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Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
12:01 AM
@Speravir Ah cool, I'll take a look.
 
Peter Grill
Peter Grill
@PauloCereda Deleted... I guess no one saw that. :-)
 
Speravir
Speravir
@PauloCereda At one time = at the same time, but it seems, you understood …
 
Peter Grill
Peter Grill
@PauloCereda You were missed...
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@PeterGrill I'm deeply sorry. :( I tried to reschedule my appointment, but I had no luck.
 
percusse
percusse
@PauloCereda As a punishment, you have to be the next interviewewvwvwewvweee... doesn't compute
 
Peter Grill
Peter Grill
12:04 AM
@PauloCereda No problem, like I said sometimes "life" happens.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
What you imagine when somebody says LaTeX syntax highlighting:
2
What you get:
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@PeterGrill Indeed. :)
@percusse Oh no! :)
 
percusse
percusse
@Gnintendo You should know by now that macros are and are not variables so highlighting is really context dependent and quite difficult to pull off with any editor, unless wait for it it's emacs.
and even that I'm not so sure.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@percusse LOL
Wait for my TeX editor. :)
 
percusse
percusse
@PauloCereda I've waited for the whole afternoon... :)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
12:09 AM
@percusse Oh my... look, an arara! /runs
 
percusse
percusse
Battle of Arara
The Battle of Arara took place on 19 September 1918 between the Yildirim Army Group of the German and Ottoman Empires and the 54th (East Anglian) Division and the Détachment Français de Palestine et de Syrie (DFPS) which included the French Armenian Legion also known as La Légion Arménienne. This battle was fought as part the military operations of the Battle of Megiddo when the XXI Corps and the XX Corps and Chaytor's Force in the east, attacked the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Ottoman Armies' front line. The Armenian's' role during this battle was so prominent that their efforts were r...
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@percusse Oh my! Liteaunent percusse, to the war room!
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
12:27 AM
@PauloCereda does arara have a logo?
Also, hi!
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo It's hard to get syntax highlighting as TeX can change the lexical analysis on the fly so in practice any syntax highlighting will be wrong in some cases, which means there is limited enthusiasm for doing much more than a simple regex and brace and environment matching.
@PeterGrill As a little exercise in expansion you can check that this expands to that
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@GonzaloMedina Hi Gonzalo! :) Yes, arara has a logo (altough I might reconsider some redesign in the future): github.com/cereda/arara/blob/master/docs/figures/araralogo.pdf
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
\def\1#11#22{\csname#1\endcsname{#2}}
\def\2#1,#2,#3,#4,#5,#6,{\qbezier(#1,-#2)(#3,-#4)(#5,-#6)}
\def\3#1#2#3#4#5#6#7\3{\put(1#1#2#3,-#4#5#6){#7}}
\def\4#1\4#2\4{\color[#1]{#2}}
\def\5#1\5#2\5{\circle#1{#2}}
\1documentclass1article2
\1usepackage1color2
\1begin1document2
\unitlength.2pt
\1begin1picture2(1000,1000)(600,-1000)
\1color1yellow2
\2665,317,963,650,1121,305,
\2665,317,939,1150,1331,417,
\21121,305,1110,130,1183,135,
\21183,135,1360,120,1415,267,
\21331,417,1376,370,1383,355,
\21187,139,1175,100,1163,61,
 
percusse
percusse
@DavidCarlisle We prefer scientific methods over pure voodoo magic here.
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@PauloCereda How can I download the logo?
 
percusse
percusse
12:32 AM
@GonzaloMedina View Raw :)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@GonzaloMedina There's a "Raw" button there, just click it. :)
 
percusse
percusse
Is Use LaTeX a valid answer?
12
Q: How can I toughen up my fingertips?

Matthew ReadRecently I played my acoustic guitar after a couple months of only playing my classical guitar. My fingers have softened considerably compared to when I was playing the acoustic regularly, and it was painful for the tips of my fingers on my left (chording) hand. Is there anything I can do to pe...

guitar
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@percusse It was scientifically constructed, although I admit I converted from the tikz control points to the quatratic bezier control point by eye.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@percusse LOL
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@percusse Ah, I know that feeling (softened fingers after not playing for a long period).
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
12:35 AM
@percusse use emacs might be better answer
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@GonzaloMedina: I can send you a .png if you want. :)
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@DavidCarlisle What's emacs? (I'd love to see David's face after this question).
@PauloCereda No, thank you. I had an idea, but it's not valid anymore.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@GonzaloMedina Oh.
@GonzaloMedina: Now I'm curious. :)
 
percusse
percusse
bah, red alert in matlab. See you later guys...
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@percusse See ya, buddy. :) Good luck. :)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
12:44 AM
@GonzaloMedina it's an editor like notepad
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle "like notepad". :)
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@PauloCereda I just thought that you could open a contest to design the logo.
But there's not much sense now, since you already have a logo.
@DavidCarlisle hehe.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@GonzaloMedina I actually like the idea! :)
 
Speravir
Speravir
@GonzaloMedina @PauloCereda Henrique has already started ;-)
Oops no logo here …
 
Peter Grill
Peter Grill
1:54 AM
@DavidCarlisle I think that is a little but more that a "little" exercise in expansion.
Ok, wait, parts of that I can actually make sense of. But that is just simple \def replacement. No \expandafter voodoo required.
 
Speravir
Speravir
2:22 AM
@GonzaloMedina @PauloCereda I should have done it this way:
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@Speravir Looks like the bird is trying to eat the X :)
Wem's schmeckt :)
 
Speravir
Speravir
@Qrrbrbirlbel No he (? @PauloCereda he or she? :-) ) has a cross (the christian sign!) in his/her bill/beak and plays with it ;-)
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
2:39 AM
@Speravir Oh, it took me a while to realize that you didn't question Paulo's sex but the bird's …
 
Speravir
Speravir
@Qrrbrbirlbel LOL
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@Speravir Yeah, it's late. making excuses
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
3:14 AM
@GonzaloMedina Are you answering the OldStyle question?
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
3:39 AM
@Qrrbrbirlbel No, I'm not.
@Qrrbrbirlbel I just got notified from your message, 25 minutes after you wrote it. Do you know if that's the normal time for a notification?
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@GonzaloMedina That's strange. I get a notification right away.
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@Qrrbrbirlbel I get notified right away if I have logged-in to the chat room; but if I am not (as was the case with your previous message) the notification took 25 minutes to appear!
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@GonzaloMedina Ah, I see. That's another case, then. That kind of notification seems to have a delay, yes.
But I don't often see notification on the non-chat site, because I have usually scrolled down a bit.
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
@Qrrbrbirlbel Seems like a little too much time...
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@GonzaloMedina Yes, I agree. It would be nice if they were as instant as in-chat notifications.
@GonzaloMedina However, it wasn't my intention to get you into the chat. I just used the auto-completion function without thinking about your actually presence.
 
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
3:52 AM
@Qrrbrbirlbel Ah, no problem at all.
 
Speravir
Speravir
@GonzaloMedina I noticed, that since Monday (but I'm not sure!) on the main site tex.stackexchange.com the notifications are not updated. I must go on any other subpage.
@Qrrbrbirlbel Kennst Du ein englisches Wort für Vorführeffekt? Kaum schreibe ich, dass es auf der Startseite nicht funktioniert, bekomme ich genau von dort eine Meldung!
@Speravir He my other Ego! It worked just now, so you’re not true (any more)!
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@Speravir demo(nstration) effect?
@Speravir Schau dir mal dict.leo.org/forum/… an, die versuchen auch einen Begriff dafür zu finden.
@Speravir Murhpy's Law passt ja eigentlich gar nicht, weil es gerade das umgekehrte Gegenteil ist. Statt "Was schief gehen kann, geht schief" haben wir jetzt "wenn es einmal schief gehen soll, klappt's auf einmal".
 
Speravir
Speravir
4:09 AM
@Qrrbrbirlbel Ah, LEO, of course (I use this one: www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~fri/ding – works in Windows, too, after a bit adjustment.)
@Qrrbrbirlbel Demonstration effect ist doch gut!
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@Qrrbrbirlbel @Speravir Wobei das auch nicht ganz stimmt, in deinem Fall ist ja das "Nicht-Funktionieren" das, was funktionieren soll.
@Speravir Ja, jetzt wo mir auffällt, dass der deutsche Begriff die Information, dass etwas schiefgeht, auch nicht direkt beinhaltet …
@GonzaloMedina After trying to resolve the problem myself with some combinations of OpenType fontspec features, this seems to be a bug (that is none), anyway.
Good morning, @DavidCarlisle.
 
Speravir
Speravir
@Qrrbrbirlbel Wobei die vorgeschlagenen „Demonstration Paradox (Presentation/Presenter Paradox)“ auch gut sind.
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
@Speravir „Paradox“ im Begriff zu haben, ist immer gut. :)
 
Speravir
Speravir
@Speravir Because an edit wasn’t possible anymore: The online version of “ding” with, I think, the same database: Beolingus.
@Qrrbrbirlbel Quotingschizophrenia is also paradox, isn’t it? ;-)
 
Qrrbrbirlbel
Qrrbrbirlbel
4:24 AM
@Speravir Quotingschizophrenia?
@Speravir Das ist mir jetzt zu hoch … und zu spät.
\bye :)
 
Speravir
Speravir
@Qrrbrbirlbel \me too
 
 
2 hours later…
N3buchadnezzar
N3buchadnezzar
6:54 AM
Anyone willing to help me with some biblatex problems? =)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
7:34 AM
Friends, I'll be in São Paulo today. Have a nice day! :)
 
 
1 hour later…
user19161
8:50 AM
@N3buchadnezzar I am here, but I can't help you.
 
N3buchadnezzar
N3buchadnezzar
9:20 AM
@WillHunting Why will, Will wont ?
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
It seems to me the names \gather, \align are semantically inappropriate. What do you think?
\gather and \align should be named as, for example, \centeredequations and \alignequations, respectively.
The first word represents the alignment style and the second word represents the environment supporting multiple equations (because we already have \equation for a single equation).
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
10:08 AM
How to produce multiple pages with standalone class? The following attempt only produces one page.
\documentclass[preview,border=12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}
\begin{preview}
\begin{align}
x&=y \tag*{original}\\
x'&=y' \tag*{primed}
\end{align}
\end{preview}


\begin{preview}
\begin{align}
x&=y && \text{original}\\
x'&=y' && \text{primed}
\end{align}
\end{preview}

\end{document}
I don't want to do the following actually, but it works.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\PreviewBorder=12pt


\begin{document}
\abovedisplayskip=0pt
\begin{preview}
\begin{align}
x&=y \tag*{original}\\
x'&=y' \tag*{primed}
\end{align}
\end{preview}


\begin{preview}
\begin{align}
x&=y && \text{original}\\
x'&=y' && \text{primed}
\end{align}
\end{preview}

\end{document}
I seem to do a monologue.
 
egreg
egreg
10:26 AM
@GarbageCollector They were chosen by M. Spivak almost 30 years ago, so it's a bit late to change them. :) The name centeredequations is surely wrong, because a gather environment respects the possible fleqn option.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Qrrbrbirlbel hi
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg I see. We can choose better names, and make amsmath backward compatible. :-) The current names are not too intuitive at a glance.
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector The option for outputting multiple pages with standalone is multi
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg Oh. Thanks. Useful!
 
tohecz
tohecz
11:12 AM
@GarbageCollector Way too long.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz What does it mean?
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector If you type dozens of equations, you find that 6 letters in the name of the environment is just right
I don't like this "Let's have long but precise names" attitude. I understand it in the lower layer (@ and _: syntax), but I don't see it good in the user-level commands.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz It does not matter. Mathematica always uses better naming convention than Matlab, so it makes it easier for us to remember the name and its functionality.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector yeah, but rot90 is rot90, and if it were "RotateMatrix90DegreesRight", the first thing everybody did would be "rot90:=RotateMatrix90DegreesRight"
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz I never find such a long name in Mathematica.
 
tohecz
tohecz
11:17 AM
@GarbageCollector ok, maybe not so long. But let's face it: centeredequations is long.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz We can choose shorter if any. Or provides with key-val options.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector yes, gather
@GarbageCollector OMG, never ever!
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: It is not a big problem actually.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector no, but \begin{equation}[centered] is even longer
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz we have c for centered.
 
egreg
egreg
11:20 AM
@tohecz Moreover, whether displayed equations should be centered or flush left should be a global decision.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector ok, and tell me how is \begin{equations}[c] and \begin{equations}[a] easier to remember than \begin{gather} and \begin{align}
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: We can use \equations[c] for example
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg ok, let's call gather -> equations
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz the plural form of \equation can be represented by \equations, and the optional c represent it horizontally centered.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector Yeah, but then you have align, and how will you call it?
 
egreg
egreg
11:23 AM
@GarbageCollector As I said, the horizontal placement is not an option for one equation: all centered or none.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz We can choose \equations[&].
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector I know quite a lot of people who write \pf This is my proof. \pfe because \begin{proof} is too long.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz But if we want to stick to readability, we should be consistent with their semantics.
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz And they are doing evil. :)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector And what is the benefit? Is \begin{equations}[&] really more readable than \begin{align} ?
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
11:25 AM
@tohecz Just for semantical purposes.
@tohecz: align is a bit confusing.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg Yes, but they are doing it. And I imagine people doing \eqa and \eeqa for \beginend{equation}[&] and after loading some package, I imagine these people complaining that their \eqa doesn't work.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: for me, align sounds to be similar to split because it does not say about whether or not it is for plural or singularity.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector sigh. Change split -> splitted then
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz What language is "splitted"? ;-)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg Does it matter?
Sorry I mean
If align is too similar to split, then let's change split, because on the same level you have aligned
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
11:29 AM
multline is also confusing.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector No, multline is the one that makes perfect sense
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
The taxonomy seems to be not well defined.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector the what?
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz split and aligned serve two different purposes, though in many cases they give the same result.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: multline works only for single equation.
 
tohecz
tohecz
11:30 AM
@egreg Yes, but they both have to be inside an equation (hence they're at the same level)
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: multline should be nested inside \equation or \equations (assume it is available)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector Yes, it does, it is its purpose
@GarbageCollector That would be just ugly. I use align always in such cases
It seems to me that we use different LaTeX
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz: split and multline behave differently.
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector No, it's like equation but for one that doesn't fit in the margin. The "inner" environments use a past participle (split, aligned, gathered). With mathtools you have also multlined.
 
tohecz
tohecz
My LaTeX was made for typesetting maths, and considering displayed equations, its naming conventions serve me quite well.
@egreg Yes, and the only problem is that the verb "split" is irregular and people do not recognize "split" as its past participle.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
11:33 AM
\equation, \multline,\align,\gather,\alignat, seem to be not well taxonimized. :D
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector Perhaps for multline it was a bad design decision and it should have been at the same level as split or aligned. Alas, Spivak decided differently.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg No, because usually you don't typeset many long equations in a row, so makind it "inner" would make the code even more complicated. And if you typeset many long equations, you should IMHO use align(ed) and align them by =-signs
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg I think a single \equation with key-val options should be enough to accommodate all current scenarios provided by \align,\multline,etc....
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz If you have one long formula and need to split it, you have several tools: you can use split/aligned inside equation or multline; probably \begin{equation}\begin{multline}...\end{multline}\label{x}\end{equation} would have been more uniform with respect to syntax.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg Yes, but it's longer. I think that you can use \begin{equation}\begin{multlined}...\end{multlined}\label{x}\end{equation} if you're so keen on uniformity.
uniformity is just a tool, so you have to really really ask: "Do I need to use this tool here or I only want to?" And if I only want to, then I should not use it.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
11:46 AM
@tohecz For me, the core should be semantically well-defined and let the end-users to override it if they want to.
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz For instance, the longer input would allow for easy searching of "single equations". Just as searching for \begin{align} or \begin{gather} allows us to find groups of equations.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg yeah, but those thousands of LaTeX users usually don't search through their code.
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz Copy editors do!
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg yeah, but they do so many compliacated things, and searching align|gather|equation|multline[^d]|\\[ is surely not that complicated
@GarbageCollector and as well, that is very bad argument, becuase then this idea (linked post) kill is completely
(and people writing \pf ... \pfe kill it as well)
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz Then the fault belong to those people.
 
tohecz
tohecz
11:50 AM
@GarbageCollector Yeah, and the more complicated the syntax is the more such people will exist
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz The mandatory citation: tug.org/TUGboat/tb26-3/tb84gregorio.pdf
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz I don't think it is too complicated. Our editors also have an auto-completion feature, so it does not to be a big problem.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector I am a copy editor (moreorless), and I know that in the end, you go manually through the source code and "clean" it, because that's the only way to go.
@egreg cough ... tex.stackexchange.com/questions/80501/… ... cough nice example :D
 
egreg
egreg
@tohecz Seemed very much like some horrors I'd met before. :)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg yeah. I get some articles in Word and some in LaTeX. And before opening them, I'm never sure what would be better. Sometimes I just print the LaTeX one and write it completely again (the math parts).
 
egreg
egreg
12:03 PM
@tohecz I had less difficulties in porting a Plain TeX paper than some "LaTeX" ones. :)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@egreg lol. I've never used plain TeX, I only looked at some implementation to get an inspiration.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz What is the difficulty when using \begin{equation}[key=value,key=value]...\end{equation} for the copy editor?
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector Nothing. But \newcommand\eqcm{\begin{equation}[multline, center]} is, and with such syntax, I can tell you that this would be the first thing the 2 professors sitting next door would do.
Disclaimer: They are my supervisors and they are very good mathematiciens.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz It can be regarded as a localized problem. :-) Or my problem might be too localized.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector But it's not, this is a world-wide problem
@GarbageCollector and what is your problem?
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
12:09 PM
@tohecz The problem is that I think the current names that amsmath adopted seem to be confusing for beginners.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector I have a different feeling: For me only split is confusing, but on the other hand I have never used it myself.
Remember that LaTeX is used by people having very little computer experience, and for them saying that {equations} has "parameters in brackets" is too much for their understanding.
I don't think we should make simple things more complicated
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz \begin{equation}[key=val,key=val,...]...\end{equation} seems to be more intuitive than defining too many confusing environments. :-)
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector for you ;)
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@tohecz I am one of many others I think.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@GarbageCollector Yeah, but you are the one that gets accostumed with different approaches inside computer languages.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
12:15 PM
@tohecz The modern programming language such as C#, adopts such a convention. A single method can have some overloads. I want to post a new question to TeX.SeX.
 
tohecz
tohecz
Well, I gotta go for lunch
 
Andrew Uzzell
Andrew Uzzell
This question asks how to find the width of a Beamer block:
6
Q: How do you get block dimensions in Beamer?

ancechuI'm using a block for emphasizing different pieces of information. I'd like those pieces to be constrained to the block dimensions and to use the columns environment, but I don't know how to get the block dimensions in order to constraint the column's width. \begin{block} \begin{columns}[t] ...

beamer width
I would like to know how to find the height of a block, as well.
Is this easy to do? Is it worth asking a new question?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@GarbageCollector who cares about beginners? Think how confusing it will be for old people (not me of course, other people) if the names change after thirty years.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@DavidCarlisle We can have an option for backward compatibility. And it is a common approach.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@GarbageCollector Then you have two names for everything which also adds confusion
@GarbageCollector anyway it is easy to test write a simple wrapper package amsmath-with-systematic-naming.sty stick it on ctan and see if people prefer it.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
12:23 PM
@DavidCarlisle Yes. We should rearrange everything from zero and probably name the new package with an different name.
@DavidCarlisle If you have time, you can help me to make such a test. I will monitor the effect. :-)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@GarbageCollector no time, sorry:-)
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@DavidCarlisle No problem. I will do it later until I have enough knowledge to do so. :-)
 
Jörg
Jörg
12:56 PM
Hi, I need some quick guidance: I know how to create macros with options using etoolbox, so that \mycommand[option]{something}. But I am a bit lost how to create keyvalues (is that the right word?) so that \mycommand[option1,option2]{something}
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg: What convention do we usually adopt to decide whether or not we need to use gather instead of align for consecutive equations? I am confused to make such a decision. I know it is about alignment for sure.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Jörg well for just one optional argument you don't need a package \newcommand has that built in. If you want a key=value syntax within that argument you need a package and then define the keys using that package. keyval is the original and comes in the required latex graphics distribution and has \define@key there are newer packages like xkeyval these days as well. If you have a specific problem probably best to ask on site with a question with a full example
 
Jörg
Jörg
@DavidCarlisle Okay, thanks, that also clarifies they syntax for me. I don't need key=value but want to specify several options for one macro.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@AndrewUzzell well you'd have to save the block in a box and measure it (unless the beamer internals have already measured it somewhere )
@Jörg oh like \usepackage{array,color,amsmath} ? you don't need a package (but it would have been easier in an answer as code formatting in chat is rubbish) \newcommand\foo[2][]{\@for\tmp:=#1\do{.... something with \tmp and #2...}} will loop through all the comma separated values setting each to \tmp in turn, with the mandatory value from {} being in #2
 
Jörg
Jörg
@DavidCarlisle Yes, that's what I mean! Thanks
 
Andrew Uzzell
Andrew Uzzell
1:11 PM
@DavidCarlisle OK. How do I do that? (Or would this, too, be better communicated as an answer?)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@AndrewUzzell sorry about deleted comment, wrong question:-) it depends a bit what you mean by the height: parboxes have the a target width specified in advance (\linewidth for example) so line breaking can happen, but they are just as big as they need to be vertically. You can measure then for example by \setbox0=\vbox{.... stuff } and then look at \ht0 and \dp0 which is the natural height and depth of the saved material,
but that isn't necessarily the same as the height it would have been had you not boxed it (or if you unbox it) as then glue will (or may) stretch.
 
Andrew Uzzell
Andrew Uzzell
@DavidCarlisle What I want to do is to set the height of a Beamer overlayarea to equal the height of a block.
Hmm, got to run now.
 
egreg
egreg
1:37 PM
@GarbageCollector Use align if you have an alignment point, gather otherwise.
 
Jörg
Jörg
@DavidCarlisle Okay, I asked a question on the site. I do not see how I can apply your code to the example I posted.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg What is the alignment point, it sounds new to me?
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector \begin{align}a&=b\\c&=d\end{align}
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg So is there an example without alignment point?
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector \begin{gather}a=b\\c=d\end{gather}
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
1:46 PM
@egreg it is confusing. :-)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Jörg @JosephWright gave a working example already I see
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector It depends on what you need to do; if you want to emphasize the relation symbol use align (with &), otherwise just use gather.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg Usually I use gather for declaring equations and use align for explaining the process of solving an equation.
 
egreg
egreg
@GarbageCollector Not necessarily. I'd use align also for typesetting Maxwell's equations, for instance.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg For asymmetric equations (one side is shorter than the other side), I think gather is more appropriate to maintain the centroid of the equations centered. :-)
 
egreg
egreg
1:56 PM
@GarbageCollector Not necessarily; it depends on what you want to emphasize.
 
Garbage Collector
Garbage Collector
@egreg OK. Thanks.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
2:24 PM
Upon reading the documentation, it's not immediately obvious to me: What are the immediate practical changes I will see in a given document after merely loading the microtype package?
I know I've done this in the past to make hboxes play a little nicer, but is this the extent of what it does from merely loading the package?
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Probably character protrusion into the margin. Look at commas and hyphens at the end of lines.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo Are you suspecting the Emperor's new clothes:-)
@Gnintendo If you are using pdftex and getting font expansion, the idea is that you get more even white space as the character widths rather than just the inter-word spaces are adjusted on a per-line basis.
 
tohecz
tohecz
@Gnintendo Less hyphenation
 
percusse
percusse
@Gnintendo If you view the manual ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/tex/macros/latex/contrib/… in AcroRead there are interactive buttons to show the effect on the margin.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
2:39 PM
@percusse Oh cool, I missed that!
Would you guys recommend loading the microtype package in most cases, then?
 
percusse
percusse
@Gnintendo I wouldn't refrain from using it until it conflicts with some other thing. so yes. Our @PaulGaborit wrote another nice package on top of ocgtools which is called ocgx and it has also a microtype demo in it (again with AcroRead on slide 7) ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/tex/macros/latex/contrib/ocgx/…
 
tohecz
tohecz
@Gnintendo I life was not so complete without microtype ;) (but I don't think it's necessary to use it always, I basically load it when seme problem appears (bad h/vbox, ...) )
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
OK, thanks all. I never really felt comfortable arbitrarily loading the package without understanding what I was actually doing.
 
percusse
percusse
@Gnintendo This is me most of times loading packages so don't worry :)
user image
3
especially with fontspec and inputenc
Oh LOL I'm dying ...... @AlanMunn
 
 
2 hours later…
tohecz
tohecz
4:43 PM
Would this one fit in SO? It's clearly off-topic here:
0
Q: How to make graph originally generated by stata look good?

Pig CryI use stata to get an eps graph, then use pdfLaTeX to get a pdf file. \documentclass{article} \usepackage{graphics} \begin{document} \centering \includegraphics{test} \end{document} When I zoom in the graph, we can see an ugly diamond. How to solve it?

graphics
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@tohecz Probably not, so might be safest to simply close
 
egreg
egreg
@JosephWright Without any hint about the code, it would be heavily downvoted on SO, I guess.
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@egreg Even with code, they'll still regard it as off-topic, I think. Certainly I'm not migrating it there!
 
tohecz
tohecz
@JosephWright can you migrate everywhere? Because we (I) can migrate only to our meta...
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
4:59 PM
@tohecz Yes: mods can migrate to anywhere on the network
 
 
1 hour later…
Gonzalo Medina
Gonzalo Medina
6:05 PM
@percusse Oi! That's f*** hilarious!
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
6:49 PM
I swear sometimes I can't even tell ANY difference after loading microtype
does it still play nice if I'm using a font like Libertine with LuaTeX
 
tohecz
tohecz
@Gnintendo Sometimes the difference is very slight (if the paragraphs are really ok without microtype, then it has no reason to modify them)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
How does it deal with ligatures by default?
 
tohecz
tohecz
7:11 PM
@Gnintendo no-how of course ;)
Remember the protrusion is in real very small, but it is enough. So you cannot notice that two letters are not protruded
 
percusse
percusse
7:45 PM
@GonzaloMedina Oi! That was no ordinary wanker, you know. hahahaha
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
8:35 PM
If I wanted to approach drawing some basic Lewis structures in LaTeX, what approach would you recommend?
Nevermind, found something
oh wow
um
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
8:54 PM
Is there a simple way to make a fancyhdr only appear on the first page?
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo What class?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
scrartcl'
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo It has its own methods for setting headers and footers
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg wait, it does?
O.o
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo In any case, you can say \thispagestyle{firstpage} after \maketitle and in the preamble you can define \fancypagestyle{firstpage}{...<fancyhdr settings>...}
Of course you have to say \pagestyle{fancy} and define the "normal style" in the usual way.
In the case of an article you can say \fancypagestyle{plain}{...} and so \thispagestyle is not necessary if \maketitle is used. But the method above works even without \maketitle
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
9:03 PM
ugh
Can you elaborate? The usual way is rather vague since there seems to be umpteen ways to achieve the same headers with fancyhdr
@egreg what is "{...<fancyhdr settings>...}"
I only ever do \lhead, \rhead, etc?
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Precisely.
@Gnintendo What do you want on the first page?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg I think I got it, does this look fine?:
% arara: pdflatex: { synctex: true}

\documentclass[letterpaper]{scrartcl}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\fancypagestyle{firstpage}
{\lhead{Gnintendo}
\rhead{\today}
\chead{MWE}}

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{firstpage}

\lipsum[1-5]
\cleardoublepage
\lipsum[5-10]

\end{document}
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Not particularly appealing, though.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg What would you suggest?
That's the best I could come up with :s
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Should that stand as the title part of the article?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
9:13 PM
@egreg Yes, but it's meant to be concise (eg, no titlepage or the like)
@egreg It's meant for a homework assignment
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo So it could be.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg So that would be appropriate for that circumstance?
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo I think so.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
The margins of scrartcl feel weird for an assignment though
Would \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} be inappropriate?
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Why should it?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
9:17 PM
@egreg because typography (insert rant here)
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo A homework has little to do with typography. :)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
is there a package to typeset chemical formulas?
or rather, a standardized way of doing it
 
Silex
Silex
@Gnintendo I've heard of mhchem, but I've never used it.
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
9:39 PM
@Gnintendo @JosephWright is the resident chemist
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
heeeeyyyy @JosephWright
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@Silex For inline formulas, that's the best approach
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@JosephWright Oh hey, how should I do electron configurations?
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@Gnintendo 1s2 2s2 etc?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
math environment seems like an obvious approach, but it would be a pain to type \mathrm for every s,p,d,f, etc
Yeah, that?
math would be nice because you can just do ^ to get the superscripts, but that would italicize the s, etc
Oh, I can just do stuff like this, can't I?: $\mathrm{1s^2}$
Is there a better way to do that?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
9:45 PM
@Gnintendo unless joseph says theres already a package you can go \newcommand\chemicalstuff[1]{$\mathrm{#1}$} ... \chemicalstuff{1s^2}
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
also, combining, we get stuff like: $\mathrm{\ce{[Ar]}3d^6}$
@DavidCarlisle Good point >.<
So does this look good typesetting-wise as far as an assignment goes:
I only answered number 1 in that so far >.>
maybe combine like this?:
Is there a way to line up all of those colons? I feel like that would make it look nicer
the nested enumerate is coded as 
  \begin{enumerate}
    \item \ce{Be^2+} : \elect{1s^2}

    \item \ce{O^2-} : \elect{1s^2 2s^2 2p^6}

    \item \ce{Na+} : \elect{1s^2 2s^2 2p^6}

    \item \ce{Fe^2+} : \elect{\ce{[Ar]}3d^6}

    \item \ce{Pb^2+} : \elect{\ce{[Xe]}6s^2 4f^{14} 5d^{10}}
  \end{enumerate}
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
10:02 PM
@Gnintendo you could use a table or just put each of the \ce before the colon into \makebox{3cm}[l]{\ce ..}
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
how would the table solution work?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo use a tabular instead of enumerate (there are several ways to auto-number rows) eg a preamble of {>{\refstepcounter{enumi}\theenumi) }l@{:}l} for example then each row looks like \ce{Be^2+} & \elect{1s^2} \\
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
errr
OK, how would the second solution work, it doesn't seem to be working for me?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo there was only one suggestion there, using a tabular with array package extensions
@Gnintendo oh sorry you mean the makebox one ?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
yeah, now I do
@JosephWright ochem or chemfig?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
10:12 PM
@Gnintendo well it would work better if I'd got the syntax right, the width is optional so [] so it should be \makebox[3cm][l]{\ce{Be^2+}} :
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
oh :P
ugh, both of those solutions are D;
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@Gnintendo Neither, I'm afraid. As I've discussed in my blog recently, while chemfig is the best LaTeX-based approach I've tried, ChemDraw is still the best way to produce schemes
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
in what way, the look of the output or of the input?
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@JosephWright Is there a better way to display electrons than this? This just looks ugly:
@JosephWright That's with \lewis{0.1.2.3.4.5.,Cl}
@JosephWright There's \lewis{024,Cl}, but our teacher wants us to actually have dots for the electrons
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
10:24 PM
@Gnintendo Don't know in terms of \lewis, I'm afraid, but I'd expect three lone pairs
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
Right...oh, undocumented, I guessed it: colon is used for electron pairs
(I read the entire section on \lewis, it wasn't documented :s )
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
(Might fiddle with the lone pairs a little more)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
Right, that's what I was tryign to do
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@Gnintendo ChemDraw ;-)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
I did it with \chemfig{B(-[:90]\lewis{0:2:4:,Cl})(-[:210]Cl)(-[:330]Cl)}
(I'm about to add the electrons to the other Cls)
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
10:26 PM
@Gnintendo BCl3?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
Yeah
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo What about this?
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@JosephWright I got \chemfig{B(-[:90]\lewis{0:2:4:,Cl})(-[:210]\lewis{3:5:7:,Cl})(-[:330]\lewis{1:5:7:,Cl})}
 
egreg
egreg
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mhchem,array}
\newenvironment{QandA}
 {\setcounter{QandA}{0}%
  \tabular[t]{@{}>{\stepcounter{QandA}\theQandA) }l@{ $\to$ }l@{}}}
 {\endtabular}
\newcounter{QandA}
\renewcommand{\theQandA}{\alph{QandA}}
\newcommand{\elect}[1]{$\mathrm{#1}$}

\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item
\begin{QandA}
\ce{Be^2+} & \elect{1s^2} \\
\ce{O^2-} & \elect{1s^2 2s^2 2p^6} \\
\ce{Na+} & \elect{1s^2 2s^2 2p^6} \\
\ce{Fe^2+} & \elect{\ce{[Ar]}3d^6} \\
\ce{Pb^2+} & \elect{\ce{[Xe]}6s^2 4f^{14} 5d^{10}}
I didn't check the answers, of course. :)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg Thanks
@JosephWright I have the correct configuration for Fe2+, right?
 
egreg
egreg
10:40 PM
@Gnintendo This is cheating! You should do your homework!
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
It's about a specific question, our professor never covered that electrons might not always come out of the last orbital they went in
It seemed logical, so I'm just asking if I"m completely offbase here as the book itself doesn't even offer anything on the subject :s
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo Just joking. My chemistry is lost in the mist of time. Ask David, who's younger than me and might remember better. :)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
>.<
Is it just me or is the space after the figure awkwardly small?:
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@egreg haven't done any chemistry since 1979 (and I bluffed my way through back then, much preferred Physics and Maths:-)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
Ignore the fact that geometry is spelled wrong the second time. >.<
 
egreg
egreg
10:49 PM
@DavidCarlisle My inorganic chemistry stopped in 1976, I believe. Unfortunately my sister, who graduated in pharmaceutical chemistry, brought her books with her when she married. So I can't give more help than the net would provide.
@DavidCarlisle I usually bluffed in Italian. :) The teacher hated me.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
Do you guys think I should insert some vspace after that figure, or do you think it's fine?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo space (some before wouldn't hurt either)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
How much do you think would be good?
why is that sssoooo close by default D;
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo well it depends how much space you have:-) half a baselineskip or so I'd guess.
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
I have all the space in the world :p
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
10:56 PM
@Gnintendo well probably because the markup used to insert it was suboptimal:-)
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
mm
how should I have done it? D;
I can place it in a figure environment, but that screws up the alignment
 
egreg
egreg
@Gnintendo \begin{flushleft}<figure>\end{flushleft}
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Gnintendo well i have no idea how you made the display but compare with including a large image (like Joseph's chemdraw version) If you just use \incudegraphics you will overload the lone spacing and just get the minimal \lineskip space so instead you'd need \includegraphics wrapped in a display environment say a \trivlist giving the vertical sacing taht \begin{center} or \begin{equation{ have
see egreg just said same in less words flushleft is another trivlist
 
Gnintendo
Gnintendo
@egreg Not that alignment; I'm saying keeping it lined up with the a) in the question
 
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