TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2012-11-11 (page 1 of 2)

12:26 AM

@Canageek Don’t waste your time. The OP has commented on my answer and accepted it.

1:08 AM

Any booktabs user's here? I don;t know why I need the additional \` before the \bottomrule`. It adds additional vertical space that don't want? See answer at: Display top border of table using csvreader

Speravir

1:49 AM

@PeterGrill Is it perhaps also a problem of interaction with datatool? Adding a manual entry removes the empty line. The additional \\ is still necessary, though.

\begin{tabular}{l l}\toprule
    \textbf{First Name} & \textbf{Last Name}\\\cmidrule{1-2}
    \DTLforeach{myDB}{\Name=Name,\Surname=Surname}{%
        \Name & \Surname \\
    }
    John & Doe\\
    \bottomrule
\end{tabular}

Peter Grill

@Speravir Hmmm.. I'd read the documentation, but David Carlisle told me that that was evil..

Speravir

@PeterGrill Grin.

@PeterGrill BTW we could ask @NicolaTalbot instead. ;-)

Peter Grill

@Speravir Yeah just saw her name of the documentation...

Oppp, hope David does not see that I opened the documentation!! :-)

Speravir

@PeterGrill Now: LOL!

Peter Grill

2:06 AM

@Speravir The documentation shows how to use booktabs with built in commands to produce a table, but don't see anything about manual usage!!

Speravir

2:21 AM

@PeterGrill I think, for your example you need a command, that strips the \\ in its last occurrence. But there’s a variation, as used by Nicola in the documentation, where the first occurrence would be needed to be stripped:

\begin{tabular}{l l}\toprule
    \textbf{First Name} & \textbf{Last Name}\\\cmidrule{1-2}
    \DTLforeach{myDB}{\Name=Name,\Surname=Surname}{%
        \\
        \Name & \Surname
    }
    \\\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

Peter Grill

@Speravir Yeah, that is what I have been trying:

%		 \IfEq{\DTLrowcount{myDB}}{\DTLcurrentindex}{\\\bottomrule }{\\ }
%			\ifthenelse{\DTLcurrentindex = \SizeOfDB}{\\}{\\}%

@Speravir I had tried something similar, and that yields spacing at the top!!

Speravir

@PeterGrill That’s what I wanted to say.

Peter Grill

@Speravir Thanks. I thought I had just figured it out, but sadly even this does not work:\\[-\baselineskip]

@Speravir Ok, found a hack that works, at least now I won't be bothered over dinner... Thanks for your help.

Speravir

@PeterGrill You’re welcome. Actually I feeled honoured, that I as a simple user, not a TeXpert, could help!

@PeterGrill \me as the user with limited knowledge has done this, what I consider better than “hardcoding” the vspace:

\newlength{\BLineSkip}\setlength{\BLineSkip}{\baselineskip}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{l l}\toprule
    \textbf{First Name} & \textbf{Last Name}\\\cmidrule{1-2}
    \DTLforeach{myDB}{\Name=Name,\Surname=Surname}{%
        \Name & \Surname
        \\
    }
    \vspace*{-\BLineSkip}
    \\\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

The \newlength should probably better go into the preamble.

Stephan Lehmke

4:35 AM

@Gnintendo I didn't mean inside TeX, but rather in the generated PDF.

Garbage Collector

4:47 AM

2

Q: Algorithm to pack any small boxes into a big box

I have a container with a certain dimension. A number of small boxes that may be different in size is to be packed into the container. How to arrange the small boxes such that the container contains as many as possible? Edit: No rotation is allowed. The heavier boxes must not be on the top of ...

Peter Grill

6:07 AM

@Speravir Yes, that is an improvement. But, I do not why I could not just use \baselineskip directly so decided to just hard code it until I get to the bottom of this.

Don't let me rep fool you into thinking I know what I am talking about. It should be obvious from the number of questions I have asked, that I really don't know much.

@GarbageCollector Isn't that sort of what TeX does? Well, except that TeX keeps the boxes in order (except for floats).

Garbage Collector

@PeterGrill Yes. It might be like you said.

percusse

9:38 AM

@PeterGrill The in the scalebox question most of the code is for angle label arc drawing. That's bizarre. So best thing is to redraw it.

Peter Grill

@percusse Yeah that i what I suggested given that the figure really is not that complicated.

But that is a path the OP needs to choose for himself.

percusse

@PeterGrill I think it comes from a drawing program anyhow. Otherwise noone draws an arc in 65 coordinates :)

Paulo Cereda

@percusse :)

Peter Grill

Oh, good point, not sure what all those points were, most are circles, so not sure what required the 65 coordinates?

Damm, can't compose two questions!! Have one I have been working on for three days of and on, and ran into another problem, so I guess I should finish the first question so I can get to the second

@percusse Oh I see, there is an arc along a circle, so that must be it...

percusse

@PeterGrill @DavidCarlisle is pushing you too hard.

Peter Grill

9:44 AM

@percusse Yeah its not fair, I really have to get some work done. Perhaps I should pay for him to go on a vacation somewhere...

percusse

@PeterGrill Really nothing changes if I clear up all those coordinates other than the angle labeling arcs so I would say Altermundus should go in and make it in 20 seconds. :)

Peter Grill

@percusse Hey, you can provide a proper answer to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/82279/…. I figured out what needs to be done, just needs some post action magic that I don't know how to do. Just thought of something: perhaps a multo-part rectangle is a better solution.

@percusse :-) He probably has a package for it..

percusse

@PeterGrill I think it's a duplicate but I can't find anything.

I would make one of them a label and travel around that

Peter Grill

@percusse I looked as well and could not find anything. It did seem like something I had seen before too.

percusse

\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node [label=west:2,draw, inner sep=0pt, minimum size=0.5cm] (1) at (0, 0)  {$1$};
 \draw (1.north west) -- ($(1.north west)!-1!(1.north east)$) |- (1.south west);
\end{tikzpicture}

:)

But the proper way is to make a nodepart.

Peter Grill

10:07 AM

@percusse almost, needs tweaking for \pgflinewidth

how do I put the fill of a node on background layer? Using a node style of on background layer, fill=olive!20 does is not sufficient?

Paulo Cereda

29

Q: Protocol for downhill cyclist overtaking a car?

Last weekend, I was driving (yes in a car, something I rarely do) down a fairly steep and very curvy mountain road (thus with very poor sight lines/visibility ahead) when I noticed a cyclist in my rearview mirror. He looked "pro" and in control, but was close enough to me that I was worried that...

road-bike safety etiquette

Can I answer this question with :set GTA-mode on ? :)

percusse

@PeterGrill I guess not. Let me the question now I have my coffee with me :)

@PauloCereda I've watched this but I don't know why youtube.com/watch?v=oXhvZC4wNA0

Paulo Cereda

@percusse ooh. :)

Peter Grill

@percusse I think I found it, thought you could do it without \pgfdeclarelayer, but I guess not

percusse

@PeterGrill How about this?

\begin{tikzpicture}[every node/.style={inner sep=0pt, outer sep=0,minimum size=0.5cm}]
\node [draw] (a) at (0, 0)  {$1$};
\node (b) at (0.5, 0)  {$2$};
\draw (b.north west) -- (b.north east) |- (b.south west);
\end{tikzpicture}

Peter Grill

10:19 AM

@percusse Yep that seems to be right..

percusse

@PauloCereda We got a Nespresso machine and it kinda sucks. The whole concept is George Clooney don't know what he's talking about.

@PeterGrill I really think this is an XY-problem and we will soon receive an What I actually want to do ..... response :)

Peter Grill

@percusse possible... I hate those.. :-0

Paulo Cereda

@percusse :)

percusse

@PeterGrill Is this a duplicate candidate maybe ? tex.stackexchange.com/questions/65519/how-to-split-a-rectangle

Almost a pop song I got there :)

Peter Grill

@percusse Not sure if it s a dupe, but perhaps chains is a better approach. I am not really into chains, so wouldn't know, at least that is my story and am sticking to that.

speaking of chains.. :-)

Good morning David.

percusse

10:25 AM

@PeterGrill It's a quite valid answer so no problem with that.

egreg

@PauloCereda I know that kind of drivers: they hit the brakes at the smallest hint that the road can do a bend. And usually they place their car at the center of the road.

Peter Grill

@egreg Sounds like California drivers after 0.000000001cm of rain.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg I thought the same. :)

David Carlisle

@PeterGrill morning.

Peter Grill

@DavidCarlisle Isn't it Sunday. You should be with your family....

egreg

10:28 AM

@PeterGrill What are you doing so late at night?

percusse

@egreg Overtaking a car :)

Paulo Cereda

California?! must... resist...posting... California... Sun... video...

Peter Grill

@egreg Got distracted with a better way to for Faheem Mitha to show her DNA sequence, plus have two pending questions I have to post!!!

by rep points

10:29 AM

@percusse worse that that, he's overtaking me.

Peter Grill

@PauloCereda Oh, I never to got to my story of moving to California in the itnerview, will have to wait until we have some beer

Paulo Cereda

@PeterGrill Oh! Please do tell us! :)

Peter Grill

Oh, also no one asked about my other "Obviously Wrong" math moment.

@PauloCereda I had no idea where Silicon Valley was, just knew it was somewhere in California and the only images i had were that of Baywatch. Boy was I disappointed. :-)

percusse

@DavidCarlisle :)

Peter Grill

when I found that Southern California is not similar to Northern California!!

Paulo Cereda

10:32 AM

@PeterGrill ooh! :) Pamela Anderson strikes again. :P

Peter Grill

@PauloCereda Yes exactly!!

percusse

@PeterGrill So no David Hasselhoff?

Peter Grill

@percusse Ahhhh no I was thinking more of Pamela.

percusse

@PeterGrill I find it striking to see the demographics about who prefers Mustangs and other American cars :) Hollywood is really misleading.

I'm also really surprised that BMW starts from 328. There is no way you can find a 316 or 320. I still don't know why.

Peter Grill

@percusse Yep, that is the show in Show Business.

@percusse Huh?

There is a 323? At least in the US

percusse

10:36 AM

Yes but in everywhere else it starts from 314 :) I mean the engine volume starts from 2800 cc and they complain about oil prices

and you travel to the local market that's it.

mall?

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke nice leaders trick, you should make an answer of it, must be worth a vote or two:-)

percusse

I was renting a car and I asked for a medium car (with a wrong impression) they offered me a Toyota Camry.

Peter Grill

@percusse They must have thought you were American. :-)

Paulo Cereda

@percusse Pi-related numbering. Probably a BMW engineer joke. :)

Peter Grill

@PauloCereda :-) Waiting for the 2.718

percusse

10:40 AM

@PauloCereda this is the real joke. I went Munich just for this.

►

Peter Grill

@percusse Huh? Is that a concept car?

percusse

@PeterGrill It is.

Peter Grill

@percusse Well I need to buy a car once my app launches....

Garbage Collector

Lets take a break

►

Peter Grill

@GarbageCollector I have to stop following video links. I am still listinging to soundtracks once I clicked on a youtube link early this (well now yesterday) morning!!

Garbage Collector

10:49 AM

@PeterGrill I am sorry for my sin. :-)

Peter Grill

@GarbageCollector :-)

So far I am at youtube.com/watch?v=bWmovafgBug&feature=fvwrel, but more links keep showing up. What do I do??? I already did all the Hans Zimmer sound tracks.

Garbage Collector

@PeterGrill I like all H.Zimmer's soundtracks but this one youtube.com/watch?v=s17XDrKuqc4 seems to be the most.

Peter Grill

Thanks. No you have me watching (not just listening): youtube.com/watch?v=kPU3Cg7LdTU&feature=related

Nicola Talbot

@Speravir How about this:

\def\dostartbit{\\}%
\begin{tabular}{l l}\toprule
    \textbf{First Name} & \textbf{Last Name}%
    \def\dostartbit{\\\cmidrule{1-2}}
    \DTLforeach*{myDB}{\Name=name,\Surname=surname}{%
        \dostartbit\Name & \Surname
    }%
    \\\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

Peter Grill

I am going to have to watch this later -- it is hilarious

Garbage Collector

11:01 AM

The hilarious one : youtube.com/watch?v=u6hAgaP066k (Really Safe For Work).

Peter Grill

@NicolaTalbot Hey, that seems to do the trick, but still trying to absorb it.

I was the one that originally had the problem that @Speravir was helping me with..

Nicola Talbot

@PeterGrill I didn't scroll back far enough :-)

Peter Grill

so what is \dostartbit? I don't see it in the documentation, and here it appears that you are only using it within the DTLforeach.

Nicola Talbot

@PeterGrill It's just a temporary macro (I'm not very good at thinking up names). It's a method I often use in for-loops when I want something different on the first iteration. The first line defines the temp macro to ` \\ ` which is what should go at the start of each row, except for the first row, which needs to be ` \\\cmidrule{1-2} `. The temp macro gets redefined just before starting the loop, but because each cell in tabular is scoped, this redefinition only holds for the current cell.

Peter Grill

@NicolaTalbot But I don't see it being used, except within the DTLforeach. is this a known issue with datatool?

Faheem Mitha

11:15 AM

If I want to caption a TikZ picture, is my only option to use the usual figure environment? Can I do something inside tikzpicture?

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha I don't think tikzpicture has a caption, but I don't use those so not sure. Was my answer on DNA squencing of any help? Also, did you see the updated version -- something I thought of after I looked at your figure more carefully.

Nicola Talbot

@PeterGrill \dostartbit isn't part of datatool, I just defined it because I was too lazy to check the documentation. Here's a rewrite using \DTLiffirstrow:

\begin{tabular}{ll}\toprule
    \textbf{First Name} & \textbf{Last Name}%
    \DTLforeach*{myDB}{\Name=name,\Surname=surname}{%
        \DTLiffirstrow{\\\cmidrule{1-2}}{\\}%
        \Name & \Surname
    }%
    \\\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

Peter Grill

@NicolaTalbot Ok, this one I understand. I tried something similar but was not able to get it to work. Thanks.

@NicolaTalbot Works great. Makes sense. Can't ask for anything more. Thank You.

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill Hi Peter. Yes, the DNA answer looks very interesting, but uses many things I don't know the meaning of, so it will require some study on my part. I have not looked at the answer since you initially posted it. I will look again.

user19161

Wow, Faheem, Peter and percusse have three different shades of green!

Faheem Mitha

11:24 AM

@PeterGrill: I'll probably accept Gonzalo's answer, since he did answer most of the original question. I hope you will not be offended by that. You'll probably end up with far more upvotes than he does.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Ok, the new one is more if an idea (just look at image, not code) to see you like that style..

@FaheemMitha No not offended at all. I'll just add you to my ignore list. :-) Just kidding... Plus mine did not really address your question... But hope it was helpful...

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill The idea behind the coloring is very simple, but it seems you did not see the point. Each triple and pair on the right is colored a single color. The squares on the left that are assembled to make those pairs and triples are the same color.

@PeterGrill That's good to know. Thanks. I think your answer is very helpful in separating formatting and data, which is always a good idea. Of course, this is technically not so easy to do.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Well that is why I had asked you to give me the macro calls. But once i "saw" it was what made me think of possibly a different way of illustrating it...

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill The rule I described is the only rule it follows. Maybe I'll add this to the question.

Peter Grill

@WillHunting if egerg was here we'd have more..

@FaheemMitha I wasn't trying to get the correct colors in the first version. But when I attempted the second version, the automation from the first version sure came in handy.

Faheem Mitha

11:31 AM

Well, wrt caption I was just thinking some text at the bottom, which of course one could easily add with the suitable tikz call. But I thought there mgiht be something builtin. Maybe not.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Yes, placing a node at the bottom is an obvious solution if that is all you want. Perhaps the caption pacakge?

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill The colors do match in the second version, but the colors for each triple on the right should be the same across all cells. That's the only difference between what I'm doing and what your second answer has.

@PeterGrill Can you use the caption package inside a tikz picture? I'll check.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Ok, but the color are easy to change. The second answer was an attempt at more clearly showing the column relationships. Perhaps it is not as clear as I thought it would be...

Gnite eveybody.. 3:30AM for me!!

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill Sure, the colors are easy to change. I can change them if you want.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Sure feel free to adjust the answer if you want.

Faheem Mitha

11:35 AM

Though I'm still around 600 pts short of being able to do unapproved edits.

@PeterGrill Ok, I'll give it a whirl.

Peter Grill

@FaheemMitha Approvals here don't take very long. I'll have a look in the morning if they aren't already approved by then (highly unlikely that they won't be approved by then).

Faheem Mitha

@PeterGrill Ok, thanks.

Paulo Cereda

12:16 PM

@percusse OMG

percusse

12:44 PM

@PauloCereda What ? What did you see? Man I was washing the dishes, why do I always miss the good stuff? (true story :P)

Paulo Cereda

@percusse The video about the cloth car. My cat would love it. :)

percusse

@PauloCereda just teasing,

@PauloCereda Next year I needed to go again but luckily it was for a conference :)

►

Paulo Cereda

@percusse me wantee!

percusse

Shut up and take my money

Paulo Cereda

LOL

percusse

12:58 PM

Hmm so my gravatar is not red. .

user19161

@percusse What a beautiful car.

percusse

@WillHunting indeed, I wish their factory cars can stay beautiful but it's getting worse and worse (for my taste)

Nicola Talbot

1:17 PM

@egreg Thanks. I just hope the modifications haven't broken anything.

Oh well, that's flowfram out of the way for now. Back to glossaries, that leviathan that's never far from my inbox!

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot Speaking of which, what a great package! :) We even have a default rule for it in arara! :)

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Thanks :-) When I decided to abandon glossary, I nearly didn't write a replacement package, but my damn ego wouldn't accept defeat!

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot :)

Martin Scharrer

2:28 PM

@PauloCereda: So, my PC is configured. Windows 8 isn't all bad.

Paulo Cereda

2:40 PM

@MartinScharrer Really? I heard that the Metro UI is very polished.

Garbage Collector

@WillHunting Hi banana guy.

Jonas Stein

3:07 PM

I want to make a table in the form
T1 T2 T3 source (BibTeX)
3 4 2 measurement by J. Doe
4 4 2 measurement by J. Bar
what is best practice for this? How can i use the BibTeX db to get the name there?

Paulo Cereda

Yay, ice cream! :)

Joseph Wright

3:25 PM

@JonasStein If you use natbib or biblatex, inclusion of author names is easy

@JonasStein That said, I'd normally expect a standard reference

Paulo Cereda

What a nice program I found! wunderlist.com

Jonas Stein

i use biblatex but per default tables do not work with \footnotes and \cite{} i found many many discussions about that.

user19161

@PauloCereda Someone flagged this message.

user19161

I have no idea what these flaggers are doing!

Paulo Cereda

@WillHunting Oh. :(

I thought it was a good app to share. :(

user19161

3:36 PM

@PauloCereda At first I thought it was some porn site. But it was not. =)

Jonas Stein

i guess its offtopic (spam link)

Paulo Cereda

People out there in other chatrooms praise Microsoft Word and no ones flags it. :(

user19161

But Paulo is a regular chat user who is just sharing. He is not a random advertiser.

user19161

The flags in SE chat are getting quite ridiculous.

Paulo Cereda

I need more ice cream to cheer me up. :(

Nicola Talbot

3:41 PM

@PauloCereda I had a really great ice cream when I was in Brazil. It was a flavour we don't get in the UK, but I can't remember what it was. (Must've been a Brazilian fruit.)

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot Yay! :) Indeed, we have some exotic flavours around here. They are yummy. :)

Note to self: include lots of ice cream flavours when I organize the TUG conference.

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda I wish I could remember what it was. This is going to bug me now. What was the ice cream I had 21 years ago?

@PauloCereda Definitely :-)

user19161

@PauloCereda Even worse, now there seem to be people reading the transcript and flagging while not even in the room.

Joseph Wright

@WillHunting Happens in various places

@PauloCereda :-)

Paulo Cereda

@WillHunting Indeed. :( Well, if for some reason I get expelled from here, tell David I still doesn't understand cricket. :)

@NicolaTalbot I have some tropical fruits in mind, but I don't know their English names.

user19161

3:47 PM

@PauloCereda It is at most a 30 minute suspension from chat. I was suspended before too, not a big deal. =)

Joseph Wright

@WillHunting Were you?

Jonas Stein

sorry i am new in SX is this chat for everyday chat, or about tex?

user19161

@JosephWright Yes, for saying some naughty things. You have not seen the naughty side of me yet. I am more reserved in this room. =)

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein Well, you get quite a bit of TeX but also other things

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Might have been guaraná

Paulo Cereda

3:48 PM

@JonasStein We talk about virtually everything here. :)

@NicolaTalbot aaah! An awesome flavour, I must say! :)

Jonas Stein

is there a tex channel too?

user19161

Hello @nicola. I seem to have read your name somewhere. I cannot recall now...

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein On your question, I'd go with \citeauthor I guess

@JonasStein This is the TeX channel, but as it's attached to the main site, 'concrete' questions go there whereas more abstract things come up here

Jonas Stein

@JosephWright but will citeauthor work in a table? I thought footnotes and cite need some tricks...

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein What's wrong with just a normal citation, by the way?

Nicola Talbot

3:50 PM

@WillHunting Hi. Possibly glossaries, datatool, flowfram or one of the other packages I've written. Or my LaTeX tutorials.

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein Citations are fine inside tables: where do footnotes come in?

Jonas Stein

First i had trouble to make a footnote with citation and i thought both were problematic.

OK then i will just use the cite stuff as usual thanks

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda I think that must''ve been it. Oh, I'm going to start craving it now I've started thinking about it. Will have to nip over to Brazil for some more :-)

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot I can send you some, but it might take a while. :)

Jonas Stein

I want to make some shorthands for constants but they have the same name as commands in packages. Therefor my shorthand \newcommand*{\Cref}{C_{\textrm{ref}}} fails. Is there a better way to make shorthands?

Joseph Wright

3:54 PM

@JonasStein Well, you could do something like have a single 'this is a shorthand' command, or otherwise have to pick different names

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda :-)

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot I can send you some guaraná powder, then you add water and put in the freezer. :)

Jonas Stein

Can i limit my \Cref to mathmode and prvent the collision with \Cref?

Paulo Cereda

This wunderlist is really smooth. :) And free! :P

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda I thought you were still talking about ice cream for a moment :-)

Paulo Cereda

3:58 PM

@NicolaTalbot There's an old man two squares from my house that sells homemade ice cream. It's delicious! :)

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda You're making me salivate, and I'm clean out of ice cream!

@PauloCereda Cool!

(Why does sending guaraná powder sound more naughty than talking about wunderlist - I definitely did a double-take when I read that!)

user19161

Nothing in this room is half as naughty as the things we talk about in the English room!

Jonas Stein

all my variables have subscripts and the code will get unreadable if i write {C_{\textrm{ref}} is there a better way to solve that then my \Cref newcommand?

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot Oops. :P

@NicolaTalbot I'm really considering going get some in a few minutes. :P

Thankfully @DavidCarlisle arrived, adding more credibility to the room. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda had to stop doing lego, clarinet practice time:-)

user19161

4:06 PM

@DavidCarlisle Wow, you play the clarinet? I only play with my vocal cords. =)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh ice cream, lego, TeX... what a great day today. :) Speaking of clarinets, @JosephWright owes us a video of him playing teh clarinetz.

David Carlisle

@WillHunting Not me, I sneak off to my computer: the boy.

Paulo Cereda

Now lets talk about hats too (/pokes @Nicola) :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda don't forget the ducks

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle oh yes, teh ducks.

Jonas Stein

4:10 PM

its a pitty that 99% is not about TeX here. :( cu

user19161

@JonasStein You can go to the main site where 99 per cent is about TeX.

David Carlisle

@WillHunting well if you count the 95% that's about tikz as TeX:-)

Nicola Talbot

4:22 PM

@PauloCereda Sorry, distracted by a couple of phone calls.

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein Well questions go to the main site, which is what it's for, so it's not surprising that the topics here are more varied

Jonas Stein

main site? do you mean the non-chat-main-site where one asks SX questions?

Joseph Wright

$TeX - LaTeX$

@JonasStein Yes, not chat-based. Chat setups are poor for asking questions with any aim of being able to find the same answer again for a repeated question

So the TeX questions here tend to be 'does this make a good question' or more discursive

Jonas Stein

OK

my preamble contains \usepackage[%
%style=authoryear%
style=alphabetic,%
%natbib=true,%
sorting=nyt,%
%backend=biber,%
doi=true,%
isbn=true,%
hyperref=true,%
backref=true,%
url=false]{biblatex}
but i fear i have no "real" biblatex. how can i check, if biblatex is working and not plain old bibtex?

Nicola Talbot

@JonasStein What do you mean by is working? Do you mean is the biblatex package installed or is biblatex configured to use biber instead of bibtex?

@PauloCereda What's your opinion on hedgehogs?

Jonas Stein

4:37 PM

@NicolaTalbot it is installed, but LaTeX does not support some commands that i expected to be able to use now

Nicola Talbot

@JonasStein What version do you have installed? Can you provide a minimal example and say what error message you get?

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot If I'm not mistaken there's a few around my area. :) They look very naughty and lovely, but I wouldn't dare play with it. When I was a kid, I remember seeing one dog bitting a hedgehog and we had to remove all the spines stuck into the dog's mouth.

Nicola Talbot

4:52 PM

@PauloCereda Ow! My next book's about a naughty hedgehog. And to keep the conversation TeX-related I used flowfram to typeset the book :-)

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot Awesome! A children book? Could you give any hints on the plot? :) And to keep the conversation TeX-related too, which class do you use to write it? :)

Garbage Collector

Because a user was removed I got -10, why?

Paulo Cereda

@GarbageCollector The same happened to me.

Garbage Collector

@PauloCereda Who was removed?

Paulo Cereda

@GarbageCollector I don't know. :(

egreg

4:55 PM

@GarbageCollector Because that's how it works. Moderators maybe can know which user has been removed, but the information is not disclosed to the community, I believe.

Garbage Collector

@egreg i see.

David Carlisle

@GarbageCollector we all get that from time to time. I don't know this case but for example if the system suspects that some account is an automated vote machine it gets deleted and its votes get removed

Garbage Collector

@DavidCarlisle It makes sense. Thanks.

Jonas Stein

@NicolaTalbot biblatex fails if i add date=iso8601

\usepackage[%
%style=authoryear%
%natbib=true,%
%backend=biber,%
style=alphabetic,%
date=iso8601,%
sorting=nyt,%
doi=true,%
isbn=true,%
hyperref=true,%
backref=true,%
url=false]{biblatex}

with the message ! Package biblatex Error: Option 'date=iso8601' invalid.

See the biblatex package documentation for explanation.
Type H <return> for immediate help.
...

l.7850 \blx@processoptions

Paulo Cereda

Does anybody here have Nintendo 3DS?

Jonas Stein

4:58 PM

@PauloCereda no i guess most readers are adults here

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Yes, it's an illustrated children's book. Granny hedgehog gives little hedgehog a dire warning. Foolish little hedgehog is tempted to ignore granny's advice\ldots I wrote a class called hedgehog.cls that loads extarticle. It uses arev package for the fonts and has a dynamic frame on odd pages that automatically includes a numbered image file.

@PauloCereda My husband does, but I've not used it.

David Carlisle

@JonasStein Adults, yes. that's why discussion is usually about lego, ducks and hedgehogs

Jonas Stein

;-)

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot How nice! :) Do you draw too? :)

@NicolaTalbot Ah. :) I'm thinking of getting one. And maybe try to run emacs in it. :)

Faheem Mitha

I don't know if this is worth asking a question about, but wrapping tikz in a figure and adding a caption greatly stretches out the pdf horizontally, even with preview standalone.

Anything I'm missing?

egreg

5:01 PM

@DavidCarlisle Also cricket, sometimes.

Paulo Cereda

@JonasStein OK, sorry to ask.

David Carlisle

@egreg and just occasionally football

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda No, I have a friend who's an artist (she painted my parrot logo, I just converted it to vector graphics).

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha a MWE

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle So, I should post a question then?

Jonas Stein

5:03 PM

@NicolaTalbot how can i findout the biblatex version on console?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well unless you strike lucky I doubt the above is enough information for anyone to help:-)

Jonas Stein

i can only see bibtex and that is $ bibtex -version
BibTeX 0.99c (TeX Live 2009/Debian)

biblatex is part of TeXLive 2009 too

David Carlisle

@JonasStein That's quite an old latex have you updated your latex packages, biblatex version 2 is newer than that

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein biblatex is not a separate program: it's a LaTeX package to provide a new framework to use .bib files, either using BibTeX or Biber. AS you have TL2009, I guess you have something like biblatex 1.0, so BibTeX as backend

Nicola Talbot

Have a look in the log file. For example, I have v2.2 installed so my log has
Package: biblatex 2012/08/17 v2.2 programmable bibliographies (PK/JW/AB)

Paulo Cereda

5:05 PM

@NicolaTalbot How nice. :) A very nice drawing.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

Joseph Wright

@egreg No, this is a Powers That Be thing

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Yeah, very rarely. Yesterday both England and Italy won their rugby test match

Jonas Stein

Package: biblatex 2010/03/19 v0.9a programmable bibliographies
said the logfile

Paulo Cereda

@egreg I heard that Brazil has good chances of putting the national rubgy team into a major competition. :)

Nicola Talbot

5:06 PM

@PauloCereda She does a very cute hedgehog: dickimaw-books.com/fiction/kids/hedgehog/cover-large.png

David Carlisle

@egreg actually usually at this point in the weekend we get a travelogue of motorbike tours around countries in the vicinity of Northern Italy.

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot How sweet! :) Very cute indeed! :)

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein A lot of the options are newer than your version. Try texdoc biblatex from the Terminal to see the manual for the version you have installed (assuming your have the documentation installed, of course)

egreg

@PauloCereda This year Argentina played the tournament with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. I don't think that Brazil can, at least now.

@DavidCarlisle The weather is quite bad. :(

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda :-)

Have to go out. Cheerio.

Paulo Cereda

5:09 PM

@egreg Indeed. :) Fun fact: Argentina is actually hoping that Brazil gets better with rugby, mostly because currently there is not match for them in South America. If more teams get acquainted with the sport, the whole continent grows in quality. :)

Faheem Mitha

@MartinScharrer: Can you elaborate on your comments in

9

A: Minimize automatically the page size of the PDF outputs

Use the standalone rather than the article document class. Among other things, it will crop rather tightly the output of your (pdf)latex run. E.g., the following modification of your example code (I've mainly stripped out some unneeded \usepackage instructions), \documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{stan...

?

Jonas Stein

oh the local texdoc does not know "date=..." yet. Is there a backport for TeXLive for usage on debian stable?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I can choose among Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Switzerland, all available for a one day journey.

Faheem Mitha

wrt to using mbox and minipage to shrink the margins?

I used \settowidth as recommended by that question and it worked.

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein I think there must be, as Ubuntu now have a more up-to-date TL and they are Debian-based. However, not really my area: I use 'vanilla' TeX Live on Linux (and elsewhere)

Jonas Stein

5:12 PM

Vanilla means, you install TeXLive local in user home?

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein It is not difficult to backport, but I don't think there is a public one.

Actually, I think it was pretty straightforward. It doesn't have much by way of dependencies.

To be clear, I did it.

Joseph Wright

@JonasStein Well, as I have root access in /usr/local, but in principal installing in ~ would also have the same effect (only one user = makes little difference)

Faheem Mitha

@JonasStein Most people here would recommend a local install though.

Personally, I like binary packages, though.

David Carlisle

@GarbageCollector oh I got -20 :-(

Garbage Collector

@DavidCarlisle :-( There are at least 2 users removed today.

Faheem Mitha

5:22 PM

Anyone know a good place to find documentation for \settowidth?

@GarbageCollector Why?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha LaTeX: A Document Preparation System :-)

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it is only two tokens long \def\settoheight{\@settodim\ht}

Garbage Collector

@FaheemMitha By assuming the point loss comes from the same question.

David Carlisle

or rather \def\settowidth {\@settodim\wd}

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright I don't have it here, unfortunately.

@DavidCarlisle Thanks.

David Carlisle

5:24 PM

@GarbageCollector most likely the removed user voted for one of your answers and two of mine

Faheem Mitha

@GarbageCollector I mean, why were the users deleted?

Garbage Collector

@DavidCarlisle Yes. It is possible.

@FaheemMitha Nobody knows.

Faheem Mitha

@GarbageCollector Surprising, but Ok.

Garbage Collector

@FaheemMitha :-)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Some of the socket puppies you created have been discovered. :)

Garbage Collector

5:35 PM

@egreg use proxy server to disguise...

Gnintendo

Is there a way to make the top answer that uses spaces for this word counter work on expanded text (like \lipsum, etc)?:

16

Q: Environment that counts words inside

How can I create the environment that could count words inside itself? More specifically, I want to write an enviroment called "assignment" such that the code \begin{assignment} Some words here. \end{assignment} will result in "Some words here." in the text and, say, "3 words" in a margin para...

environments word-count

egreg

@GarbageCollector How do you think I manage my socket puppies? :P

Garbage Collector

@egreg I don't think you have more than one account.

egreg

@GarbageCollector Who knows? ;-)

Faheem Mitha

@egreg sock puppets?

egreg

5:38 PM

@FaheemMitha Oh, yes, that's how they're called, thanks

Garbage Collector

6:03 PM

there are approximately 591,000 homeless people in Germany

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha We can speculate, but it's hard to be sure as there is no obvious 'bad' behaviour on our site alone. So the deleted accounts are probably linked to those on other parts of the network.

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright I see.

@GarbageCollector That's rough.

user19161

Well, in most cases, user removed just means the user chose to delete his account. Very few such cases are actually where the user has done something bad on the site.

Joseph Wright

@WillHunting That's also true, yes

user19161

@JosephWright I myself deleted 8 accounts a few weeks ago. =)

Garbage Collector

6:12 PM

Does an event with zero probability represent that the event is impossible to occur?

It seems to be a paradox. Assume there is a point bullet that is shot randomly in a line (-1,1). The probability to target the origin is zero. But it should be a possible event.

Andrew Stacey

@GarbageCollector No. Something with 0 probability is not necessarily impossible.

Garbage Collector

@AndrewStacey Then my textbook is wrong. :D

user19161

@GarbageCollector It is not wrong. It depends on the context.

user19161

For example, what does the set of events look like? What is the meaning of impossible?

user19161

Now a point certainly exists on the real line, but if we integrate over a point we get zero area.

Faheem Mitha

6:20 PM

@WillHunting Why?

user19161

@FaheemMitha Because I won't use them anymore so I don't want to keep them lying around. I like to keep things clean and tidy. =)

Faheem Mitha

@GarbageCollector No, that just means it is measure 0. In measure-theoretic terms.

@WillHunting Ok. These are SE accounts?

user19161

@FaheemMitha Yup. So don't open a million accounts for fun!

Faheem Mitha

@GarbageCollector Roughly speaking sets of zero measure aren't big.

user19161

So in a way we can say a point exists, but in another way we can also say it does not exist. =)

user19161

6:22 PM

Intuition is one thing. Formal mathematical definitions are another thing.

user19161

The latter is motivated by the former, but then becomes an independent entity.

percusse

@WillHunting And makes the mathematics super dry and ultimately boring (except for the professionals).

Faheem Mitha

@WillHunting Well, measure theory works fairly well as a foundation for probability theory. It's not perfect, but what is? And it has been around for 70+ years now. The foundational work was by Kolmogorov in the 30s.

And measure theory is a nice clean theory. Elegant and simple.

user19161

By the way, for those interested in measure theoretic probability I recommend Oliver Knill's Probability and Stochastic Processes, available in book form or notes form.

Faheem Mitha

Billingsley is nice, though a bit idiosyncratic.

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