If you mis match ) and ( you get a friendly error saying you are out of sync whereas if you mis match $ you just get a paragraph in italic with no spaces.
but doing tests are the kind of thing you can not do in a \write to the toc file whch makes it fragile
\9 could have been made robust. all commands could have been made robust, but that doubles the number of commands defined and in 1993 after loading latex2e into emtex there were about 50 csnames left for document level definitions and cross references so using twice as many csnames in the kernel wasn't really an option (may have been more than 50, it was a long time ago, but it wasn't a lot)
I think @JosephWright needs an award for the longest package loadscript I have; \usepackage[mode=text,per-mode = symbol,parse-numbers = true,parse-units = true,number-unit-product = \text{~},separate-uncertainty = true,multi-part-units = single]{siunitx} I think it is time for me to give that its own section in my preamble; only Hyperref is longer, and I broke that into its own section ages ago.
@JosephWright yes sure (even at the time etex was just about out) but that just means changing teh definition of every user facing command, which was pretty scary as well so deferred a bit to latex3
Over the next few weeks I am planning to go through Leslie's book and make a list of all of the documented interface to give some form of basis to work on
So it seems the latest version of inkscape is not very psfrag friendly (if you insert text tags into your EPS then upon saving (even if you deselect convert txt to paths) it still encodes the tags as things like <01>Tj, which can be worked around by manually replacing each by something like (m...
@JosephWright I was thinking about the one migrated here from SO complaining about TeX compilation runs, together with a couple complaining about how graphics are rendered in PDFs, and one about errors in TikZ/PGF. Just don't like that style of question.
Or take this one: tex.stackexchange.com/q/49789/86 What's wrong with "Read the document after you think you're finished and look for these things."
@AndrewStacey depends what you are doing, if you are writing a paper by hand, looking at it is a good idea, but if you are using tex as an automated print engine processing gazillions of pages a minute being churned out of some other system, looking at the output isn't an option and automated checks may be needed 9not necessarily within TeX, but somewhere)
@AndrewStacey I wanted to ask which bit of latex internals were you looking at (in the comment in the starred list)
@DavidCarlisle What I'm really whinging about is the tone of these questions. Yes, I agree that this might be something that someone might want to do - and be reasonable for them to do. The linked question gives no motivation, no explanation as to why "we" might want to do it. (I'm just grumpy today, I guess.)
@DavidCarlisle It was \set@fontsize. Here's the question that raised it: tex.stackexchange.com/a/49612/86 (actually, that's my answer). I ended up tracing \@tempdimb through several macros until I found \set@fontsize. Felt like I was on the trail of the Loch Ness Monster.
@DavidCarlisle NFSS is for sure the most unfunny part about tracing LaTeX. There are so many seemingly-innocent commands which internally switch to math mode, triggering an inferno of font-mongery. And to me it looks like total gibberish because catcodes of \{} are redefined internally...
@AndrewStacey The business with what is long and what is not is awkward in LaTeX2e. One of the reasons I've pushed hard for a definite set of rules for LaTeX3: code-level functions with arguments are all long.
I'm in doubt: how would be the correct way of typesetting ordinal numbers? The "usual" way I learned is "1.º" (with the dot), but it seems people prefer the "1º" version. 1$^\circ$ seems wrong to me. :(
For my project, I've been using the listings package in order to color the keywords, comments, strings, and digits in the code.
The thing is, I've managed to color the keywords, comments and strings, however, I couldn't color the digits within the code without coloring those in the comments/stri...
@egreg: I added some additional explanation on the \lccode thing. I'm pretty sure it's all correct but would you mind having a look to see if there is nothign really crazy in there?
The following should work.
\def\DefineShortTexttt#1{\begingroup\lccode`~=`#1\lowercase{\endgroup\def~##1~{\texttt{##1}}}\catcode`#1=\active}
It uses the same lowercase trick, note that on inner definitions you need to double the # token. That is, \def\x#1#2{\def\y##1{##1#1}\y#2} is a silly way...
@egreg: In yesterday's MetaFont/MetaPost question, I guess the OP doesn't have a proper TeX setup. After our answers, the OP said that "either eps or mps isn't working". :(
Ok, so downvoting: :3815474 Is probably mainly due to his inappropriate reply! But is it okay to approach him in the comments on that I would redo my downvote if he kindly apologized?
@Jake (Taking this out of the comments on that question). Normally I'd agree with you about excessive down-voting. This particular user, though, has asked a few questions in a similar vein: quite technical (so unlikely that someone just happens to know the answer), with no evidence of prior work, and no motivation. Moreover, this user has consistently demonstrated an "I deserve an answer" attitude. (ctd)
(ctd) So whilst I dislike excessive down-voting, maybe it will demonstrate that this is not acceptable behaviour in this community.
I have a rather large block of TeX macro code that is no problem to do in TeX but I'd like to create the macro in Lua instead
The macro contains various TeX macro characters (\, %, [, ])
How can I easily format this macro easily without having to really mess with it much by hand so I can use te...
@zeroth I'm ready to "undownvote" the question if it shows (a) a minimal example; (b) the OP apologizes for having being rude. It's not the first time, I should note.
Downvoting should be done based on the question (when I hover over the vote then it says something like "This question does not show any research effort" so I feel quite justified in my down vote!). The correct response for comments is to flag them.
I really do not like his attitude, I dont think that any comment will provide resolution, I think that the flame war will just continue. I will leave to at least not stress him further.
@AndrewStacey I've seen this. Could I suggest that some of those downvotes are reversed. While the question needs attention, I don't see it as any worse than many others we see, which are given time to either be improved or to be closed.
@JosephWright But how does one then address his constant inappropriate replies to comments which are there to help him? I would rather not have to discourage myself into not asking for a MWE from him.
On that note I am of course willing to redo my vote, however, it is very hard for me to be objective on this matter.
@zeroth Voting is on questions, not comments. Inappropriate comments should be flagged and we (the mods) then take a look. Direct contact can be made if needed.
Now that the tex.sx logo has the real kerning, the Community Blog logo should be updated, too. Compare:
(tex.sx logo)
(blog logo)
I stick to my comment to Jin's answer though, that the braces should be moved a bit closer to the TeX, preferably on both/all logos.
I have a rather large block of TeX macro code that is no problem to do in TeX but I'd like to create the macro in Lua instead
The macro contains various TeX macro characters (\, %, [, ])
How can I easily format this macro easily without having to really mess with it much by hand so I can use te...
How can I create a macro (re)definition directly inside a LuaTeX block?
e.g.,
\directlua{tex.print("\\mymacro{test}")}
would be the same as
\mymacro{test}
in TeX?
@diabonas I'm not up enough on LuaTeX to know how sensible that plan really is. I know that tex.print can be awkward in some cases, but have never done anything which runs into the issues.
I tried getting this answer here to work, and it does. But is there any way to make the rectangles stand more out? Eg I am trying to get a black edge around them.
@JosephWright well, the accepted answer written by the OP himself (tex.stackexchange.com/a/48426/3323) actually uses tex.print, so this shouldn't be too critical for him... however, i again don't understand the new question then - he already seems to know how to use tex.print?!
@JosephWright i think i'll add (yet another...) comment asking for the difference between the two questions - if the OP doesn't react any more (as it seems at the moment), we can close the question as a dupe
I am trying to recreate the following image in tikz
Sorry for not including a MWE, but I have problems getting started drawing this.
I tried simply writing in the coordinates, but even that turned out wrong. (The point in the middle should have coordinates (2,3,0))
Does anyone have any hints...
I can understand, however later it will give you the benefit of knowing how to handle unforeseen problems in TeX while doing your thesis etc. So total procastination it is not! :)
@YiannisLazarides Ah! It reminds me of the scene when Indy needs to choose which one of the "holy grails" is real. He picks one and the guardian says, "You chose wisely." :)
Is there a simple explanation for why the LaTex compiler is funky in the following two ways:
1) N multiple compiles are necessary until you reach a "steady state" version. N seems to grow up to around 5 or 6 if I use many packages and references.
2) Error messages are almost always worthless. ...
status-completed... sort of.
It's now possible to reject a migration, but rather than making this some special mod-only thing or yet another privilege/task you have to familiarize yourself with, it's instead a function of closing/deleting.
If a migrated question is closed on the destination (mi...
@YiannisLazarides Like I had said earlier besides filtering questions on tags, would be nice to be able to filter them on who asked it (Hopefully none of mine are that annoying).
Lout is a batch document formatter invented by Jeffrey H. Kingston. It reads a high-level description of a document similar in style to LaTeX and produces a PostScript file which can be printed on most printers. Plain text and PDF output are also available. The term Lout primarily designates a document formatting programming language, while the (only) implementation of the language (by Jeffrey H. Kingston) is sometimes referred to as Basser Lout. Basser Lout is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Lout copies some of its formatting algorithms f...
@PeterGrill I saw it the other day and wanted to have a go at answering, but the day was a bit hectic. Interesting question though. I am glad you are asking them, now and then I make an effort to ask questions otherwise the site will turn to a TikZ site or a software support service:)
@YiannisLazarides :-) Please feel free to ask about drawing lines from one point in the text to another -- I have been "milking" \tikzmark a lot lately but is been almost two weeks since the last one and am getting "antsy". :-)
Well uhm, I am asking quite a lot of questions regarding drawings. But, I mean I am trying to draw things myself before asking. Perhaps, I just do not see the harm in tikz related questions.
@N3buchadnezzar No harm -- Yiannis and I were just joking. I think as long as you show some attempt and ask a specific question as opposed to "How do I draw this"?
@StephanLehmke Yep, soul for the highlighting, and tikz for the pointer. Although I recall that Martin Scharrer had posted a solution to using TikZ when things cross line (and even page) boundaries.
@zeroth Hey, that looks great. You should post that as an answer to Making a 3D colored pyramid in tikz. I have been meaning to post a question on how to get the symbols in the plane to which they apply and it seems that that image already has that.
@lockstep guys, I really disagree with the claim that the question is to be closed because the resulting answer are naturally debatable or just personal meaning etc. I rather think that mine (imho) actually offered the technical level properly -- and honestly beside the initial question having things a bit on the argumentative side ... it was an interesting and valid question
@Canageek I think it has to do with the square bracket -- sometimes it is used to specify styles so putting the extra {} masks that from the pgf parser.
@MartinScharrer Yeah. I was be facetious and referring to the list of questions that come up when looking at the active/new list for the purpose of hiding it from view similar to what the "ignore tags" does.
as an aside ... once a question is closed I thought that there is a way to suggest it is getting reopened, and I thought I have seen that in the past ... has this vanished too, with this new feature?
@FrankMittelbach I also found the resulting answers quite insightful (if I may say so myself...). Indeed calling a TeX run "compilation" is prone to attract misinterpretation by coders.
@StephanLehmke actually, calla TeX run a compilation is fairly comon (I do it my self) the problem is it is a compilation in a data context which is not quite the same as a typical compiler job (nor it is really a compilation but an interpretation)
@FrankMittelbach We can/should close questions as "not constructive" if they "will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion". In the present case, this turned out not to be true.
@lockstep any question can do that ... but after all as you said this didn't happen and as a result both qurstion plus the answers that where given are instructive. so the act of closing it gives the wrong message which is why I object
@FrankMittelbach It is a classical "false friend" because in its commonplace meaning, it is very near to what TeX actually does (for instance "to make (a book, writing, or the like) of materials from various sources") but OTOH it has a very much fixed meaning in computer science which is clearly wrong when applied to TeX. I didn't say it's wrong to say compilation, just that it can confuse programmers and such.
@StephanLehmke yep sure ;-) but beside that we are not compiling i thought it interesting that the Qer didn't understand the big difference of TeX to C++ and i guess that this too is happening to many people, so again ... that makes it an interesting question
@FrankMittelbach The "strong" language was only a secondary reason why I voted to close, and it was present on the question at the time I cast my vote.
@lockstep but by the time this got closed it was clear that is is not the case or did you vote much earlier?
I really think the process is flawed if at that point in the game a question like that one gets closed, for those reasons such a "strong language" (which I don't see really) or "Likely to solicit opinion and debate"
@FrankMittelbach I must say, as one of the intended audience of the site, which is I think, someone who knows LaTeX enough to use it, but needs help with hard things, I think the system works very well. If I ask a question I need help with, there is no dought in my mind that I will have an answer in short order.
Sadly, I think there's an additional worry of how much "simplified" a model becomes in the eyes of a coder. I think that in some cases, coders don't actually use the correct terminology to refer to their own stuff, hence the confusion. Besides, there's an actual confusion between the the compiler behaviour and the language specification.
@FrankMittelbach A system when breaks on edge cases isn't perfect, but I think if it works well regarding the main usage (I get answers quickly, and have a way of judging the relative merits of them, and filtering out bad ones), it can be forgiven for not working on a few edge cases.
Now, that is just me talking about what I've seen watching this room and asking questions (I've even answered a couple when I happened to spy an easy one no one else had pounced on yet!)
@Canageek not really my point, is it. the site may work well for getting help, sure. All i claim is --- and that's me being arrogant --- I 'm somewhat surprised seeing a question closed that a) a god number of people looked at (makes it of some interest) b) result in a few answer hat I all thought came nicely too the point and c) several of them got good number of upvotes
@FrankMittelbach Ah, ok. I can see that as a flaw. I think it is worse on the main SX site; I've seen great questions closed, despite answers with over 100 upvotes.
@PeterGrill Yes, I wasn't sure about the exact context of your discussion. But I thought mentioned that wouldn't hurt. It's a pity that you can't filter the other results in the same manner.
@PauloCereda nothing broken or so ... but i can't press out toothpaste or open a beer bottle with my left hand right now
@PauloCereda and left hand is my strong/favored one. bloody thing really -- drove into a set of wires which where impossible to see in the dark despict very good lights
I'm fairly new to TeX and LaTeX, having been drawn in by the Big Idea — creating a document programmatically. However, my experience of TeX (and its libraries — LaTeX, ConTeXt, …) has been almost entirely unpleasant.
My impression is that TeX (etc.) is essentially a pile of undocumented macros ...
I'm right handed, but got RSI for a year or so, so I was once pretty good with my left hand, almost good enough to write with it. I can mouse with it, though a bit slowly, and I can keyboard with either hand if I have too...
Ok, this is cool. I can run latexmake, see the first figures, and while it is working on my citations, edit my TeX document based on that, and save, then it will update the document when running the next iteration. >.>
This does not directly answer your question, but how about using different definitions for \amper & friends in the ToC vs. everywhere else? Example:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\DeclareRobustCommand{\strong}[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}}
\DeclareRobustCommand{\renewstrong}{%
\...
@FrankMittelbach Thanks. :) I really like instruments. From the left to the right: a 5-string electric bass, a 6 nylon strings guitar (with a broken string, my bad), a 7 nylon strings guitar and a viola caipira (10 steel strings). :)
So how much would I have to pay someone to go over all my figures and get them into senesable places? They keep clumping into their own pages, which is not desirable.
@Canageek I'd say it's unusal to find one, but it's not difficult to find. It's a typical guitar for playing choro. You have a 7th string which can be a C or B.
I'd say the 8-string guitar is more difficult to find.
BibTeX question! Why do journals sometimes write Pages = {{671--682}}, sometimes Pages = {671--682}, sometimes Pages = "671--682", and sometimes other things with both { and "?
@JosephWright Find and replace has now solved that. Now if there was some way of automatically using the ISO shortened names I'd be very happy, but it looks like going through and changing them by hand would be easier.
@FrankMittelbach and guys. I am generally against closing questions easily for example tex.stackexchange.com/questions/49746/a-table-with-square-cells produced a set of different answers to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/7315/…. People come and go all with their own set of expertise, so in general one should give a chance to see some answers. I dislike though tremendously support questions such as ... Lyx is not doing that etc.
@AlanMunn I see a few nothing in my mind. This morning I saw the above question and I was sure if I did link to the previous one people would have been quick to mark as duplicate.
@YiannisLazarides Yes, I see the point, (and agree with you). I guess it also sometimes depends on whether the linked question is suggested as a duplicate in the comment or just as related. Also sometimes linked questions are more specific than a new potential duplicate, and closing such questions is probably detrimental to the site.
@AlanMunn We have a lot of new members some with considerable expertise that joined recently and is always nice to see new angles of attack to old problems. I am glad you agree:)
@YiannisLazarides There is also a bit of a "pile on" mentality with voting that we should discourage, or at least be mindful of. The same mentality caused the serial downvoting incident that has just happened. Overall that question wasn't that bad, and I don't think it deserved the downvotes it got.
user19161
@AlanMunn Serial downvoting is what seems to happen on ELU. Sometimes the temptation cannot be resisted!
@WillHunting But we definitely should try. We seem to have done extremely well here without such tactics/behaviour preferring from the beginning to use comments to improve questions. I think most of us would like to keep it that way.
Have I missed anything in writing tex.stackexchange.com/questions/40988/…? The last comment suggests it is hardly possible. I do not understand what would make it almost impossible.
@FrankMittelbach (it's evening here so I get called away by other things, sorry). I can best explain my vote-to-close by linking to a comment on meta.mathoverflow: meta.mathoverflow.net/discussion/568/… Your answer was great, but it will languish in the answers to that question simply because no-one when seeing that question title or summary on the main page will suspect it of having such a good answer.
I try to be consistent, and I have the safety net that I'm only one person on this site so my votes and decisions are not binding (I used to be a moderator here - this is one reason why I didn't go for re-election).
I know it can be really tempting to write a great answer to a rubbish question because one knows that there could be a good question there. The lua question that caused so much fuss today is a case in point: it could be a good question. But it isn't. It is a completely lousy question as asked. Those who think otherwise are, I contend, seeing the great question that it could be and not seeing the question as it is. In that situation, the right thing to do is to ask a new question.
If you have a great answer, then make it even better by ensuring that it answers a great question. Then people will see the question, think "I always wondered about that" and read the answer. As it is, people will see the title (with words like "funky" and "C++") think, "There's nothing there for me" and never see the great answer.
The lua question is bad because the questioner has two false assumptions about this site and that leads him or her to ask questions in a particular way. These assumptions are: 1) this is an ask-an-expert site, 2) the most important person involved in a question is the questioner.
Both are false. There are experts here (you, egreg, Herbert, David, Ulrike, to name but a few) but there are far more like me: beggars who happen to know where there's a little bread and a willing to help other beggars find it. So the majority of questions are answered by people who know just a little bit more, or who might make a lucky guess (my answer on the interaction of \baselineskip and tikz is a case in point).
So to make the most of this site, questions should be asked in such a way as to optimise for people who are willing to try to help. And that means asking in such a way that it is obvious what the question is, and obvious what the problem is.
Someone who doesn't do that is merely harming their own chances of getting an answer, so someone who mistakes the site for an ask-an-expert site is simply not making the most of it. They are misguided, but can easily be set straight. The second assumption is more dangerous. This is a public site. It is not a private interaction between the questioner and answerer. I spend time here and not on any other TeX forum or mailing list because I learn a heck of a lot here.
But I learn not just by asking questions, I learn by trying to answer ones as well. But most importantly, I learn by reading others' questions and answers. If a question is written in such a way that only an expert can answer it, why post it here? It does no good. It does not, to coin a phrase, make the internet better. I'm intrigued by luatex - I've been learning a little lua and can see a couple of places where it might be useful to me to integrate TeX and lua.
4
So I'd like to learn about lua and TeX. One thing is to know how they interact. So this particular question could be quite useful to me. But because of how it is phrased, it isn't. I don't know what problem the questioner actually encountered. I don't know any simple examples of what one might try to do where this might occur. To coin another phrase: I know nothing.
So I voted it down. I explained my vote in the comments: does not show adequate research. I did not vote down because of the OPs rudeness. It is quite possible that had the OP not been rude I might not have voted, but to say that I voted down because of the rudeness is to mix cause and effect. Had I thought that the OP would have been amenable to editing, I might have held off on the vote thinking "I'll wait and see what happens".
But the comments, and previous interactions with this particular person led me to believe that that would not happen. Hence the vote. A similar thing happened with the question you answered. From the interaction, I came to the conclusion that the questioner had no interest in making the question better, worthy of the answer given. So I voted. My decision was effectively made when I saw the original question and affirmed when I saw the (abbreviated) obscenity.
I like to configure the Mercurial Keyword Extension to support all Subversion keywords, i.e. to expand them in the exact way as Subversion does. I'm looking for this in order to use Mercurial together with my LaTeX package svn-multi which allows users to read and typeset this meta-data in their L...
I don't actually recall when I voted, but if it wasn't immediately at that time then I held off only to see if the OP would make the necessary changes - which didn't happen. To repeat: I voted according to how I see the question. I do not down-vote a question according to the answers it gets. I sometimes up-vote a question if it gets good answers, but that's a different story.
@MartinScharrer beamer uses this extension. To be honest, it's a pain and I'd like to drop it, but Vedran made the call and he's (technically) the lead maintainer of beamer.
Phew. I think I've said enough. As Joseph interlocuted, I have the freedom here to act in a certain way and know that my actions are not the be-all and end-all. I try to act in a way that optimised for pearl-producing sand. I get things wrong. I learn, and I change - sometimes. I also tend to be a bit over-protective of this site which probably puts me in the firing line from time to time.
I don't like to offend people, and if my actions did upset you then I apologise, but I acted and voted according to my view of what makes this site great and whilst others may not agree, hopefully they can understand why I acted the way I did.
@JosephWright I agree, I have problems with downloading the cvs version of biblatex to add it to a new rep. That proved difficult as the biblatex insisted on having the same revision number in all files!
@MartinScharrer I beleive it can, don't Mercurial have the same setup as git, by allowing users to create script hooks. So ultimately one can supply scripts for that.
@PauloCereda That occurred to me as well and I think it's a good idea. An alternative would be to make a blog post about that answer - explaining a bit why it's a good answer and so forth but leaving people to read the answer in context (see my "Great Questions" and "Great Answers" blog posts for the sort of thing I mean).
@JosephWright Yes, but each file had previous revisions from a very old biblatex installation. In effect it made the files have inconsistent revision number. biblatex checks for them all to be the same (or at least above a certain "main" configuration file. :)
@zeroth See my stackoverflow question two lines earlier. There is a configurable keyword extension, but I have trouble to configure it to produce the exact same format as Subversion.
@JosephWright I would rather separate the two issues. Frank's answer is a Great Answer and shouldn't be clouded with the debate over closing the question (which is part of my point). Since I voted to close the question, I think it would be better if someone neutral (Paulo would be great) would write the "Great Answer" blog post.
So it seems the latest version of inkscape is not very psfrag friendly (if you insert text tags into your EPS then upon saving (even if you deselect convert txt to paths) it still encodes the tags as things like <01>Tj, which can be worked around by manually replacing each by something like (m...
The following should work.
\def\DefineShortTexttt#1{\begingroup\lccode`~=`#1\lowercase{\endgroup\def~##1~{\texttt{##1}}}\catcode`#1=\active}
It uses the same lowercase trick, note that on inner definitions you need to double the # token. That is, \def\x#1#2{\def\y##1{##1#1}\y#2} is a silly way...
Now that the tex.sx logo has the real kerning, the Community Blog logo should be updated, too. Compare:
(tex.sx logo)
(blog logo)
I stick to my comment to Jin's answer though, that the braces should be moved a bit closer to the TeX, preferably on both/all logos.
I am trying to recreate the following image in tikz
Sorry for not including a MWE, but I have problems getting started drawing this.
I tried simply writing in the coordinates, but even that turned out wrong. (The point in the middle should have coordinates (2,3,0))
Does anyone have any hints...
Is there a simple explanation for why the LaTex compiler is funky in the following two ways:
1) N multiple compiles are necessary until you reach a "steady state" version. N seems to grow up to around 5 or 6 if I use many packages and references.
2) Error messages are almost always worthless. ...
Do we allow questions regarding the Typesetting language Lout on this site?
This does not directly answer your question, but how about using different definitions for \amper & friends in the ToC vs. everywhere else? Example:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\DeclareRobustCommand{\strong}[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}}
\DeclareRobustCommand{\renewstrong}{%
\...
