TeX, LaTeX and Friends

Joseph Wright

8:00 AM

@egreg True, that certainly is unusual :-)

Brent.Longborough

10:18 AM

Should we have an [ugly-alert] tag?

2

Q: Enlarging document letter spacing

I am trying to enlarge letter spacing. I have already tried soul package, but it seems it can enlarge only for a single phrase and i would like to enlarge for entire document. Soul command was something like this: \so{phrase with more letter spacing here} Which is the command to set a higher...

letterspacing

David Carlisle

@BrentLongborough beware-stolen-sheep

Brent.Longborough

10:35 AM

@DavidCarlisle ¿? Not quite as user-friendly, perhaps (Not sure I understood) Anyway:

0

Q: Do we need a [beauty-alert] tag?

I accept that this question is similar to "do not do this", but please hear me out. TeX is, at least in part, about beautiful typesetting. Now, although beauty is subjective, there are a number of commonly-agreed things that are generally considered ugly, and I believe that one of the measures o...

discussion

egreg

10:59 AM

@BrentLongborough Goudy allegedly said something like "Whoever would letterspace lowercase would probably also steal sheep". The quotation is dubious, though. But letterspacing lowercase is really awful. It's used in Russian typography instead of italics (the model was probably German typography using Fraktur): cyrillic can't have small caps and italic letters are very different from upright.

David Carlisle

@egreg yes it's usually said the original quotation was about letterspacing blackletter, and wikipedia I notice claim the word was less polite than steal, but anyway, since it is so commonly mis-quoted, doing it again can do no harm:-)

Paulo Cereda

@egreg: Palmeiras won the first game of the final yesterday. If we win the next game, we win the Brazilian Cup. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda I didn't know that there was a Brazilian cup presented at Wimbledon?

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Oh! :) Wimbledon FTW! :D

►

egreg

11:24 AM

@PauloCereda We don't have Brazilian football on the main channels. :(

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Oh. :(

Paulo Cereda

12:09 PM

@AlanMunn: Awesome comment! meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2599/… :)

Paulo Cereda

12:35 PM

0

Q: Integrating sonar with eclipse-oepe-helios

i am trying to integrate sonar with eclipse-oepe-helios but unable to do this. way m doing it----> firstly i open eclipse-oepe-helios then go to help --> install new software and use below url in work with tab http://dist.sonar-ide.codehaus.org/eclipse/ after putting this in work with tab i g...

eclipse

Definitely not a TeX.sx question. :)

Besides, better go with Indigo or Juno than stick with Helios. :D

Alan Munn

1:02 PM

@PauloCereda Thanks. I'm actually not convinced that the lower case thing is particularly helpful, but it's kind of annoying when people from outside come in and start making pronouncements about the quality of answers here. It would be interesting to see how many downvoted answers or negative answers we have on the site compared to others, for example.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn Indeed. It's quite contradictory when SO staff claims that every site is unique and should be community-driven, and then later dictates how one site should behave.

Alan Munn

1:17 PM

@PauloCereda He's not staff, just a mod on SO, I think.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn Ah indeed.

Stephan Lehmke

@AlanMunn Uh, gulp. There is a deep german tradition of all-lowercasing rooted in bauhaus style which is practised by a lot of people still (one of my bosses among them). I wonder whether the spelling of Gropius, Aicher and Bayer would also be corrected here :-(

Kleinschreibung

Unter Kleinschreibung (Verb: kleinschreiben, nicht klein schreiben) versteht man die konsequente oder weitgehende Vermeidung von Großbuchstaben. Die Einführung einer Kleinschreibung wird von Rechtschreibreformern immer wieder thematisiert. Während die konsequente Kleinschreibung die Vermeidung aller Großbuchstaben bedeutet, lässt eine gemäßigte Kleinschreibung (welche auch als gemäßigte Großschreibung bezeichnet wird) bestimmte Fälle großgeschriebener Wörter zu, etwa am Satzanfang oder bei Eigennamen. Ziel Die Vorteile der konsequenten oder gemäßigten Kleinschreibung sind aus Sicht...

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's corporate art collection until his death in 1985. Training and Bauhaus Years Bayer apprenticed under the artist Georg Schmidthammer in Linz. Leaving the workshop to study at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, he became interested in Walter Gropius's Bauhaus mani...

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke This could be a great blog post! :)

(I'm trying to lure Stephan to become a blog author) :)

Alan Munn

@StephanLehmke That's really interesting. I had no idea that there was such an anti-capitalization movement in German (especially since you capitalize even more than in English) although the very fact that you do capitalize nouns is exactly the kind of weird rule that would be likely to spawn a rebellion of sorts. It's not surprising at all, though, that the Bauhaus folk would promote it.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn The nouns capitalization is something that fascinates me in the German language. :)

Stephan Lehmke

1:35 PM

Otl Aicher published several books (also on design and typography) in all lower case

typografie.de/product_info.php?products_id=138&language=en

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke I've got that one. Interesting, but not one of my favorites

spam or not:

-3

A: Problem with viewing interactive PDF content on Mac

You could always give our PDF Viewer a try if you're having difficulties with Adobe: http://bfo.com/products/pdfviewer/

Alan Munn

@PatrickGundlach I voted to delete. It's basically spam unless the person could show that a sample tex document using cooltooltips works on their viewer and not Adobe reader.

Stephan Lehmke

@PatrickGundlach Well the basic idea alone of setting everything in tight columns has a lot of merit. Almost impossible to create a badly designed book that way.

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke good point

@AlanMunn fair enough (<--- should be "i agree", I probably got the usage wrong)

Alan Munn

@StephanLehmke For my field, text set in columns is awful.

@PatrickGundlach 'fair enough' has a kind of concession meaning, so it's an agreement that is either "I don't agree but I'll go along" or "You've changed my mind enough that I'll agree, but I'm still skeptical".

Patrick Gundlach

1:43 PM

@AlanMunn then I've got it wrong :) Thanks

Stephan Lehmke

Argh can't edit the message on Aicher :-( :-(

Of course I meant in all lower case.

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke Would be interesting how a book in all small caps would look like :(

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke we should all star it so your error is posted for all to see for the next week or so

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle Suddenly I feel sick...

Alan Munn

@PatrickGundlach Re: your comment on meta. While I agree in principle, it does seem that the poster in this case really isn't part of the community in that he just ended up here. But even so, it seems reasonable to learn a bit about how the community works.

Martin Scharrer

1:58 PM

Karl Berry has just announced that TeXLive will be released this weekend (i.e. tomorrow or the day after).

4

Alan Munn

@PatrickGundlach And the OP reveals his not being a part of the community here: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/2607/2693 where he uses 'your site' instead of 'the site'. :)

Paulo Cereda

2:20 PM

5

Q: How can we get a rounded PDF page?

I want to remove the white spaces at the corners shown in the following figure. Is it possible to produce a rounded PDF page? \documentclass{standalone} \usepackage{graphicx} \newsavebox\IBox \savebox\IBox{\includegraphics{example-image-a}} \usepackage{pstricks} \begin{document} \begin{pspic...

pdf pstricks

I don't think this is actually possible. I think Christian's comment is accurate, I've been looking the PDF format spec and the PDF page description is simply a "plane" where PDF uses a coordinate system to describe the surface of a page.

Stephan Lehmke

@PauloCereda Well the PDF itself cannot actually have rounded corners, but by removing the background color and setting the transparency grid to "on" in the viewer settings, it will appear to have ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke ooh great idea! :)

@StephanLehmke: great answer in the meta site. :)

Brent.Longborough

2:56 PM

@egreg Ah, Gregorio, always didactic... :)

Paulo Cereda

3:39 PM

Hi @Canageek! We miss you! :)

@JosephWright: awesome comment! :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Thanks

@PauloCereda Barbara's style is a bit odd, but I think we can survive one slightly eccentric approach. The content is usually excellent, after all.

Canageek

@PauloCereda I know what to write an image format that uses circular coordinates for everything now

@PauloCereda I haven't touched *TeX since my thesis. Or Word for that matter. Just notepad++ and plain text to take some notes.

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright My thoughts exactly. :) Barbara is well-known for her style in the TeX community, and as Jeff Attwood once said, no one comes to this community by accident. :) And according to Donald Arseneau, a real TeX user knows not to capitalize 'barbara beeton'. :P

2

@Canageek :)

Canageek

@PauloCereda I still link to the policy on editing posts and answers now, every time I doso, since I was once rejected for not being respectful to her.

@PauloCereda Specifically for going though and fixing all her grammer.

Paulo Cereda

@Canageek At first, I never understood why she writes in lowercase until the one day I saw her using capital letters in an answer. I was like, "Jesus Christ, things got serious! The AMS has spoken!" :)

Canageek

4:10 PM

@PauloCereda The rest of the time it makes things harder to read however, as it removes the distinctions from between sentances

Joseph Wright

@Canageek As I've commented, in many ways I'd prefer it if Barbara stuck with 'normal' capitalisation, but if it's a choice between getting her contribution or having 'standard' capitalisation I know which I'll take

Alan Munn

@JosephWright I agree. Especially since I would assume that most people here wouldn't actually assume she was talking for the AMS, so anything that was intended to be an official pronouncement from it could be marked explicitly as such.

Joseph Wright

@AlanMunn Yes, I'd agree but she seems pretty definite about it

Joseph Wright

4:45 PM

@StephanLehmke I can, and have (hopefully correctly) :-)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright shame, no point staring it now then:-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I can reverse the edit if you'd prefer

David Carlisle

@JosephWright so (I just found) biblatex redefines \end is that really safe?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Does it?

David Carlisle

\end=macro:
#1->\csuse {@end@#1@hook}\csname end#1\endcsname \@checkend {#1}\expandafter \e
ndgroup \if@endpe \@doendpe \fi \csuse {@afterend@#1@hook}\if@ignore \@ignorefa
lse \ignorespaces \fi .

Joseph Wright

4:51 PM

@DavidCarlisle Not biblatex: it's etoolbox and is there to allow 'end of environment' hooks

That I know of, no issues reported

David Carlisle

well the top level document just uses biblatex, which comes to same thing

@JosephWright well if I hack \end myself without checking if it's already hacked it failed:(

7

Q: How to avoid that citations are placed on a new line when \blockcquote ends with a list?

When csquotes's \blockquote and displaycquote ends with a list the citation is put on the next line after the list rather than directly after the last list item. Can one force csquotes to place the citation directly after the last list item? The following is an example that illustrates the probl...

biblatex lists csquotes

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle The recommended way to hook into \end is to use etoolbox ...

David Carlisle

:-)

joran

I wouldn't mind the tex community's feedback on this meta.SO post of mine, if you have a chance:

5

Q: Should several year old LaTeX questions on StackOverflow be migrated?

Recently I've been seeing a fair number of older (~2010) LaTeX questions in the StackOverflow 10k Review flag queue being flagged for migration to tex.stackexchange.com. A few examples of some questions I've seen flagged: here, here, here and here. New questions dealing solely with LaTeX I have...

discussion flagging migration latex

Joseph Wright

@joran See for example

11

Q: Policy on migrating questions from another StackExchange site?

In the recent days there has been a (thankfully) small trickle of questions migrated from Stack Overflow. Here are two that I stumbled upon, probably there are more: How does one insert a backslash or a tilde into LaTeX? What is the difference between “Page Break” and “New Page”? To be hones...

discussion migration

@joran I think there was something on either meta.SO or the mod chat room about this too

The feeling was good material should be migrated, but that a 'migrate all the old TeX questions' approach was not so great

@joran Good question, of course

joran

5:02 PM

@JosephWright Ok, that's very helpful. You should be aware then, that I think someone is going through old LaTeX questions on SO and flagging them for migration, in case you see an uptick in migrations.

Joseph Wright

@joran Possibly they are. Certainly in the past this was done by some of our members.

@joran A lot of them end up as dupes, of course

joran

For the purposes then of my handling posts in the flag queue at SO, it sounds like a good strategy may be to vote to close+migrate good questions that haven't already been resolved in a satisfactory fashion.

But if it's a bad question, or it's already been answered well, I'll be more inclined to leave it be.

Andrew Stacey

@joran I see you linked to my old migration question (note that I'm no longer a mod here). Hendrik Vogt made a very good case against migrating old questions in the comments to one of the answers. I think those are very good reasons.

@joran I like the strategy you just outlined. If it's a good question but was resolved, chances are it'll be asked again on tex.se.

Peter Grill

6:03 PM

@egreg: I am really trying not to post questions with \sfrac, or \ensuremath. :-) But my point was that since`\microtypesetup{activate=false}` did not disable microtype for a portion of a document, I do not believe that that setting actually disables all the microtype features.

Paulo Cereda

6:16 PM

We will interview @DavidCarlisle again. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda lost your interviewee?

Paulo Cereda

6:38 PM

@DavidCarlisle Nah, we love interviewing you. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda remember we're going to turn the tables on you one of these days

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Oh no! I'm going to escape. :D

Joseph Wright

7:03 PM

@MartinScharrer Where is the TL announcement? I can't locate it

Stefan Kottwitz

@MartinScharrer oh, and I'll be travelling this WE

Joseph Wright

@StefanKottwitz So I'll win the blog race :-)

Stefan Kottwitz

Flying to Miami for one week - this means getting a TL DVD through the hotel WLAN

egreg

@PeterGrill I don't know what to say; the method used in a \parbox seems to work.

Stefan Kottwitz

7:23 PM

@JosephWright I'll gladly read your blog entry. However perhaps there's a chance when it's on sunday and I've got time ;-)

the week I'll attend a satellite engineer's training

egreg

7:37 PM

@PeterGrill What might happen is that microtype continues to do its work, but with "zero values".

Alan Munn

7:59 PM

Anyone here with experience with an HP 4000tn printer?

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn Heavy artillery. :) My humble HP printers are nowhere close to that one. :)

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda I bought it for $150 a few years ago at a going out of business sale of a computer store. It was one of their office printers. HP printers are workhorses. I still have a couple of 4m printers going strong.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn I have two laserjets, they are very good indeed. :)

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TeX, LaTeX and Friends

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends