TeX, LaTeX and Friends

Q: How do I build a paper feeder with LEGO to transfer a single sheet of paper from a deck robustly?

6

I want to create an apparatus (which might be called a paper feeder) to take a still image for each paper taken from a deck of 500 sheets robustly. Robustly means that the apparatus must guarantee all sheets of paper get captured by the still camera. I am new to LEGO but I think creating the app...

robotic

percusse

@GarbageCollector I should have known

:)

@percusse Why?

percusse

@GarbageCollector I'm usually good at finding obscure stuff but you are also quite good.

@percusse :-)

12:20 AM

@egreg: thanks, found it.

@DavidCarlisle What was the problem?

well I'm going to blame soul, but it would be possible to put the blame elsewhere, I'll put some code in the answer but basically chaptermark forces letterspacing in the head and then soul trashes box 1 at an unfortunate time

@egreg lots of dubious local/global assignments to box1, although I suspect it's teh global ones that kill me:

 \global\setbox\@ne=\lastbox}%
    \ifvoid\@ne
    \else
        \setbox\@ne\hbox{\unhbox\@ne}%

@DavidCarlisle Good programming indeed. :(

@egreg I'm just looking to see where in Lt I allowed the output routine to slip in between me saving box 1 and looking what I got:-)

hello!

12:37 AM

@egreg ah.

  \LT@echunk
  \LT@start
  \unvbox\z@
  \LT@get@widths
  \LT@bchunk}

I should have got the widths, straight after echunk as unvbox potentially triggers the output routine.....

I have the problem with TeXLive and biber. Or with Windows and biber

Windows do not find biber

1:01 AM

:-O

Windows does not find it because it dont exist

@leo i was just going to ask if it is there

well at least its not in here: C:\texlive\2012\bin\win32

@leo tlmgr install biber ?

@DavidCarlisle :-) yep. Ill check if the bin directory is in the PATH variable

there it is

@leo there what is bin/win32 in PATH or biber in bin/win32 ?

1:09 AM

@DavidCarlisle C:\texlive\2012\bin\win32

@leo so tlmgr install should be your friend then

@DavidCarlisle running it (-:

gekkostate

2:46 AM

Hey guys, I have a quick question. Is there a short cut on texmaker to enclose numbers with $..$ ? Like, I can just highlight the number and then enclose them with $..$ .

user1460166

3:39 AM

@Qrrbrbirlbel could you please let me know when you are here?

Many Thanks

Qrrbrbirlbel

4:56 AM

@user1460166 I'm gone in a bit. If you have follow-up questions, ask a new one on the main site. You can link to your previous question for context. You should now have enough reputation to insert images on your own in your questions.

@user1460166 The Trunk Posture table can easily built with tabularx and thirteen X columns as well as a few \multicolumns. You can search the site for tabularx or multicolumn to find more answers about those two.

@user1460166 The other table can be done too with a few \multicolumns and certain \cline, though it will be very annoying to do.

user1460166

5:27 AM

@Qrrbrbirlbel can you check the latest update of the question? I know its very difficult but I'm just trying.

Herbert

7:35 AM

\pstVerb{tx@Dict begin
tx@NodeDict begin
/N@A load GetCenter /N@B load GetCenter end
Pyth2 \pst@number\psrunit div /Dist exch def
end}%

Jake

8:25 AM

@JosephWright: Did you see tex.stackexchange.com/questions/102149/…? Can siunitx be taught to not print the leading zero even if rounding is used? Not that I want that, of course, I love leading zeros, but the OP does.

@Jake I'd have to check the order in the code

@Jake I think the logic internally is that rounding should lead to 'well formed' numbers, and .12 is not well formed

Jake

@JosephWright Yeah, that makes sense

@Jake Of course, I will check and see what I can do

Jake

@JosephWright Thanks

I'm supposed to be rewriting siunitx again: if I get round to it, I guess this is the sort of thing to check up on

9:44 AM

Now I can leave all tables question to David. :)

10:18 AM

@egreg Yay, congrats!

@PauloCereda Thanks! Fifth gold tag badge. Wow! Thanks to all the voters.

By the way, Herbert is at –370

@egreg minus 370?

@tohecz From 100000

@egreg oh this! I thought you mean –370 votes on tables ;p

11:32 AM

@egreg took you long enough:-)

@DavidCarlisle Now you're free to find as many longtable and colortbl bugs as you want.

@egreg ooh! :)

@egreg I'll blame any I find on soul

Q: Referencing bib files with spaces in the filename

0

I am using a Mac with TexLive and Mendeley for automatically generating bib files, some of which have spaces in the filenames. I would like to know how to reference such files from LaTeX as using "" or \ doesn't seem to work.

biblatex texlive paths

Is "Why?" a valid answer? :)

@PauloCereda I was thinking about suggesting cp "silly name .bib" good-name.bib

11:46 AM

@DavidCarlisle Good one. :)

Q: How to transfer .cls from a flashdrive to my computers My Documents using .bat in UBUNTU?

12:05 PM

0

i am planning to transfer my myclass.cls from my flashdrive to my computers My Documents in a more decent way so i want to create a .bat file where when clicked, myclass will be transfered to my documents.

document-classes ubuntu

Why is there a reopen vote?! :)

Meanwhile, TV turned on CNN waiting for white smoke to come out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

12:21 PM

@PauloCereda so are they using your macros?

@DavidCarlisle I'm not sure. Apparently they are inclined to use PSTricks instead of TikZ.

2

@PauloCereda maybe I should switch: the CofE is all TikZ these days.

12:36 PM

@Herbert Thank you for responding. Btw, I still get a strange output. The /Dist is too long beyond my expectation.

12:53 PM

Lo :-)

@NicolaTalbot Hi Nicola! :)

Now that "Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis" is almost complete (barring a few corrections) I need to start thinking about "Using LaTeX for Adminstrative Work". Possible topics: using koma's equivalent of the letter class, mail merging (datatool), reading csv files to produce long tables, invoices etc. Hmm, it's looking like it's mostly going to be a book about datatool. Maybe creating exam/assignment sheets. What other admin tasks do people use LaTeX for?

Oh, and the parrot could be wearing a bowler hat ;-)

@NicolaTalbot And a monocle! :)

@PauloCereda Instead of the glasses or as well as? ;-)

@NicolaTalbot Both! :)

1:01 PM

@PauloCereda LOL :-)

@NicolaTalbot: can I ask for a fashion advice? :)

@PauloCereda Ooh, yes. (Does it concern hats?)

@NicolaTalbot Indirectly. :)

The hat will be the second item, later on. :)

I'm about to buy a new coat for me, but I'm not sure which one is more casual. :)

@PauloCereda Oh, that sounds exciting. What's it about?

Which one do you like? :)

Very same coat, different colours.

1:10 PM

@PauloCereda Hmm. I think I like the darker one.

@NicolaTalbot The grey one will make me look like Sherlock Holmes. :)

Hence the hat.

:)

@PauloCereda Ah, then you can say things like "the solution to this LaTeX problem is quite elementary, my dear Watson" :-)

4

@NicolaTalbot LOL

Another point of view: I think collapsed dandruff is very visible on black clothes. :-)

@GarbageCollector So true. :)

1:15 PM

@PauloCereda I think this is more you:

@DavidCarlisle ooh a duck!

I need one of these when I go to São Paulo. :)

Q: How to use soul with glossaries to space-out acronyms?

@DavidCarlisle Oh definitely :-)

I thought this question would be straightforward, but it's not :-(

0

I want to increase the spacing between capital letters of acronyms inside text. Acronyms are printed by \ac, \acs, etc. commands of the glossaries package. soul package provides a nice command \caps. How can I modify glossaries to use \caps for acronyms? Here is an example that does not work. ...

spacing glossaries capitalization soul

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage[acronym,shortcuts]{glossaries}

\makeglossaries
\newacronym{OFDM}{OFDM}{Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing}

\begin{document}
Test~1: \caps{OFDM}

Test~2: \caps{\glsentrytext{OCDM}}

Test~3: \expandafter\caps\expandafter{\glsentrytext{OCDM}}

\edef\tmp{\glsentrytext{OCDM}}

Test~4: \expandafter\caps\expandafter{\tmp}

\end{document}

Only the "Test 1" produces any text.

Okay, it seems \glsentrytext{OCDM} is expanding to \relax so it glossaries not soul :-(

Of course, it would help if I could spell!

@NicolaTalbot I was just going to mention that...

@DavidCarlisle It would certainly help my debugging if I didn't make silly errors like that.

3:16 PM

@NicolaTalbot hi! I couldn't find the file sample-exclude.tex, at least no in my local mirror, and yes I'm interested :-)

@leo I'm sorry, it looks like I forgot to upload the latest version of probsoln. It should be dated 2012/08/23 v3.04. I'll bundle it up and upload it.

(I think I must've been too busy sorting out exam papers when I made the changes.)

3:35 PM

Okay, I've uploaded it.

@NicolaTalbot Thanks :-)

Dominic Michaelis

5:09 PM

huhu

5:35 PM

woohoo epic AI code!

6:09 PM

@PauloCereda: habemus papam

Few minutes ago the news

OMG!

LOL: xkcd.com/1185

6:23 PM

@ClaudioFiandrino I need to update my TeX question, now that we have a new pope! :)

@egreg: How about Gregorio~\stepcounter{gregoriocounter} ? :)

ooh I'll have to add the new name to the litany this year!

@PauloCereda Of course :) And you should mark the elected cardinal before they announce the name

@ClaudioFiandrino OK, my guess will be Scola. :)

Of course, we would like to see Scherer. :)

See, my question helped the Vatican! :)

@JosephWright Yay! :)

I also think Scola is favourite... but surprises can be around the corner ;)

@JosephWright: we're all ping @Paulo

@ClaudioFiandrino: wave your hand to the camera, I'm trying to locate you in the crowd. :)

6:41 PM

@PauloCereda What name will the new pope take? Paulo VII? Gregorio $n$?

@Brent.Longborough I have no idea. :)

@PauloCereda Did you like the two references to eminent members of our community?

@Brent.Longborough <3

John XXIV

Habemos patientia

2

@Brent.Longborough LMAO

6:51 PM

Here's the TeXPope!

The cardinals might have an outdated TeX distro, so my code isn't working properly for them. :)

Habemos Enrico

Gregorio~\stepcounter{gregoriocounter}

@PauloCereda They're very traditional. They still use BibTeX and \begin{picture}

@Brent.Longborough Wow. Where's @DavidCarlisle to help them? :)

6:53 PM

@PauloCereda \Roman{...} of the above

@NicolaTalbot ...but my \marginpar is too small to contain it

@PauloCereda It would be the 17th, IIRC. I propose Gregorio Paolo I.

@PauloCereda Unfortunately I'm not one of the $\geq 100\,000$ there :)

@egreg ooh! :)

@ClaudioFiandrino Go there, it's still time! :)

Oh, it's on BBC iplayer! And I've got the bandwidth to view it for a change!

@PauloCereda Oh: I need something faster than a Freccia Rossa... I'm more or less far from Rome as Enrico... just on the opposite direction :)

7:02 PM

@ClaudioFiandrino Nice keming!

@ClaudioFiandrino Borrow Enrico's Ducati 1198R. :)

Is there an "official" way (at least on Unix) to make a conditional based on the result of some shell command. So, for example if I want a condition based on the result of \immediate\write18{ls | wc -l}, is the only way to write that to a file, and then read that file?

@Brent.Longborough thanks ;)

@PauloCereda same problem: before I should reach Enrico :) I guess this turn I'll watch on TV :)

@ClaudioFiandrino :)

ooh there are two bands!

Why isn't Berlusconi there!

7:05 PM

I wonder if they can play some Pink Floyd.

oooooooh lights on!

wooooooohooooooooooo

I am wondering if there are any live webcasts of the pope emerging to the Balcony...

@PauloCereda Definitely not, only (Black|White|Red|Purple) Floyd

@Brent.Longborough Ah liturgical colours. :)

@KannappanSampath BBC IPlayer on the News?

@Brent.Longborough I guess he can't watch the election.. at least because officially he's at hospital for conjunctivitis

7:07 PM

@ClaudioFiandrino Hmm, been reading too much Comic Sans

@Brent.Longborough Let me check out, thanks.

@KannappanSampath It's currently showing on bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21777747

@Brent.Longborough :)

@NicolaTalbot Thank you so much. :)

Open. The. Damn. Door.

7:10 PM

@PauloCereda Where's Kerberos?

The Pope's Twitter account has now been reactivated on @pontifex.

@Brent.Longborough LOL you naughty boy. :)

@KannappanSampath It would be awesome to have a spoiler tweet. :)

@PauloCereda True Dat.

ooooooooooooooooooooh

Now should be open

7:12 PM

Habemus papam!

4

Argentine!

Francisco?

Finally, a Latin American!

2

woooohoooo

@Brent.Longborough Yep.

That's the Falklands screwed, then

@Brent.Longborough LMAO

Ohhhhh

7:14 PM

A Jesuit!

@Brent.Longborough Yep! :)

@Paulo: we were wrong in our prediction ;)

@ClaudioFiandrino Indeed! :)

The bookmakers (non-typographic) have made a fortune

@Brent.Longborough Absolutely yes :)

7:16 PM

Francesco I

(Is that the correct spelling?)

@NicolaTalbot Yes! :)

@NicolaTalbot Yes :)

Does this mean a new, humble Church?

Being a devotee of Francesco d'Assisi, I like it! :)

@Brent.Longborough I think so, specially for our Latin American church.

Bring the pope.

Yay @Francesco I is here.

He appears! Paulo VI's doppelgänger

7:21 PM

:)

@Brent.Longborough LOL

Marco Daniel

Can I change the information given here: ctan.org/pkg/mdframed

@MarcoDaniel Wait a minute, we are discussing pope-related stuff. :)

3

Qrrbrbirlbel

@PauloCereda What about your daughter, arara?

@MarcoDaniel You can use any font as long as it's Cardo

Oh.. Just discovered of his Piedmontese origin

7:25 PM

@ClaudioFiandrino Wasn't there a massacre there, once?

@Brent.Longborough Yes.. for example in Boves during the second world war

@PauloCereda František z Assisi has a nice church close to my house

Also famous is the siege of Turin of 1706 after which the Duke of Piedmont became first King of Siciliy then King of Sardinia

@Qrrbrbirlbel It's frozen for now.

:)

@tohecz Cool! :)

Look, the document is typeset in TeX!

@ClaudioFiandrino Yes. I was thinking of 1655, after Milton's poem

7:32 PM

@Brent.Longborough Oh.. the Waldensians persecution :)

@ClaudioFiandrino Yeah. But all of those massacres suck...

@Brent.Longborough .. and we always remember few of them.

@pontifex sends its first tweet of the new papacy, with the message: "HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM". -- From BBC feed.

And we've already got a new pope?

@tohecz Yes. :)

7:41 PM

@KannappanSampath oh kool

I really pray and wish for him to be a good pope!

@tohecz I believe he'll be. :)

There's a religious background from Latin America that the rest the world will know soon. :)

@PauloCereda Yay :-)

@NicolaTalbot :)

@Qrrbrbirlbel: now that we have a pope, your answer is accepted. :) Thank you! :)

(I'm not Catholic myself, but still I keep him in my prayers)

@tohecz :-)

Digressing slightly off-topic ;-) Is it possible to bundle up a Perl script into an executable so you don't need to tell the user that they need to install Perl and all the relevant Perl modules?

8:06 PM

@NicolaTalbot I have no experience with this but per2exe might be what you are looking for

indigostar.com/perl2exe.php

@PeterGrill That's great. Thanks :-)

@NicolaTalbot There's a module called PAR which seems very interesting.

Qrrbrbirlbel

8:23 PM

@PauloCereda Yeah! :) Sorry I couldn’t get artsier, though. I just added colored rounded rectangles …

@PauloCereda Thanks, I'll have a look at that.

I've just noticed that perl2exe has a "buy now" button but I can't see a price tag anywhere.

It's a great answer! :)

@NicolaTalbot Yes, that's how biber works

Argghh! Can't figure out what exactly needs additional escaping here. I added the "{" before the awk and the closing "}" after "0" (hangs otherwise)... Purpose of this is to set \ShellOutput to 1/0 if A.tex has "XY:" as the first three characters in the file. This is based on egreg's solution at Write18: capturing shell (script) output as command/variable?

\documentclass{article}

%% tex.stackexchange.com/questions/16790/…

\newcommand*{\FBFileNameWithPath}{}%
\begingroup\makeatletter\endlinechar=\m@ne\everyeof{\noexpand}
\edef\TempResult{\endgroup\def\noexpand\ShellOutput{\@@input|"{awk 'NR==1 {if(/XY:/) print "1"; else print "0"}' \FBFileNameWithPath}" }}\TempResult%


\begin{document}
	% Should be 1 as A.txt starts with XY:
	\xdef\FBFileNameWithPath{./A.txt}
	ShellOutput is ``\ShellOutput"

8:38 PM

@PeterGrill You have double quotes inside the awk command. That's not covered, I'm afraid.

covered? I think I tried escaping them already, but perhaps not..

@PeterGrill You can quote the entire command with double quotes, but can't have double quotes inside, the parser gets confused.

Escaping does not work. But if if I remove them still get null output.

@PeterGrill print instructions in awk need double quotes. :(

@egreg Ok ( I don't know AWK, got that forma friend)... So, is there a simpler way to get a 1/0 depending on the file content. I guess I could write to a file and read that in, but really liked this solution of yours...

8:43 PM

@PeterGrill I guess that for more complex tasks it's better to write a shell script and call that one with \@@input|"script.sh"

@egreg Ok, will do that. I was trying to avoid having another file lingering around.

@JosephWright Do you know what they use?

@NicolaTalbot Ask @PLK

@JosephWright Thanks. I'd like to be able to bundle up makeglossaries so I don't get so many "I don't want to use it because I don't want to install perl" complaints!

@NicolaTalbot but doesn't TL come with enough perl to run biber, isn't that enough? oops just followed the thread back, that's where you started:-)

8:52 PM

Mind you, there are so many useful perl scripts I don't know why people are so reluctant to install it.

And I've got another one on the way - as long as I can find the time to finish it!

9:09 PM

@egreg Well, found a solution that works without needing to use an additional file that does not require the double quotes either. Perhaps I should post a question, as I think this is an expansion related issue in that I am not able to replace A.txt. in the following with \FBFileNameWithPath:

\newcommand*{\FBFileNameWithPath}{}%
\begingroup\makeatletter\endlinechar=\m@ne\everyeof{\noexpand}
\edef\TempResult{\endgroup\def\noexpand\ShellOutput{\@@input|"head -1 A.txt | grep '^XY:'" }}\TempResult%

Perhaps \FBFileNameWithPath\space?

But a MWE would be better

Q: Is learning mathematics good to build personal character?

0

In my experience, people who are well trained in mathematics will have strong toughness and confidence in solving their daily life activities or problems. Is learning mathematics good to build personal character?

personality

@egreg I've just made an important step in my life: I've bought the first espresso machine in my life :)

@tohecz :) What brand of coffee will you use?

Tested! I award you the cake and eat it to honor :) — hsmyers 7 hours ago

@egreg well, you won't be happy about the type of the machine I s'pose, I have the NESCAFE KRUPS system

9:25 PM

@tohecz Uh!

@egreg my consumption at home is small, and this offers me what I need. We have a good machine at school, and we use high quality fairtrade coffee there.

10:00 PM

@DavidCarlisle: Seems as I need to post a follow-up question: "How to step carefully to avoid waking sleeping dragons"? :-)

@PeterGrill easier to ask here I just asked in a comment but do you need it to work in normal text ?

Q: Changbars to indicate location of conditional text

@DavidCarlisle I have an existing conditional macro that I have been using based on

5

I am using etoolbox as per this question on LaTeX conditional expression, and would like to modify the conditional to print some sort of indicator (like a vertical change bar in the margin) to show that the text displayed is conditional and subject to change. In the final version I intend to rem...

conditionals etoolbox changes

but perhaps I can have a different one for use with align type environments.

10:24 PM

@PeterGrill

\def\xaligns{align*}
\def\ConditionalText#1{%
    \iftoggle{SupressConditionalText}{}{%
        \ifx\@currenvir\xaligns
          #1%
        \else\ifmmode
           #1% Don't underline if in math mode
        \else%
           \UnderlineText[red]{#1}% This case not used in this MWE.
        \fi
       \fi
    }%
    \ignorespacesafterend%
}%

@DavidCarlisle Seem to be stick on Misplaced alignment tab character &....

I think that's only bit I changed in your MWE, could post on site I suppose but...

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}% Not essential for this problem.
%\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage{mathtools}
%\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{parskip}% Eliminate need for \noindent
%\usepackage{showframe}

\makeatletter
\newtoggle{SupressConditionalText}%

\togglefalse{SupressConditionalText}% This has too much space BEFORE the conditional \intertext.

% Not used in this paritcular example
\NewDocumentCommand{\UnderlineText}{O{red} +m}{%
    \setulcolor{#1}\ul{#2}%