3 with what is done in earlier versions.

3 hours later…

7:18 PM

We have a fourth taker:

15

Q: Who would like to become a member of the TeX User Group, sponsored by Stack Exchange?

The initiative on meta Do we want Stack Exchange to become an institutional member of the TUG? got a great response. It quickly became the highest voted question on meta. This fact and the well thought out concept convinced Stack Exchange to join TUG: Stack Exchange is institutional member ...

discussion featured sponsorship tug

7:33 PM

Apparently I have only one vote left today. Any suggestions for what it should go to?

@AndrewStacey Vote up a zero-score accepted answer. :-)

@lockstep Got any in mind?

@AndrewStacey No -- it was just meant to be a "vote of dissaproval" with regard to a stupid SO feature.

@AndrewStacey A few days ago I would have said: Supply Audrey with his first "Nice Answer" badge -- but he has earned it since then.

@AndrewStacey That's an idea: Vote up one of Audrey's biblatex answers. They deserve far more upvotes. Here's a nice one:

7

A: BibLaTeX reverse numbering (i.e. count down)

This numbering scheme can be achieved by printing the labelnumber as the total number of entries in the current reference section, minus the actual label number, plus one. In the code below, the count is defined like the label number in biblatex.sty. This approach relies on commands from etoolbo...

@lockstep I'd imagine Audrey is a woman :-)

@JosephWright Dang.

7:48 PM

@lockstep I may be wrong, of course.

@JosephWright Yeah, I know next to nothing about non-German first names.

Audrey is usually a girl's name, except maybe in the Perl community...

@lockstep Not that common a name in the UK, but I think common enough in France (I know one French Audrey)

Audrey Tautou?

;-)

alias Amélie Poulain

@JosephWright Audrey is a common name on this side of the channel indeed :)

@Raphink Well there's her too: I meant I actually know an Audrey from France (she's currently in Grenoble)

7:55 PM

14 users in chatroom!

Audrey Hepburn?

@JosephWright Audrey Hepburn? Her father was an Englishman.

@egreg I said is was 'less common' in the UK. There was a shop in my village run by a lady called Audrey, so the shop was called "Audrey's", and this was never considered odd.

@PauloCereda Strewth

@PauloCereda Just when I was hitting return. Wonderful actress: what movies do you know?

@egreg indeed! I know only two, but I like them very much: my fair lady and (I don't know the name in English) Cinderela em Paris.

Joseph, you must be younger than I thought. I'd expect a True Brit to know the fictional Audrey: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Manor_Born

8:01 PM

@AndrewStacey Ah, very true. I certainly remember it being on.

(For reference, I'm 34)

How old is everyone ?

(Now that kind of a/s/l question makes for a good chat one)

Audrey is also Sybil's best friend, they used to play golf together (Fawlty Towers, anyone?).

@PauloCereda Sabrina (Billy Wilder), Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards), Charade (Stanley Donen), Wait until dark (Terence Young). And others.

@egreg A real connoisseur. :-) I'd like to watch more films with her.

@JosephWright You made me look at the dictionary for that word. :-P (Note to self: don't trust too much the Internet references, one says Strewth means "I want a peanut butter and wood louse sandwich, Mummy, please!")

@Raphink I'm 27.

@PauloCereda 'Strewth' is an Australian indication of exclaimation

8:09 PM

@JosephWright ;-)

And now Audrey has a second "Nice Answer". :-)

Always learning something new here. Sometimes it's about TeX, sometimes about English.

@PauloCereda I'd forgotten that one. As evidenced in "The Anniversary" (if I remember the title correctly)

@PauloCereda The first three I mentioned are by great directors. Billy Wilder is first in the list of my favorite directors, sharing the position with John Ford, of course.

Who is Audrey?

8:14 PM

@AndrewStacey Amazing! That's absolutely correct!

user image

Ah, found

@JosephWright Are ages visible to all on users' profiles? *checks* Oh yes, so they are. In that case, mine is "worth watching" this week.

@Caramdir and sometimes about The English

@egreg I remember the Emperor Waltz and Sunset Boulevard. :-)

@AndrewStacey Birthday cake?

8:30 PM

@PauloCereda Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece; what about "Some like it hot"? Maybe the best comedy ever produced (with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe). But also "Witness for the Prosecution", "The Apartment" and "Front Page" are wonderful.

@AndrewStacey It depends whether the user tells the truth. Look at Herbert's user profile. :)

3

@Raphink sorry to bother with TeX: I am 100% sure now that node.insert_before() needs the hlist.head and not the hlist as the first argument. So the idiom(?) is: foo.head = node.insert_before(foo.head,node_that_is_part_of_the_foo.head_list, new_node)

@Patrick ok :)

@egreg ROFL!!!

@Patrick I began thinking of the end of lines now. Not sure if I can access the last node of a line with head.last_node ?

@egreg Or indeed @TH.'s location (context: there was some auto-cleanup with some very odd geographical ideas!)

8:36 PM

@Raphink use node.slide() or node.tail() - the former also corrects prev pointers

(sorry, corrected the message - it's node.tail()and not node.last_node())

Did anyone see that UIT are printing @Herbert's books in the UK? See for example amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1906860130/u02d-21

See also uit.co.uk/Cat/Typesetting

@JosephWright The funniest thing is that Chandgad is still the best choice when using the query here. :-)

@Patrick: thanks, will try

On a sidenote, today is "Talk like a pirate day".

@Patrick ... whenever my son gives me back my second arm...

8:52 PM

@Raphink it's late, he should be in bed by now :)

@Patrick tell me about that...

At least my daughter is in bed, and she's the harder to get to sleep ;-)

@Raphink Guess he's not that young anymore. Mine has to be in bed by 7--8

my son is 4 months old

so it's hard to have fix bed times yet

That's true. They sleep all the time, but not when they're supposed to :)

heh

with my daughter, we're trying to keep stricter times -- though it's quite hard ;-)

Stefan Kottwitz

8:57 PM

@Raphink and I will see from November on ...

@StefanKottwitz expecting the first one?

But now it's time for me -- see you tomorrow with new challenges :)

see you @Patrick

Stefan Kottwitz

@Raphink yes! :-)

Congrats @StefanKottwitz

boy/girl/surprise?

9:00 PM

So, how's the TUG membership request going?

@GonzaloMedina did you apply?

Stefan Kottwitz

it will be a surprise

great :-) surprises are the best

we were sure my daughter was a boy until I asked the nurse about 10 minutes after I first saw her ;-)

@Raphink No. I already have a membership.

@GonzaloMedina ah ok :-)

9:02 PM

And, congrats @StefanKottwitz!

Stefan Kottwitz

@GonzaloMedina thanks!

@GonzaloMedina oha - I thought who I could ask if he wants to apply, and you were one of my favorites, now I learn you are already a member

@GonzaloMedina I remember cqf.info ;-) great that you came here

@StefanKottwitz yes, I'm already a TUG member. I surely would like to be a member representing TEX.SX... if none else applies by the deadline, I could consider applying; but only if nobody else applies.

Stefan Kottwitz

@GonzaloMedina there's not really a deadline - just a motivation ;-)

@StefanKottwitz cqf.info was a nice experience. I wish I had known about this site before.

Stefan Kottwitz

@GonzaloMedina there's not really a deadline - just a motivation ;-)

yes, I prefer winning a new TUG member and user of TeX.SX, it's no about saving the fee, as you know

@GonzaloMedina I mentioned cqf.info just yesterday :-) here:

9:15 PM

@StefanKottwitz I am somehow surprised to see that only three people applied. Maybe there's a lot of us who are already TUG members?

Stefan Kottwitz

texandfriends.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/…

it's German, but there are tools for translating

texandfriends.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/…

it's German, but there are tools for translating

@GonzaloMedina maybe, some confirmed it in the poll question on meta

9:30 PM

Ah, now I see that Raphink also applied. Now there are four!

Congrats @StefanKottwitz! :-)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda thanks!

@GonzaloMedina I'm sure there will be more. If necessary I'll have so speak to some people such as @Caramdir and @lockstep >:-)

Yay, I want Kirby's Return to Dreamland for the Wii!

9:50 PM

@PauloCereda: never heard of Kirby's Return to Dreamland. Just googled it, and sounds nice.

@GonzaloMedina Indeed! It's good to have a good old 2D platform in the Wii. :-)

@GonzaloMedina: which games do you like?

@PauloCereda I only have three games Super Mario Bros., Sports, and Mario Kart, so they are the ones I like ;-)

@GonzaloMedina hehe these games are awesome! Mario Kart is very challenging. And Super Mario Bros. is full of secrets. :-)

@PauloCereda Yeah! I bought Mario Kart just last week and it's really challenging. Me and my daughter are now getting all the star coins in Worlds 1 to 8 to play all the levels of World 9 in Mario Bros; some of them are really difficult to get (at least for me; it's rather a trivial matter for my daughter).

@GonzaloMedina How nice! I managed to get all star coins, but only because I followed a video playthrough. I believe it's very funny in the multiplayer mode (I only play in single mode).

10:14 PM

@GonzaloMedina: I'm don't know if these games are your cup of tea, but they are actually funny to play: Rayman raving rabbids, Rayman raving rabbids 2, Rayman raving rabbids TV party, and Rabbids go home.

It might be nice to go multiplayer with them.

Hmmm, that's enough LuaTeX for tonight... :S

11:06 PM

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I'm barely beginning to know something about LaTeX and now there's LaTeX3, and LuaTeX, and ConTeXt... and there's no time to learn all of them. Which one to choose?

hehe, that depends on your needs I guess @GonzaloMedina

that said, ConTeXt has been around for quite some time, LuaTeX has been cooking for some time, too, but LuaTeX is new

also, I'd think that LuaTeX might be a way towards ConTeXt

pfiew, I don't know how many ties I'm adding :-)

11:22 PM

For my needs, LaTeX is enough. But, will LuaTeX eventually become a replacement for pdfTeX?

I think that's the idea yes

LuaTeX is LaTeX by the way

All I know is that LuaTeX is more or less literally Lua + TeX.

@GonzaloMedina: For my needs (literary works, no math), system fonts (XeTeX or LuaTeX) with OTF support are great, microtype support (LuaTeX) is even better and I'm discovering now that I can get quite a few things automated with LuaTeX, like tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27588/…

@Raphink: what do you think is required for a first approach to LuaTeX? Should I first learn Lua? Can I start directly learning and using LuaTeX?

Well I think every path is different. As far as I'm concerned, I came to LuaTeX through XeTeX. I was happy with XeTeX's font features, but I also wanted good microtype support. I only began playing with Lua very recently (thanks to @Patrick's great answers).

but if you want to start and play with lua, it's nice, too

11:31 PM

I think that's the approach I'll follow: to start playing...

hehe

you can have a look at @Patrick's answers using LuaTeX. They're usually simple and instructive

like tex.stackexchange.com/questions/28294/… or tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27780/…

I've seen some of them, but never have stopped to read them carefully. I'll start paying them a little more attention from now on...

Thanks for the links

you're welcome

I'd add that you don't need to know Lua to benefit from Lua(La)TeX. It suffices that there are package authors who know how to encapsulate Lua's and LuaTeX's abilities.

2

11:47 PM

:)

« first day (323 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (4600 days later) »

Transcript for

Sep '1119

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends

\begin{chat}

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

$TeX - LaTeX$

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile