@SeanAllred There is an object-oriented engine in PGF/TikZ, although I don't know how performant that would be if you would really want to emulate JavaScript code... however, it might be of some help.

@MHaaZ I will have to take a look at it! Thanks!

Seriously. I cannot believe it took me this long to find/see the AUCTeX RefCard. I've been using it for a year and it has just doubled in functionality. I might be fanboying a bit, but Emacs/AUCTeX/RefTeX has to be the best editor for TeX. I'm curious though --- in the vi world (@PauloCereda?), is latex-suite as utilitarian? I've a friend who is about to get into learning LaTeX and is already pretty comfortable with vi, which is why I ask.

morning!

today I'm trying to do some things I haven't done before in TeX,

and hope you guys can again help prodding me on into the right direction

just set up LuaLaTex in Texmaker

and am now trying to write a first MWE for Lua

a "hello world" document

how ?

:-)

(oh, by "hello world" I don't mean scripting! I just want to ultimately convert my pdflatex document to be Lua-conform; no scripting for that I hope)

@nuttyaboutnatty If you are not using Lua yourself, your document will look very similar to a pdfLaTeX one :-)

yes...

am already underway :)

just in case you happen to know:

figured it just now...

(but am not at the end of the road for today yet, still got some hurdles to climb)

ok,

here's a question:

I got a bunch of fonts in this directory:

/home/<username>/.fonts (where <username> is your user name) -- see wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts

they're all recognized by/in LibreOffice

but don't seem to be on the TeX-PATH-variable or whatever

how to add 'em to that PATH ?

or do I just need to do some sort of cache-update ?

not sure if I ever did this: sudo fc-cache -f -v

attempting to use Calibri,

can't get past a barrage of error messages :-(

help, plz!

! Font \EU2/Calibri(0)/m/n/6=name:Calibri:mode=node; at 6pt not loadable: metric data not found or bad.

have four CALIBRI.ttf files in a directory,

see also: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/111453/… tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9918/… tex.stackexchange.com/questions/33972/…

I've written an answer for a question a while back, then deleted it until I check something, so that I can come back and un-delete it and continue editing if needed.

I forgot now the title of the question, and can't find it in my history edits in my profile..Is there an easy easy way to find where that question was in my user profile?  it does not show under my answers sections. I thought deleted answers remain there all the time.

may be I'll ask this in some other meta/admin group for stackexchage...

I have just earned my 20th "Good Question" badge.

congraz!

! LaTeX Error: Unknown option UprightFont=CALIBRI' for package fontspec'.

is the first error msg in the log

:-(

even copied the four font files into my working directory

really lost just now :-(

(or am I a victim of using an old, buggy version of TeX ?)

@Seamus Oh, I've got none! /me envious

@JosephWright I'd like to vote this for migration… tex.stackexchange.com/questions/122028/…

@egreg I need your help regarding your answer tex.stackexchange.com/a/71113/27721

@nuttyaboutnatty What's the matter?

/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/luatex/luaotfload/otfl-blacklist.cnf

shows

for me

((( I'm not using a bleeding edge version of tex-live (just some standard ppa), I hope I can solve this issue without doing a manual upgrade... )))

it's about using CALIBRI.ttf (not ttc) with LuaLaTeX

can't get past the error msg's

commenting out all (or most) of that blacklist file (where no *.ttf's and neither Calibri is mentioned): would that help ??

@nuttyaboutnatty You still have an old TeX Live/Debian, I argue from the path. That black list has nothing to do with your problem, I'd say.

(as suggested here tex.stackexchange.com/questions/103704/… which refers to the question you answered)

@egreg yeah, I think it's 2011 or 2012 max

I copied all four Calibri ttf's into the working directory

tried:

(where tmp was my working directory)

and get

etc

@nuttyaboutnatty What about Path=./?

oh, btw:

@nuttyaboutnatty However, if the file is CALIBRI.ttf you should use all uppercase in the \setmainfont call

(it's recognized in LibreOffice, for instance...)

@egreg tried upper-case too, with and without giving the extension: no dice

@nuttyaboutnatty If fc-list is able to find the font, it should be somewhere; can you tell where?

oh yeah, sure

(as said b4,) even copied the ttf files to the current directory (tmp)

@egreg Noted

also tried giving the full directory

@nuttyaboutnatty Does XeLaTeX find it?

as in:

didn't try XeLaTex (yet), as I thought Lua is "the future"

am just "graduating" from plain pdftex

@nuttyaboutnatty Just for experimenting

would I need to make any changes to the file, or just change the compiler?

@nuttyaboutnatty Just run xelatex filename from the terminal

ok

(I second the question mark of the compiler...)

time to upgrade?

@nuttyaboutnatty Hmm, doesn't seem right. But again, if the files have uppercase names, you should use uppercase.

(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.cfg)))kpathsea: Invalid fontname `[/tmp/CALIBRI.ttf]/ICU', contains '['

same result (which doesn't say you don't have a point there...)

Do you happen to have Calibri on your system?

@nuttyaboutnatty Where did you download the font from?

microsoft

@nuttyaboutnatty No, I don't. Why should I? There are tons of better sans serif fonts.

maybe

any other ideas?

@egreg I like Calibri; do you not like the way it looks or just that it's Microsoft? There are (apparently) free and similar alternatives like "Asap" fontsquirrel.com/fonts/asap Any font suggestions?

@nuttyaboutnatty Sorry, no. Put the fonts in ~/.fonts and run mkluatexfontdb; then look whether the font appears in otfl-names.lua

ok, I'll try that. fingers crossed

@egreg the fonts (Calibri etc) were in ~/.fonts already

(that is, also in that directory)

@nuttyaboutnatty So, why copy them elsewhere?

to run mkluatexfontdb from any terminal and any directory ?

just plain mkluatexfontdb

@nuttyaboutnatty Yes

@nuttyaboutnatty Now try looking in the produced file if Calibri is there

searched for Calibri

then for ttf

no show

work-around: manually edit that file and add the entires ?

@nuttyaboutnatty Do you have other fonts in ~/.fonts?

Cambria, and 2-3 others

the C-series

@nuttyaboutnatty Do they appear in otfl-names.lua?

no.

but looking at the "Asap" font, which seems open, free and odt,

I might find a way out of this headache...

@nuttyaboutnatty Run mkluatexfontdb --force --verbose=-1 -vvv and look at what happens.

you're on to sth here... :)

it didn't seem to have explicitly scanned ` ~/.fonts`

@egreg only (explicitly) scanning \usr but not \home

hmm, am clueless

The OSFONTDIR=${HOME}/.fonts:/usr/share/fonts//:/usr/share/texmf/fonts// seems a good strategy. Try this command line:

OSFONTDIR=${HOME}/.fonts:/usr/share/fonts//:/usr/share/texmf/fonts// mkluatexfontdb --force --verbose=-1 -vvv

@nuttyaboutnatty Seems promising.

YES !!!

(and wow does the document look ugly now ;) )

and henceforth it reduces to:

@egreg I like Calibri; do you not like the way it looks or just that it's Microsoft? There are (apparently) free and similar alternatives like "Asap" fontsquirrel.com/fonts/asap Any font suggestions?

I plan to use it for CV and (possibly also) Cover Letter

(that is, not for longer papers / publications)

hence, I figured sans-serif would be good/reasonable

and Calibri reads well, not "crowded"

happy to hear your suggestions and personal preferences

@nuttyaboutnatty I never use a sans serif font for continuous reading.

ok...

@egreg I'M just trying to figure out if microtype will have any effect with calibri.ttf

but it doesn't seem to budge not even half a millimeter...

is that cuz it's sans-serif, or because it's TTF ?

oh no, a downvote :(

life sucks :)

@egreg see for instance tex.stackexchange.com/questions/121557/… which suggests that it's an issue of whether there's a *.cfg file for the font or not...

... in contrast to which the microtype manual does not seem to suggest a per-font *.cfg file were necessary

Somebody in Christina Stephens' research lab joked that she - an amputee - should build a fake leg out of LEGO. Challenge. Accepted.

This awesome video shows Christina rummaging around like a kid for the right pieces, before taking the leg for a test drive.

And I got a downvote! :)

I bet @David downvoted me. :P

@PauloCereda I also bet that @David downvoted me for my emacs joke yesterday :)

@PauloCereda I wonder why? I'd already upvoted it, so I can't upvote it again :-)

... perhaps tex.sx suffers from a downvote virus

I think really long urls should go in an \href for hyperlinked documents. In hardcopy versions it's better to have a link to the url home page and let the user navigate from there as there's no way people can be expected to manual type in a long url.

@topskip LOL

@NicolaTalbot aww thanks. :)

@PauloCereda: Is the update of Sergey useful? I am sure you have a newer non committed version on your desktop ;-)

@topskip Well, I have my reasons :-(

@MarcoDaniel It is, after all we are not versed in Sketch. :)

@Nicola: We are expecting F19 today. :)

@PauloCereda Yay :-)

This should be an olympic sport. :)

@PauloCereda Looks funny!

@egreg :)

The Fedora Project is delighted to announce the release of Fedora 19 ("Schrödinger's Cat"). Open the box and take a look for yourself!

Fedora is a leading-edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release about every six months.

Download it now:

fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

Detailed information about this release can be seen in the release notes:
docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Release_Notes

@NicolaTalbot: ^^

@PauloCereda Yay! :-)

@PauloCereda Is it just a case of running sudo fedup --network 19 ? (After backing up etc.)

@NicolaTalbot Is this the command you run when you've had it with your OS? :)

@AlanMunn That's the replacement to the preupgrade tool according to docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Installation_Guide/…

@NicolaTalbot I figured that. I was only joking about the name fedup. As in "I'm fed up with this OS".

@AlanMunn Oops, I misread your message. :-) But surely that would refer to another OS ;-)

@NicolaTalbot I wouldn't know. I have a Mac. All the unixy goodness without any of the system administration. :)

@AlanMunn A Mac's too flashy for me :-) My desktop is usually full of terminals all eagerly awaiting typed input :-)

Mine too. Although they're all contained in one window with tabs.

@AlanMunn That question definitely needs a MWE. ;-)

@PauloCereda Sorry, that was me. egreg already explained what is wrong with your solution. It will break half of the time, and usually in horrible ways :-(

@egreg It does. At first I thought he just wanted to change the syntax, but the issue is that the other package (not on CTAN) places labels in a different place than the bussproofs package. Too much work to change for me.

@AlanMunn The Mac showed great wisdom adopting a unixy base :-)

@NicolaTalbot It did. I was very happy when OS X first came out. It really is a fantastic OS. I'd always had accounts on Unix machines in addition to my Mac, but now that's no longer needed.

@PauloCereda It's not worth downvoting vim users

@mafp unlike SO there are so few downvotes here, it helps to leave a comment on the question.

@DavidCarlisle The answer already had one pointing out the problem. I upvoted that comment.

@NicolaTalbot To be honest, I really don't know. :) I always do a fresh install. :)

@PauloCereda Oh, scary. That's when I find out which files I've forgotten to backup :-)

@mafp yes but as seen by Paulo's comment the person making the answer has no indication of any connection between that comment and its upvote and the downvote,

@mafp No worries. Sadly I don't know to make my answer better. I know things might break, but I have no idea on how to come up with a better code.

I can delete my answer, if you guys think it might be wise. :)

@AlanMunn OMG tamanduá!

@PauloCereda Don't; just add a warning that it's indended for simple URLs without special characters (the kind that can go in the main text of a document).

@egreg Thanks, I'll add a warning. :)

@mafp Personally I wouldn't downvote an answer just because it only works for a subset of use cases (especially if the answerer points out that there may be instances where it will fail). A partially helpful answer can be used as a springboard to a better answer. (I upvoted Paulo on that basis and then upvoted Heiko as well when he produced a better answer, although Heiko doesn't need a springboard for any of his answers.)

Random question: does anyone know of any font that has bold-small-caps defined? (I tried \usepackage{libertine} to no effect.) XeTeX is cool.

If you think it'd be better as an actual Q, I can post it -- but it doesn't seem TeX-related, just TeX-inspired ;)

@NicolaTalbot I usually don't do that either (my voting stats are +1291/-34). But when an answer goes straight to Nice Answer, and does not work that well (without a warning), I think it is overvalued. I mean, dozens of really nice answers (lower case) are posted here everyday that get a shabby single upvote if at all, so let's keep some perspective. What do you think how many upvotes this answer would have gained if user483762 had posted that answer?

@mafp @PauloCereda and I do our best to upvote every good question or answer!

@mafp I thought it did come with a warning ("but some characters in the URL might cause problems").

@NicolaTalbot I was gonna say that. I even mentioned your comment.

@NicolaTalbot Fair point, but I thought that is too unspecific.

@PauloCereda I noticed :-) but I would've upvoted it if someone else had given that answer (before Heiko answered, which happened in this case) because it naturally followed on from the comments.

@SeanAllred I only have one font on my system with a bold small caps is Arno Pro. (Which came with Adobe Creative Suite, I think). I don't think there are any free fonts that do, and even most of the Pro fonts I have don't have bold small caps either.

@AlanMunn oy vey iz mir... on the flip-side, how else could you format acronyms while distinguishing proper nouns from mere concepts?

Is there any standard practice I'm unaware of?

(Unless it is as it seems, with the standard practice being no such distinction.)

@SeanAllred XeTeX allows you to fake bold. So you could use small caps and fake the bold in the few places you needed it.

@SeanAllred What's an example of what you have in mind?

\DeclareAcronym{dns}{
  short = dns,
  long  = domain name server,
  class = concept,
}
\DeclareAcronym{ip}{
  short = ip,
  long  = internet protocol,
  class = concept,
}

@AlanMunn These acronyms appear frequently in section titles

I considered making the section titles medium weight, but that looked horrible

Perhaps I can just use a style of \MakeUppercase for now?

@AlanMunn: You can clear your comment here:

@Werner Done. I'm assuming you're deleting your other comment too? The OP is aware that \FOREACH ≠ \FOR in formatting, hence the question.

@AlanMunn Yes, I cleared mine as well. I quickly read through the question and commented before I left the home for work.

After arriving, I saw your comment, re-read the question, and fully agree: It was an incorrect guess.

@Werner But you have another comment which seems to state what the OP already knows.

@AlanMunn The OP mentioned a new command \FOREACH, which should have read something like redefine or replace \FOREACH. Perhaps they know, perhaps not.

I thought I'd mention it.

@Werner Fair enough. My answer just takes the definition of \FOR and redefines \FOREACH to that. Maybe I should have used \renewcommand instead to make it clearer that it's redefining the old \FOREACH.

@AlanMunn I noticed from the source program.sty. But I guess that's fine too.

@Werner I added a bit of explanation to my answer.

@SeanAllred Actually, I may be wrong on my claim about only Arno Pro. Linux Libertine O seems to give bold small caps:

% !TEX TS-program = LuaLaTeX (just to check if XeLaTeX was faking it)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[
Ligatures=TeX,
]{Linux Libertine O}
\begin{document}
\textbf{\textsc{some small caps}}\par
\textsc{some small caps}
\section{\textsc{some small caps}}
\end{document}

@AlanMunn So it does - thanks! Does \usepackage{libertine} not use the right font when compiled with pdfLaTeX? I guess it's possible I simply didn't have the font installed on my system where it was looking for it, but that wouldn't explain why XeTeX works.

@SeanAllred The pdflatex version of the font is different, I think.

@AlanMunn That could explain it. Thanks so much for our help! [XeTeX is starting to grow on me :-)]

@SeanAllred You can also replace XeTeX with LuaTeX for most things.

That is next on the to-do -- I've never worked with Lua, but it seems very familiar given my python/basic background, so it wouldn't be the language itself that bothers me.

@SeanAllred You don't need to know Lua to use LuaTeX; it's just another TeX engine but with a Lua interpreter embedded if you need it, so it has great potential for extensions. But as a regular engine, it can be used just like you would use XeTeX.

Any adjustbox aficionados here?

@AlanMunn Oh I know, I just don't yet see the advantage of moving over yet. I only moved to XeTeX recently when I needed to customize fonts for a Father's day present; I'll move to LuaTeX when I need to do some serious number-crunching ;)

Besides, Lua makes it too easy. I need to practice my TeX-fu if I'm ever going to catch up with you guys.

:-)

@SeanAllred I'm not sure I can be included in "you guys". I'm a capable end user, but far from an expert TeX programmer (although I may know a little more than some.)

@AlanMunn :) your reputation speaks for itself (no pun intended) - IIRC you have a few packages up on CTAN, and I've nothing anywhere close to being published so.

@SeanAllred You can get a lot of reputation here by being really good at RTFM. :)

I've definitely a lot more to learn, and it's difficult to tell if people will start hopping on the LuaTeX gravy train en masse, in such a case, it'd definitely be worthwhile to know

@AlanMunn Oh yes, we have some fine manuals in the TeX world ;) Unfortunately for me, my eyes mostly glaze over when I read the implementations.

A lot of it is just experience; I don't yet really know what's out there. That will just take time.

@SeanAllred Right. I use LaTeX every day. And you can learn a lot from trying to solve problems here on the site. I know I certainly have. (Even if I don't post my attempts as answers.)

@AlanMunn Definitely -- although I'd say there is a stark difference in being an end-user and a power user of LaTeX -- most of the time I just don't care how it looks, because it looks fine.

I definitely learn more when I'm doing things for others though, because they tend to be more picky.

(For better or for worse.)

@AlanMunn As I said in another occasion, I learn from the site every day, either makeing or reading answers.

@egreg Even @DavidCarlisle has been opened up to a whole new world of TikZ.

I wonder if we can use the API (or data.SE) to construct a 'Best Of' for TeX.

@AlanMunn Which he became a great expert of.

@AlanMunn Now that I wouldn't expect - I didn't know David didn't really use TikZ -- I guess I've just never noticed if he's not the one answering those questions (although I'm sure he's done at least a few).

@egreg naturally.

@SeanAllred This is a bit of a running joke. David manages to answer all TikZ questions he attempts using picture mode (i.e. not using TikZ at all.)

@AlanMunn Adding some \edef or \expandafter here and there.

XD And here I was trying to make a unit circle in picture a year or so ago, before I knew about pst/tikz

@egreg Some of the magic that is worked that way boggles my mind

@SeanAllred Once you grasp how \expandafter really works, you become hooked to the world of (La)TeX programming. But the best trick is still \begingroup\edef\x{\endgroup...}\x

@egreg Not \lccode~?

@egreg I remember that construction from the quine question posted a while back; I'm still trying to sort it out. (Don't ruin it for me!! XD)

@MarcoDaniel The second best

@MarcoDaniel Third is \expandafter\@firstofone\else\expandafter\@gobble\fi{...}

@egreg We need a list of best hacks ;-)

Some of Bruno's stuff is very clever

@MarcoDaniel I believe there is a question on the site.

@egreg Found it ;-) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/19746/cunning-latex-tricks

Unbelievable how much knowledge this site has collected.

@egreg I'm not having much success with adjustbox. I think I'm not understanding something. max size gives a box smaller than that size if the content fits, but I want the box to be exactly the size I give.

@AlanMunn Where's Martin when one needs him?

@AlanMunn Example?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{array,booktabs}
\usepackage{pgffor}
\geometry{
paperheight=11in,
paperwidth=4.25in,
tmargin=1in,
bmargin=1in,
lmargin=.5in,
rmargin=.25in
}
\pagestyle{empty}
\def\name{Alan Munn}
\def\affiliation{Michigan State University}
\def\conference{Syntax and Variation: where are we now and where do we go from here?}
\begin{document}
\centering
\foreach \x in {1,...,3} {
\adjustbox{max totalsize={3in}{4in}}{\begin{tabular}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{2.5in}}

(The loop is for the example; I'm using datatool for the actual loop.)

The paper I have consists of 3 3in x 4in perforated units with an inch margin on the top and bottom and a .25 inch left margin.

What I'm trying to achieve is the badge text filling each of those regions so that I have 3 badges per page.

@AlanMunn With max width the dimension is never exceeded; but the box is not scaled if it fits.

@AlanMunn A little help from \vbox

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{array,booktabs}
\usepackage{pgffor}
\geometry{showframe,
paperheight=11in,
paperwidth=4.25in,
tmargin=1in,
bmargin=1in,
lmargin=.5in,
rmargin=.25in
}
\pagestyle{empty}
\newcommand{\badge}{%
  \leavevmode\vbox to .3\vsize{\vfill
  \begin{adjustbox}{width=\textwidth}
    \begin{tabular}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{2.5in}}
    \toprule
    \sffamily\small \conference\\
    \midrule
    \\ \\
    \Large\name\\
    \\

@egreg Thanks a lot. That looks great.

@AlanMunn The main problem was the interline skip; with the trick of \vbox we can avoid it.

@egreg And why not \offinterlineskip?

I gave up. :) I was trying to write another answer with LuaTeX for the \url list, but I fall into the same char problem.

is this a listings package include order, or is it unrelated to listings directly?

If anyone has a spare minute, could you please try to compile the following code with lualatex:

% !TeX program = arara
% arara: lualatex
\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{abbr.tex}
\newacronym{swh}{swh}{Significant Wave Height}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}
\setmainfont[Numbers=OldStyle,
             Renderer=Basic%
             ]{TeX Gyre Pagella}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage[smallcaps]{glossaries}
\input{abbr}
\begin{document}
This is some text \gls{swh} and this is some more text.

\glsreset{swh}
This is some text \gls{swh}

@Luke I think there's a verbose option that adds extra information to the log file that might help, but I can't remember what kind of information it supplies.

I get the first acronym printed with the normal serif font, the second with small caps. (TeX Live 2013, Kubuntu)

@NicolaTalbot is the option for listings?

@Luke No, sorry, it's a hyperref option.

@NicolaTalbot ah, ok... I'll check it out

@TorbjørnT. They look the same to me.

Back! I'm back!

Just removed the cookies.

@StefanKottwitz Yay :-)

@NicolaTalbot Ok, thanks for trying. It's a little bit weird. When I tried with a different acronym it worked fine, when I switched to article it worked fine, if I remove microtype it works fine. Probably something local though, occurred after upgrading to TeX Live 2013.

@TorbjørnT. Could be. I haven't got around to upgrading to 2013.

@MarcoDaniel Because it would hold also in each \vbox

@PauloCereda How did you have to bundle up arara to get it into TeX Live?

@NicolaTalbot I provided the .jar file, the .sh and .exe wrappers, the rules directory and packed them into a .zip file with the directory structure Karl suggested me. :)

@PauloCereda Is the structure scripts/appname, doc/support/appname and source/support/appname ?

@NicolaTalbot Ah yes, that one! :)

Something along those lines, it was a traumatic time. :)

@PauloCereda v0.2b is nearly ready, and then I'll give it a go. :-)

@NicolaTalbot ooh! :)

@PauloCereda It now has search facilities and create a new database from a template function.

@NicolaTalbot Wow! :)

@PauloCereda Here's what I'm doing just now.

@egreg Oh my, Ubuntu! :( New TL install guide? :)

VirtualBox running full screen, image captured from OS X

@PauloCereda I need to test the procedure for TL 2013

@egreg :)

@PauloCereda I continue to dislike Fedora, sorry.

@NicolaTalbot I'm making great use of datatool right now as I organise my conference. It's such a great package.

@AlanMunn Thanks :-) I'm hoping my new app will make datatool even more useful :-)

@NicolaTalbot Is that 'app' as in it will run on my iPhone?

@AlanMunn No, sorry, "app" as in I can't be bother to write "Java application".

Do Java applications run on iPhone? I don't have one.

@egreg No worries. :)

@AlanMunn High horse. :)

@NicolaTalbot Nope: iphonefaq.org/archives/9731

@PauloCereda If you've got it, flaunt it. :)

@AlanMunn Nobody uses Java any more? I'd better tell our BluRay player it's obsolete ;-)

@NicolaTalbot ooh! :)

@NicolaTalbot Yeah, well famous last words, I guess. I have mixed feelings about Java. For some things I think it's great, but especially on the Mac it's frustrating to have applications that don't interface with the standard modes of the OS. But that's the price we pay for platform independence.

@AlanMunn Yes, it's the platform independence that's the key. Without that, all my applications would only run on Linux :-)

@AlanMunn I never tried to use SWT on my Mac, but Swing produces mixed feelings. :)

@AlanMunn I even have a badge. I think though TikZ answers should be banned from the current "make tex slow" question, It's just too easy that way.

@DavidCarlisle I only upvoted your answer. I think it's the only one that meets the criteria. I was tempted to obfuscate this:

\newcount\coffeebreak
\def\breaktime{\pdffilesize{\jobname.tex}}
\loop
    \advance\coffeebreak by 1
    \ifnum\coffeebreak<1000\breaktime \repeat

But obfuscation is way too much work for mere mortals.

@AlanMunn I'm running it now actually, I'm a bit afraid it'll hit the pdf object limit before I get to maxdimen pages, we'll see it's on page [2360853] so far. It fails the don't show in the log part as it makes so many pages, I might try one that doesn't produce any output later.

@AlanMunn oops I'm going to have to edit it as it fails the must compile test, that's a shame: Oh Perhaps I'll try classic latex instead of pdflatex

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [indirect objects table size=8388607].
<to be read again>
                   \endgroup \set@typeset@protect
l.7 h
     ello
!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
Transcript written on sl111.log.

real    19m0.863s
user    15m17.300s
sys     2m55.735s

@NicolaTalbot Do you know if there's a way to tell Excel to wrap its CSV cells in quotes?

@AlanMunn Sorry, I don't know. I assumed it did that automatically.

@NicolaTalbot Are you kidding, it's MS. They don't do anything right. :) Thanks. I've changed to tab separated which solves the problem, but I'm getting Argument of \@dtl@qlopoff has an extra } errors.

Does datatool not like underscores in header names or file names?

@AlanMunn I was going to say standard way to get anything out of any office tool is to take whatever comes out and pass it to a perl script to clean up:-)

Who broke the site?

@AlanMunn Probably not. Have you got a mwe?

@percusse Where's it broken?

@NicolaTalbot I can't access any questions but main page works fine

yep

@percusse Oh, you're right. That must have happened fairly recently.

Same thing happened here!

Temporary glitch I expect.

Somebody at SE headquarters is compiling @DavidCarlisle 's script for leisure...

@AlanMunn It would be useful if we could integrate @Paulo's excel reading code into datatooltk. Then you wouldn't have to convert to CSV.

@AlanMunn Canadian keyboard layout! :)

@PauloCereda Damn right, eh?

@NicolaTalbot Yes, that would be nice. There's also the stupid issue that Excel still doesn't produce UTF8 output, I think.

But I'm still getting the error, and I've replaced all the underscores, so that's not the problem.

@AlanMunn What version of datatool are you using?

(v2.14 is the latest.)

@AlanMunn Canucks for the win. :)

@NicolaTalbot 2013/06/28 v2.14 (NLCT)

@AlanMunn Do you have any line breaks in your cells?

(As in \n rather than TeX linebreaks.)

@NicolaTalbot Possibly. I'll check in a regular text editor.

@AlanMunn datatool can't cope with that, but datatooltk can.

@NicolaTalbot No I don't.

@AlanMunn Hmm. That's odd. Is there a particular line in the CSV file that it fails on? (Can you reduced the file to a header + single row file that has a problem?)

@percusse: youtube.com/watch?v=468qT640YRk :)

@PauloCereda Am I gonna get rickrolled ?

@percusse Go for it. :)

@PauloCereda WTF?

@NicolaTalbot Sorry there was one line that had a line break in it. Now it's working. Thanks.

@percusse bullshift. :P

I have some unconventional RSS feeds. :)

epmhasis on the I have

Why?

@percusse :)

@AlanMunn That's an unfortunate drawback with \DTLloaddb. Once datatooltk is on CTAN I'll recommend using that as the optimal method of loading CSV files into datatool.

@NicolaTalbot It might be helpful to have a troubleshooting section in the manual, since this error is pretty opaque, but the source may not be uncommon.

@AlanMunn Okay.

@NicolaTalbot In fact, I'm sure it's not the first time I've encountered it, but without retaining the memory of the solution. :)