TeX, LaTeX and Friends

9:24 AM

@egreg I lost track of time listening to Laura Pausini. :)

11:35 AM

lalalalalalalalala

12:45 PM

@PauloCereda Back from the lecture. And my big boy (the MacPro) has safely returned from the hospital. After installing Mavericks I discovered that the hard disk wasn't in real good shape. :( Now I have a brand new 2TB disk. Going to restart it in a few minutes.

@PauloCereda You know you can simplify that to *{9}{la}

1:11 PM

@egreg Oh my! 2TB!

@DavidCarlisle ooh. :D

1:26 PM

@JosephWright Phew, I'm glad the microphone wasn't on when I said that I might consider trying emacs on my tablet.

(Not that I have much hope that it will manage the size of my book any better that vim, but it's worth a try.)

@NicolaTalbot Oh no!

@PauloCereda vim crashes on my tablet when I try to edit my book because the file's too big :-(

@NicolaTalbot vimtouch?

@PauloCereda Yes. I think my poor little tablet doesn't have much of a brain.

@NicolaTalbot Oh.

1:35 PM

@PauloCereda jota can't cope either.

(I don't half say "um" and "er" a lot in these videos.)

@PauloCereda They taunted us with the promise of cake, but only brought biscuits.

@NicolaTalbot oh no! @Joseph, how could you do this? :)

@PauloCereda Oh well, at least I've got my duck cake to look forward to :-)

@NicolaTalbot Yay! :)

ooh teh owl is back! /pokes @Jake :)

Jake

@PauloCereda Hoot!

@Jake <3

Joseph Wright

2:03 PM

@NicolaTalbot :-(

@JosephWright It's okay, I'm better off without the extra calories :-)

@JosephWright I'm impressed with how quickly you got the videos sorted.

@JosephWright (I was just kidding around.)

Now I've recovered from all the excitement, I ought to get back to glossaries again. It would be nice if I can get it released before Christmas :-)

@JosephWright Tea? :)

2:21 PM

@NicolaTalbot: where are you in the videos? :)

@PauloCereda In the workshop one I'm the one who asks about key=value stuff in package and documentclass options.

@NicolaTalbot Joseph can easily be the next Doctor with that accent. :)

@PauloCereda LOL :-)

@NicolaTalbot and David can easily be the next Q in a new James Bond movie. :)

Joseph Wright

@NicolaTalbot Experience

@NicolaTalbot Hope to do the others tonight

2:27 PM

ooh the doctor is in. :)

@DavidCarlisle I tried installing emacs on my tablet, but it says I need a hardware keyboard with Alt and Ctrl keys, which I don't have, so I've abandoned that idea.

@PauloCereda Maybe there should be a TeX version of Bond where the doctor turns up to save the day with LaTeX3.

@NicolaTalbot ooh I like the plot! :) If we let things to Q/David, Bond will save the world with picture mode. :)

@PauloCereda And the evil villain is called OR :-)

@NicolaTalbot LOL

2:55 PM

@PauloCereda The migration from the old disk wants another hour and a half.

@egreg Solid state?

@PauloCereda No! How much would it cost?

@egreg A bunch! :)

@PauloCereda I've seen 500€ for 960 GB

3:11 PM

@egreg Wow.

3:57 PM

@PauloCereda After one hour, the estimated time is still 1.5 hours.

@egreg :)

4:27 PM

@NicolaTalbot it says that but it's not true, the hackers keyboard (free from google play) has more than enough keys to keep emacs happy

@egreg but @JosephWright was saying in his UKTUG talk that tracing beamer was tricky as \tracingall fills your disk, but now you have 2T you should have no problem

@NicolaTalbot a very impolite question if I may say so:-)

@DavidCarlisle Waiting for you to present a TeX file that fills 2TB with \tracingall. ;-)

@egreg \tracingall\def\a{\a}\a

@DavidCarlisle Not with an infinite loop, that's too easy!

@egreg the other cases are left as an exercise for the reader

@PauloCereda After being at "37 minutes remaining" it jumped up to "3 hours remaining"

4:40 PM

@egreg Let's hope it ends until Christmas. :)

@PauloCereda It went down again to 37 minutes

@DavidCarlisle Oh no, I keep putting my foot in it! :-) Did I make up for it by considering installing emacs?

@NicolaTalbot No but if you finish the rest of your book using emacs, you might be forgiven

@DavidCarlisle boo!

@DavidCarlisle I've installed the hackers keyboard, but I get the scary message "This input method may be able to collect all the text that you type, including personal data like passwords and credit card numbers."

4:57 PM

@NicolaTalbot It's the hackers' keyboard, after all. ;-)

@egreg :-)

@NicolaTalbot It's like the "Albanian computer virus": a mail message saying "We're a group of Albanian hackers, but still learning. Upon receiving this mail you must erase your hard disk. Thanks for your cooperation."

@egreg LOL :-)

@DavidCarlisle I tried to install emacs and I got Fatal error (11)Segmentation fault. I think I'll go back to using pen and paper.

5:12 PM

@egreg Speaking of hard disks... :)

@NicolaTalbot isn't that true of any keyboard that you install? It can see your keypresses

@DavidCarlisle Somebody should invent a keyless keyboard: no risk of our personal data being overlooked.

@egreg follow the thread from

Oct 30 at 20:16, by David Carlisle

@PauloCereda a vim keyboard for android:

@DavidCarlisle No. :)

Q: siunix, beamer and \maketitle

I had to make a comment to this question.

0

I'm using beamer and I'm not able to use the package siunitx features within the \maketitle environment. Minimal NOT working example \documentclass{beamer} \usepackage{siunitx} \title{\SI{5}{\micro \ampere}} \begin{document} \begin{frame} \maketitle \end{frame} \end{document} Here is the log...

5:26 PM

@egreg LOL

@egreg perhaps I should flag that comment to see what our moderators make of it

Szabolcs

Is there anyone around who's used LaTeX to make scientific posters?

I'm wondering if you found it a good tool for this.

Q: How to create posters using LaTeX

@DavidCarlisle One of the moderators will talk to the maintainers of siunitx and beamer, trying to convince them to straighten out the issue.

Torbjørn T.

156

I want to create posters for my poster presentation on a conference. What tools or LaTeX classes are available for preparing posters ?

document-classes big-list posters

Szabolcs

I know it's possible, I was really looking for some personal experiences.

For example, for me, beamer could never replace graphical presentation tools. It's just too rigid, and I can't fit a presentation to a rigid template.

Many people (but not everyone) agree with this.

But posters have a naturally more rigid structure, so it might not be a problem there.

5:49 PM

@PauloCereda “Less than a minute” it says; let's wait to measure how long are Apple minutes.

@egreg :)

@PauloCereda Well, not more than five standard minutes. Rebooting. :)

All seems going well.

@egreg Except emacs. :)

6:05 PM

@DavidCarlisle This is true. It seems that this message is generated for every keyboard app.

It's kind of like the "this product contains nuts" warning on a packet of nuts.

6:24 PM

@NicolaTalbot look out, nuts!

Hmmm I need to buy another nutella jar. :)

@PauloCereda Be careful, it contains nuts! :-)

@NicolaTalbot :)

6:41 PM

@PauloCereda No time for trying. Tomorrow.

Alan Munn

7:39 PM

@Szabolcs I always use Adobe InDesign for posters. I think the opensource equivalent is Scribus, but I haven't used it.

@Szabolcs If you don't like beamer for presentations, then I think you would hate using it (or any LaTeX poster package) for posters. I do use beamer, but since a poster is an inherently visual object, LaTeX is not really that suited for it, IMO.

9:17 PM

@egreg ready to ask your question? (only 40 to go:-)

@DavidCarlisle Here it is: Why should I ask a question?

@egreg 'cause @PauloCereda said so?

@DavidCarlisle I'll leave the honor to you.

@egreg never figured it out, and I haven't time now :(

@DavidCarlisle I'm listening to ‘The Art of Fugue’, it's almost impossible to think to anything else.

Szabolcs

9:35 PM

@AlanMunn What finally I did last week was to make textboxes in LaTeX (each one in a separate file), in place them into an Illustrator document as linked files (i.e. they're auto-updated when the linked file changes). There were a number of inconveniences though so I was looking for something better. I should try InDesign next time.

10:10 PM

@Szabolcs did you have other illustrator artwork in the document as well as the latex generated text or is it just positioned text boxes?

10:50 PM

I make my drawings in Inkscape using only vectors, then export the graphics to .pdf, and include them in a TikZ poster thingy.

11:10 PM

\cs_new:Npn \mytest:n #1 {

\int_compare:nNnTF #1 > 0 { greater~than~ \mytest:n {\int_eval:n {#1 - 1}} } { less~than~ }

}

Suggestions? :) My recursion doesn't work. :)

@PauloCereda \int_compare:n implies the first argument should be a standard {..} syntax but you have ` #1 > 0 `

@PauloCereda \int_compare:nTF{#1>0}{true}{false} is easier to manage

@egreg, @DavidCarlisle: Thanks, let's see if I can make my crazy idea work. :)

A: How do I make a tenfold power in LaTeX?

11:25 PM

0

I dedicate this code to Sean. :) Long live expl3! :) \documentclass{article} \usepackage{expl3} \usepackage{xparse} \ExplSyntaxOn \cs_new:Npn \paulo_epicrecursion:n #1 { x^{ \int_compare:nTF { #1 > 0 } { \paulo_epicrecursion:n { \int_eval:n { #1 - 1 } } } { x } } } \New...

@egreg: I did, I did! :)

@PauloCereda this is quicker:-)

\documentclass{article}

\def\powertower#1{x\ifnum#1>1 ^{\powertower{\numexpr#1-1\relax}}\fi}

\begin{document}

$\powertower{10}$

\end{document}

@DavidCarlisle ooh that's pure gold! :) Post it, please. :)

I could really optmize that evaluation. :)

@David: Thanks for the hint, I updated the code. :)

@PauloCereda I posted mine as well, as requested:-)

@DavidCarlisle Where?!

No new entry in the thread. :(

11:41 PM

@PauloCereda oops it had popped up the annoying captcha thingy and not posted it:-)

@PauloCereda Ps my recursion s deeper than yours, so there:-)

@DavidCarlisle OMG

Hi guys, it's been a while :) @PauloCereda your power tower is awesome!

@cmhughes Hi Chris! :) Thanks, but you should see David's. :)

@DavidCarlisle:

This is the TeX version of Stairway to heaven. :) Amazing! — Paulo Cereda 22 secs ago

@PauloCereda I was looking at it above- mighty impressive stuff. Is it another competition to minimize characters typed?

@cmhughes I'm quite surprised David didn't use picture mode. :)

11:46 PM

@PauloCereda lol :) @DavidCarlisle will have the gold tikz badge before we know it

@cmhughes :)

@cmhughes I'm counting my silver one as a new year's resolution achieved (even though I said I was aiming for gold:-)

@DavidCarlisle brilliant :) won't be long until the gold is yours, I'm sure :)

@cmhughes hmm I'm at 628/88 so getting to 200 answers may take a while, unless I learn something about tikz.

@DavidCarlisle you could answer the tikz questions with PSTricks code as <marientplatz> does

11:52 PM

@cmhughes That's the measure of last resort:

Jan 2 at 16:46, by David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha The new years resolution is to get a tikz gold badge by answering tikz question with tex primitives, picture mode, or if really pushed pstricks, doing quite well so far this year.

@DavidCarlisle fair enough- picture mode for the win, then!

@cmhughes And let us not forget Stefan's grandma. :)

@PauloCereda indeed, indeed :)