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12:02 AM
@yo' Fixed
 
cfr
@yo' It really wouldn't be in the least deserved...
 
@egreg: I just had the Qt - answer in my "Late answer" queue... I refrained from flagging it however.
 
@DavidCarlisle haha
@egreg no problem
 
12:18 AM
@azetina I think it lacks an MWE :-)
 
@DavidCarlisle I did not put one due to the reference. I just showed where I edited the code. But let me edit to add the MWE
 
@azetina oh did you, I missed that sorry:-) Still it's easier if it's in the question without edits.
 
@DavidCarlisle Just editted the question.
 
12:44 AM
@azetina I gave an answer, not sure it answers your real q, although gives the output I think you intended
 
@DavidCarlisle oh my i totally forgot about that. why didnt i try it first. In any case i am still look forward to an answer that implements the math library. If none appears well your answer does answer the question :)
 
I just recognized that the "hyperlink pdf test" question has been asked months ago. I have seen it while browsing through the questions and got interested in trying it out. So thank you for accepting it.
 
@azetina note that not only did I use \ifnum I used the other instance of \sqrt in Mark's code
 
@DavidCarlisle I made a tinnie winne edit to your answer :)
 
1:01 AM
@azetina oops yes it must expand \n first:-)
 
 
1 hour later…
cfr
2:05 AM
@PauloCereda @ChristianHupfer @yo' Only because the hwyaden is sick. And I regret it already.
 
 
5 hours later…
7:13 AM
@yo' I can remove a bounty if required
 
7:27 AM
@yo' I've closed but it's too late to migrate
 
8:16 AM
@cfr: Thank you very very very much for adding your name to the list! :)
Hey guys, @cfr has added her name to the TUG membership list! Yay! :)
Now, SP awaits for me. See you guys soon. :)
 
yo'
8:49 AM
@PauloCereda party!
@PauloCereda have a safe journey!
 
Still only 7 candidates at present
 
yo'
@JosephWright that sounds good I think, it'll be ok :)
 
@yo' Hopefully
 
9:02 AM
@JosephWright Thanks for thinking about me. I applied. Well, I do not know if they need TeX-noobs like me, but if I can help a bit by applying at least, I am glad to do so.
 
yo'
@LaRiFaRi the point really is: most of the "advanced" TeX users (I use your vocabulary, in my opinion, you are advanced as well) get they subscription in another ways. I really think that this should be taken as a good opportunity for people like you to enjoy the membership :)
 
@yo' thanks, sound good. And actually that was my thought, too. Hope I transported that message in my post...
well, without the "enjoy"... sounds much to selfish :-)
 
@LaRiFaRi @yo'I feel a bit dumb, but where is the current list of names?
 
21
Q: TUG Membership: Names for 2015

Joseph WrightStackExchange continues to support TUG with corporate membership (many thanks). With that come eight individual memberships that can be given out to members of the community. The time has come to select our representatives for 2015. (See TUG Membership: Names for 2014 for last year's selection.) ...

 
yo'
@Johannes_B in the (now deleted) answers to the question, however, you need 10k-tools to see them
 
9:10 AM
@yo' Ah, that explains a lot :-)
 
@Johannes_B Oh, sorry, forgot about that rule.
if you want I write them down. But as the election will be opend today...
8 people until now.
 
@LaRiFaRi Nah, i'll see it in a while.
@LaRiFaRi So 8 winners? :-)
 
yo'
on the list, there are (in random order): Jubobs, cfr, LaRiFaRi, Yiannis Lazarides, yo', Christian Hupfer, Stefan Kottwitz, azetina
 
@Johannes_B all right. (sure, I wouln't have applied if this would not have been clear...:-))
@Johannes_B just kidding. I hope very much for more appliers.
 
yo'
people are allowed to put themselves on the list even after the election starts, but they can miss some votees
 
9:13 AM
Come on guys! Last day to go. (before start of election...)
 
@yo' I have to write our office woman a mail to renew my joint membership. Gonna do it in the afternoon.
 
9:48 AM
I can recognize an answer by @Paulo before seeing the name. But that one was easy. A duck, Pacman, Homer Simpson ...
Why can i also recon an answer by @joseph without reading it and only scrolling down?
 
@yo' Exactly
 
10:04 AM
tex.stackexchange.com/revisions/82666/2 Doesn't the system prevent this kind of edit?
 
11:04 AM
@Johannes_B clearly not:-)
 
11:28 AM
How would I find why pdflatex hangs?  Also lualatex hangs on same .tex file. No error message, nothing. It hangs here:

(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tools/calc.sty))
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tocloft/tocloft.sty)
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/etoc/etoc.sty
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tools/multicol.sty)
The file is not large, so it must be hanging on something.
So I kill the process each time.
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tools/multicol.sty)^C
! Interruption.
<inserted text>
                \@ifundefined {etoctocstyle}{\let \etoc@startlocaltoc \@gobb...
l.460     {\typeout{No file \jobname .toc.}}
                                            ^^M
?
Here is the end of the log file
\@tempa=\box74
\@tempa=\box75
\@tempa=\box76
\@tempa=\box77
\c@columnbadness=\count175
\c@finalcolumnbadness=\count176
\last@try=\dimen190
\multicolovershoot=\dimen191
\multicolundershoot=\dimen192
\mult@nat@firstbox=\box78
\colbreak@box=\box79
\mc@col@check@num=\count177
)
\Etoc@toctoks=\toks27
\c@etoc@tocid=\count178
\c@etoc@tocdepth=\count179
\Etoc@tf=\read2

! Interruption.
<inserted text>
                \@ifundefined {etoctocstyle}{\let \etoc@startlocaltoc \@gobb...
 
What does the log say (has more information than the terminal output) the error is just after it's finished loading multicol, so what is the next thing in your preamble? removing the toc file would be a good start
 
@DavidCarlisle thanks! you are so smart. I deleted file called *.toc and now it worked!
I think Latex gets confused too quickly. I need to add something to my Makefile to delete all those files before each run. I now only delete the aux file.
 
@Nasser If you kill a job while it is writing the table of contents (ie at any point, really) then it is quite likely that the toc file is mal formed with half written commands, then when it is input at the start of the next run it will generate spurious errors or loop or do whatever it does. It is very hard to catch that in a macro language like tex.
 
@DavidCarlisle other than .aux and .toc, what other files should one delete before each run to make sure there is no conflict? Should I ask this at main board if you think it will be useful? Latex generates so many files on the side.
 
@Nasser You need some (typically three) runs without deleting the aux and toc
@Nasser different packages may write any number of files for bookmarks md4 checksum checks or whatever, there is no need to enumerate them really if your source is in any kind of source control, if you want a clean build just delete everything other than the source.
 
11:42 AM
@DavidCarlisle I do not use source control. I have all files in one folder, and divide things by folder. So many temp files exist in same folder from earlier build. So now I add commands in makefile to delete files I do not want before running pdflatex or tex4ht. I can't do rm -f * in the folder, else I will delete things I need.
 
@Nasser " I do not use source control. " That's brave:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle, well, it is one student PC in the living room. No other person shares the code with me, and I backup all the time to different disk. So source control is not that critical. But I really need to spend time to learn one one day.
 
@Nasser well OK but if you just do ls in that directory and look at the files, any that you didn't put there you can delete so that tells you the extensions used by thepackages you are using. A quick look in the directory I use for running MWE from here I see all these extensions aux toc lof lot bbl 4ct 4tc xref out mtc mtc0 mtc1 maf I have no idea about some of them:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle yes, this is a good idea to find all the temporary files. thanks.
 
12:46 PM
@DavidCarlisle A LaTeX pearl: \renewcommand\footnoterule{\flushleft\raisebox{2pt}{\rule{42.68pt}{0.4pt}}}\ski‌​p\footins=17.07pt
 
yo'
@Johannes_B only from <2k users
 
1:04 PM
Good maen
 
cfr
1:15 PM
@PauloCereda Only because of the sick hwyaden. (And I was afraid @yo' might carry out the threat made yesterday.) I already regret doing it. (But compile the code if you like cats.)
 
@cfr You can of course pull out
@cfr Speaking of group membership, might I tempt you to consider UK-TUG? We probably should have more people with knowledge of the languages of the British Isles beyond English (OK, @Brent.Longborough is also in Wales)
 
1:27 PM
@egreg Nice
 
yo'
@egreg it hasn't happened to me for a long time that I wouldn't have the slightest idea of the author's intention.
 
@yo' Well, you should look at the definition of \footnoterule as commented in texdoc source2e
 
@egreg probably he got that from one of your answers
 
@DavidCarlisle I did read the definition of \footnoterule in source2e.pdf. :P
 
@egreg especially the helpful bit (See PLAIN.TEX.) ?
 
yo'
1:38 PM
@JosephWright Spam alert:
-3
A: Sorting bibliography references using the Vancouver style

user70294Worobetz L, Hilsden R, Shaffer E, Simon J Pare P, Scully L, et al. The liver. In Thomson BR, Shaffer EA, editors. First Principles of Gastroenterology. 2nd ed. University of Toronto Press: Toronto; 1994. Gray H, Lewis WH. Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body. 20th Ed. New York, NY: Bartleby; 2000. Bu...

 
@yo' Zapped
@yo' I've also mod-flagged the other answer so the back-end picks up the IP for blocking
 
yo'
@JosephWright thanks
 
2:27 PM
@JosephWright Thanks for the ping and thanks to @yo' too. Thanks and No for this time. It is the chance for others now as I have been there already once. Thanks all :)
 
@egreg and the \scriptspace tick goes to....
 
@DavidCarlisle … the answer that explains nothing. ;-)
 
@egreg it explains where the space comes from and how to set it to 0, which seems fine to me:-)
 
2:59 PM
Do we have a catch-all "wrong graphic format for your chosen compiler" question?
2
Q: No BoundingBox in LaTeX for a JPEG figure

Jose HdezI am creating a pdf file with MiKTeX editor. I am including a figure as follows: \begin{figure} \centering \includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth]{MonitoringConcept.JPEG} \caption{Monitoring concept for energy and comfort} \label{MonitoringConcept} \end{figure} In the header, I h...

Everything that came up in my searches seemed super localized.
 
yo'
@PaulGessler yes, gimme a sec
56
Q: Which graphics formats can be included in documents processed by latex or pdflatex?

BWWThere several types of graphics files. In no particular order .jpeg .eps .pdf .png .tif .jif (and no doubt others). Some work with latex, dvips and some work with pdflatex. How am I supposed to know which? Just to confuse matters, metapost produces .eps but I can use these with pdflatex as long ...

 
@yo' got it, thanks. I was searching for the error message.
 
yo'
3:15 PM
@PaulGessler I included it here, too:
3
A: Often referenced questions

WernerImages Why do I get a black rectangle instead of my external picture? [Why do I get a black rectangle instead of my external picture?](http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/112473) Which graphics formats can be included in documents processed by latex or pdflatex? [Which graphics formats can be includ...

 
Nice: LuaTeX sets the mu unit the same in all styles. :(
 
@egreg Probably
 
@JosephWright Incredibly stupid.
 
@egreg I suspect an oversight
@egreg There are still a lot of LuaTeX issues if one looks closely
 
@JosephWright Understatement for “blatant error”?
 
3:24 PM
@egreg They've reworked all of the math mode stuff: I think mistakes are to be expected
@egreg Will you raise on LuaTeX list?
 
@egreg a question here or just something you spotted?
@egreg don't you like my \mathtt answer :(
 
@DavidCarlisle Not at all, sorry.
@DavidCarlisle A question here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/222725/…
@JosephWright I don't subscribe to it. And I don't really like the general attitude about these problems: we do this, period.
 
@egreg output is strange but is I think what the OP asked for, and might be Ok if used for specific input uses.
 
@egreg Not always the case
@egreg Can you set up a (plain) MWE I can report? I seem to handle this task for the team :-)
 
@egreg oh. I wonder if that would show up in the latex2e test suite if we ran with luatex, I'd have thought so (@JosephWright?)
 
3:36 PM
@DavidCarlisle Probably
@DavidCarlisle We are it seems their most testing testers :-)
@DavidCarlisle I've got to get back to them about the font logging business: Bruno worked out this has come from e-TeX and is supposed to be fixed!
 
@JosephWright Here it is
\setbox0=\hbox{$\mkern18mu$}\message{\the\wd0}
\setbox0=\hbox{$_{\mkern18mu}$}\message{\the\wd0}
\bye
Knuth TeX: (./mubug.tex 9.99976pt 8.69443pt )
LuaTeX: (./mubug.tex 9.99976pt 10.49976pt)
 
@egreg Understood: will report
 
@egreg it's bigger in scripts?
 
@DavidCarlisle There's \scriptspace (which can't be set, but it's another matter).
 
@DavidCarlisle \showbox0 :-)
 
3:47 PM
@JosephWright The second line might be \setbox0=\hbox{$\scriptstyle\mkern18mu$} so the \scriptspace will not influence the result.
@JosephWright I guess they thought mu units are not important, as most spacing in formulas is not used in sub/superscripts; but, \thinmuskip is used. So $a_{\log x}$ would output too big a space.
 
@egreg I've mailed the list: will report back
 
4:09 PM
@JosephWright I'll follow
 
in texpubs -- bbeeton and percusse, 1 min ago, by barbara beeton
is it useful to list texdoc latex2e, etc., among the "beginner to intermediate" items? or maybe some in that section, and the rest in the "more experience" section?
Thoughts welcome :-)
btw @joseph, have you seen \DeclareSectionCommand[Eigenschaften]{Name} and friends with KOMA-script 3.15? <- komascript.de/releasesvn
 
@JosephWright Not specially for you, but where did everyone get the idea that, just because I'm interested in the problems of uppercasing Turkish correctly, I can speak Welsh. I can write about three words; pronunciation has, so far, escaped me...
 
@Brent.Longborough I didn't say you could: I said you were based in Wales :-)
 
@PauloCereda You're lucky it wasn't Tragic Sans, the Official font of the London 2012 Olympics Ho-ho-ho
@JosephWright OK, just my impression, then.
 
@Johannes_B What am I looking for?
 
4:27 PM
@JosephWright \DeclareSectionCommand[%
level=4,
indent=0pt,
beforeskip=3.25ex plus 1ex minus .2ex,
afterskip=-1em,
font={},
tocindent=7em,
tocnumwidth=4.1em,
counterwithin=subsubsection
]{paragraph}
@JosephWright This seems to be a rather intuitive interface.
 
@Johannes_B Yes, the team are indeed thinking in this sort of way for templates
@Johannes_B We need to sort out the LDB/style sheet business. Perhaps I should tackle that this year.
 
@JosephWright I was reading xtemplate, but to be honest, i didn't quite get the jist of it. And my mind was distrcted before i had the chance to look at examples here on site.
@JosephWright @topskip suggested something like this on the DANTE list:

Auch fände ich so etwas wie CSS für LaTeX gut. %I would find something like CSS good in LaTeX%

body {
font-size: 12pt;
font-family: Arial;
}

section {
font-weight: bold;
...
}
 
@Johannes_B There are issues with xtemplate which we think the LDB is better suited for, but that's not released
@Johannes_B Indeed: my thinking is something CSS-like in concept if not in syntax, but there are questions about the differences in requirement, etc.
 
@JosephWright May i ask what LDB stands for?
 
@Johannes_B One for LaTeX-L
@Johannes_B LaTeX Data Base: an idea from the 1990s, too complex for production use then (hence xtemplate) but more powerful (predates CSS!)
 
4:36 PM
@JosephWright Can you point to some docs?
 
yo'
9 people, yay! (Someone will be teh Schwarzer Peter)
 
@Johannes_B github.com/latex3/svn-mirror/tree/master/l3trial/l3ldb would be a start: I have a load of stuff I can e-mail too if you want it
@Johannes_B We need to rework this entire area
@Johannes_B I think it probably is priority #1 for this year's L3 work
 
@JosephWright I never had the time to really dive into L3, but i can alsways proofread documentation (and see if i can understand them) :-)
 
@Johannes_B This is 'design level': what we need really is good use cases
@Johannes_B Real design specs or models thereof for document components, for example
 
yo'
@JosephWright I'll be probably soon designing a class file for my university thesis, I consider using L3. So I might be able to give a lot of feedback.
 
4:49 PM
@yo' We don't yet have the design level sorted, which we know. @DavidCarlisle probably knows more about LDB than I do
 
yo'
@JosephWright well, it'll basically be a 2e class, but the underlying layer should be L3
 
@JosephWright I think i will watch the coffin presentation by @frank once again.
 
@JosephWright Oh right, forgot about that. I downloaded all the videos, but haven't watched all of them.
I have watched @paulo's presentation at TUG2014 and now know how to pronounce arara.
 
@Johannes_B Cool
 
yo'
@Johannes_B I propose keeping the middle one
Hi @AndrewCashner :)
 
@yo' Agreed, but the question could use some fixing to make it more findable for users with the same problem.
 
yo'
@Johannes_B the other Qs won't disappear, they're not edible by the auto-delete bot
 
@yo' Yeah, i know. But i was looking for the raggedbottombusiness in the often referenced questions and i can't find it. I thought of adding it.
 
Hi @yo' and everyone!
@JosephWright Regarding design specs: Just about every university in the US uses the same dissertation archiving service, so they all have to meet the same specific formatting requirements. As far as I can tell, the thesis model in the memoir manual meets this spec with only a few modifications. If there was a usathesis class implemented in L3 with a good interface it would be a tremendous benefit. media2.proquest.com/documents/…
@JosephWright But I still don't quite understand if this is the kind of thing you're looking for.
 
5:29 PM
@AndrewCashner I am confused. They (this proquest paper) are having specs, but the university can add specs to the list and one has to follow both? Can somebody explain this to me?
 
@Johannes_B that's it exactly. Proquest stipulates a minimum set of requirements for archiving and reproduction purposes, and then universities add their own specifications on top of that. E.g., lib.uchicago.edu/e/phd/pdf/booklet2011.pdf
 
@AndrewCashner I'm thinking more publishers with 'proper' designers involved
 
@AndrewCashner eventually but not yet, the l3 interfaces to specify the document design just are not there yet, expl3 is very much a programming layer but is now robust enough for general use so you see 2e packages being written in it (siunitx, unicode-math,...) but the l3 document layout specification is some combination of some version of xtemplate, xgalley, xor and ldb and it's not yet usable (or existing in some cases)
 
@JosephWright Are there enough publishers using this tool that would want to contribute in this way?
 
5:48 PM
@DavidCarlisle I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to be involved if there were some concrete way to add something useful. It sounds like there are deeper problems involved than I could understand.
 
@Johannes_B The university specs add a local flavour of idiocy that adds to the fond memories students have when they deposit their dissertation.
3
 
@DavidCarlisle I have been slowly reading through the TeX source code and enjoying it.
 
@AlanMunn One should set one spec, write a documentclass and command others to be so pleased by that, that all use this spec. Period.
 
6:20 PM
@Johannes_B But there is no way to do this. Each university has a cadre of small minded bureaucrats who delight in making stupid requirements which must be followed. To cite just one example (I maintain a class for my university), students are not allowed to have a copyright page in their thesis unless they pay Proquest to register the copyright, even though Proquest itself says that you should have such a page whether you register or not. I've argued unsuccessfully to get this changed.
 
I am a bit concerned with this -> profpartha.webs.com/publications/tugendorse.htm. I have read the review by Nicola on that one in the last TUGboat. I wanted to have a look at the pdf to see for myself and i need to tell them my mail? Strange
 
@Johannes_B And another one: headings in the TOC must match headings in the chapters/sections which in my university gets interpreted that they must all be in bold because the headings themselves are bold.
 
@Johannes_B just to echo @AlanMunn's comments: as maintainer of "yet another thesis class" I have had similar senseless/silly discussions with the powers that be in my former graduate school.
 
@AlanMunn That's why there was the commnd them part ;-)
@PaulGessler @AlanMunn The maintainer of our university thesis class is a friend of mine. We have a corporate design, in fact only for flyers and stuff. But it was implemented in the thesis design as well. Now the standard is futura for a technical/mathematical paper.
Fallback if glyphs are missing: Arial.
Madness i call this.
 
@Johannes_B Are you also in the US? I thought this madness was mainly found here.
 
6:26 PM
@AlanMunn Germany. Many university »provide« templates. Which in most cases is some cluttered stuff the older once give to freshmen.
 
@Johannes_B But they're not required by the university, right? Here, before you can have your thesis accepted, a minion looks through the whole thing to see that it matches the requirements laid down by the university.
 
@AlanMunn I was searching for »latex vorlage« and checked many german university templates. Even the national library thingy with three or for names for people in charge was just sooo bad.
@AlanMunn No, or not that i am aware of. I don't think a thesis can be rejected for formallities like this. The templates are almost always a you can do it this way if you want. The guy usually having the last word is the supervising professor.
 
@Johannes_B Yes, there's a lot of crap out there. That's partially why I wrote one. I got sick of my students trying to use a badly written and often outdated template they found on the web made by some grad student who hacked something together.
 
@AlanMunn But if everybody does that, we have thousands of templates.
@AlanMunn I am not sure i even get the whole word template any more.
 
@Johannes_B Well at least for any one institution if you can keep the number to a minimum it helps. At my university there are two "competing" versions, a class maintained by me, and a package maintained by a math prof. We are gradually trying to get the grad school to make more rational guidelines, but it's hard.
 
6:37 PM
@AlanMunn Do you share your class, i.e. is it publicly available? I'd like to have a look at it ;-)
And for today, going home.
 
@Johannes_B Alan's is on CTAN, as is mine. (With very similar names IIRC :-))
@Johannes_B Alan's: ctan.org/pkg/msu-thesis and mine if you care to look: ctan.org/pkg/mugsthesis
 
7:02 PM
9 names on the list ... ;-)
 
@ChristianHupfer great news! :-)
 
@PaulGessler: Yes, I can drop out :D
 
@ChristianHupfer nooooooooo! Don't do it!
 
@PaulGessler: By votes, not by my own decision :D
@PaulGessler: Your nooooooooooooooooooooooooo reminds me on 'I am your father' ....'nooooooooooooooooooooo'
 
@ChristianHupfer that was exactly my intent... ;-)
 
7:09 PM
@PaulGessler: So I am Darth Vader... well, could be worse ;-)
 
@ChristianHupfer indeed, you could be an emacs user
 
@PaulGessler: Paul... I am an Emacs user :-P
@PaulGessler: noooooooooooooooooooooooooo? :-P
 
@ChristianHupfer whoops, haha!
 
@AlanMunn Do you think it would be possible for a team to create a baseline thesis class that would satisfy Proquest and maybe 70% of the specifications of the US research universities, and leave an interface so that each university could add the remaining 30% with a custom package? Maybe this is too idealistic.
 
@PaulGessler: The evil is strong in me ;-)
 
7:17 PM
0
Q: Formatting like this sample

FengI'm writing my dissertation and have difficulties in producing the same formatting as in the sample. Can anyone help? There are several requirements here: CHAPTER NUMBER: TITLE (in captions and in one line) Introduction section without number Footnotes must be placed at the bottom of the page ...

 
@AndrewCashner two unfortunate issues make this too idealistic in my opinion: 1) who will maintain this custom package for each university? The thesis offices certainly won't; it falls to students, most of whom wouldn't put in the effort, and all of whom will eventually graduate and may not want to keep up maintenance. And 2) even if an author/maintainer is found, there is no good way to eliminate the old cruft that will inevitably be floating around.
I don't even come close to writing perfect LaTeX code (some of you here would probably have axes to grind with me if you saw some of the stuff I've done... :p), but even I shuddered when I saw some of the things in the previous so-called "Marquette Thesis Template".
All that said: we won't get anywhere if we don't try. Which was why I posted my class on CTAN and tried to promote it as much as I could within the university.
 
@PaulGessler Okay, I can see the problem there. But if the interface and documentation of the base class were good enough, perhaps we could do without the university packages. Right now students are either fighting with these dinosaur templates, or like me, starting from scratch with memoir or KOMA or Context. Perhaps we could provide something in the middle, that still leaves details up to users (who hopefully would come here for help) but at least gets them more in the ballpark.
@PaulGessler @AlanMunn I will look at your classes and think about this some more. First I have to finish my own and hopefully it will pass the minion's review. But later in the year I might be able to see what common ground there is between templates and the different university specs.
 
7:35 PM
@AndrewCashner that's a good point, and now I think I see something closer to what you were originally envisioning. Maybe memoir or koma configured to match UMI/ProQuest with clearly-documented interfaces to the most common changes. But of course, if everything is covered, then we're back to basically customizing memoir (or whatever base class).
@AndrewCashner it sounds like you're going this route, but I highly recommend starting from one of the highly-configurable classes with "API-like" features such as memoir. I started trying to write one from scratch and it was an absolute disaster.
 
@PaulGessler -- saw the recent question about the thesis, and it reminded me that peter flynn had talked about this topic in 2012: A University thesis class: Automation and its pitfalls. at that time, there were 42 thesis classes on ctan; a quick check just now lists 69. i was wondering if anyone would consider making a list of the important characteristics, and presenting the info in chart form?
 
@barbarabeeton I would be willing to take that up later in the year.
 
@barbarabeeton I read this when I was working on mugsthesis, but I'll give it another read tonight. I think that's where I got my "Yet Another Thesis Class" catchphrase from. ;-)
 
@PaulGessler Yes, you see what I mean exactly. I made my own thesis class based on memoir, which I use with my own package that emulates some of TEI XML.
 
@barbarabeeton A talk for TUG2015, perhaps?
Speaking of which, who's planning to go?
 
7:41 PM
@AndrewCashner -- i'd be happy to publish the result in tugboat, but perhaps it would be more accessible on tex.sx. but what it might make possible is identifying a core of requirements that could be used as a basis for a readily-modifiable "super-template" (actually document class), that might be added to the core classes in "latex required". (probably a vain hope, but ... whatever.)
 
@barbarabeeton Good plan: specs first, code later
 
@barbarabeeton You've articulated my hope exactly.
 
@JosephWright -- talk sounds good. (i'll be there, barring disasters.)
 
@barbarabeeton Cool: same here
 
@JosephWright I was going to try to make this year my first trip, but I don't think it's going to happen unfortunately. I'll make a strong effort to attend the next time it's in the US.
 
7:43 PM
I see we now have 10 names on the TUG selection list
@PaulGessler where are you based?
 
@JosephWright Midwest USA (Wisconsin)
 
@PaulGessler Ah
 
@PaulGessler I would be a bit worried about piggybacking documentation, though. So memoir duplicates the functionality of other packages, and gratefully provides documentation for all of that functionality in one place. On the other hand biblatex-chicago, though its function is amazing and I think should make LaTeX a must-use for humanities researcher, builds on biblatex and does not duplicate its documentation. So one constantly has to look through both docs to figure things out.
 
@PaulGessler -- would "somewhere on the north american continent" suffice?
 
@barbarabeeton Canada the plan for 2016?
 
7:45 PM
@JosephWright -- you guessed!
 
@barbarabeeton yes, definitely. The main issue with Germany is that I'd make it a longer trip to justify the long travel, but it's difficult for me to get much time off of work at the moment.
 
@barbarabeeton Cool: I'll cross my fingers LaTeX3 can stretch to travel to Darmstadt and Canada, then (I can cover Darmstadt, but not a long-haul flight)
 
@PaulGessler It's like when you're using LaTeX and you have to dip down a layer of abstraction to the TeX primitives. When you use memoir you feel like you should avoid "Plain LaTeX" and stick to the class macros. With something built on top of memoir it would get even worse.
 
@AndrewCashner exactly! Good way to put it
 
@PaulGessler BUT - if we can look at all the specifications we could be able to predict somewhat scientifically what modifications users would actually want to make.
Especially if we can get community members to contribute test files from different disciplines.
 
7:51 PM
@AndrewCashner I like this thinking. If you want to team up on this, I'm game.
 
@PaulGessler Fantastic! I defend my thesis Feb. 18, so -- sometime after that I can contribute.
 
@AndrewCashner great! Good luck to you, of course. :-) I'll start by compiling specs from universities (probably starting from those with existing classes on CTAN) and also file away theses I find with source available as potential test documents.
@AndrewCashner you can ping me here or email (pdgessler at gmail) when you're ready to jump in. :-)
 
@PaulGessler Sounds good, and thanks! :) Given the cruddy nature of those templates, perhaps it would be better just to take the specs directly from the dissertation formatting office websites of the research universities.
 
8:08 PM
@AndrewCashner yes of course I'll go direct to the current source; I was only going to use the list on CTAN to get an initial sampling of universities where LaTeX is widely used.
Even the well-written classes may be out of date.
 
@PaulGessler That makes sense.
@barbarabeeton I don't know what those PLOS researchers would think, but I definitely think a new thesis base class would decrease the amount of time graduate students like me spend fiddling with TeX instead of "producing."
 
@AndrewCashner Problem is most thesis rules in the US are not about typography
 
@JosephWright well they are, in the sense of mostly ruining it in many cases... ;-)
 
@Joseph Do you mean like the regulations for the title page and frontmatter? Otherwise mostly they do specify typographic things like margins, spacing, font size, font embedding.
 
@AndrewCashner I mean that they are the opposite of good typography in many cases
@AndrewCashner All kinds of stuff from the age of the typewriter
 
8:22 PM
@Joseph Oh, no doubt! That's why it's so hard to get TeX to comply with them. badness = 100000
 
@AndrewCashner I'm used to the UK situation, where it's mainly down to student how it looks
 
@Joseph I agree absolutely. I toyed with the idea of using Computer Modern Concrete or even just \texttt for the whole thing. Why try to make it look pretty when it can't?
 
@AndrewCashner :-)
 
@AndrewCashner -- i think those plos researchers would probably think the whole effort is a waste of time, since word makes everything so much easier. (i've even toyed with the idea of "reproducing" my masters thesis -- linguistics, typed on an ibm executive typewriter on red-lined paper with structure trees hand-drawn in india ink -- in some flavor of tex, just to see how much easier it would be. but i'm sure the thesis regulations have changed since then; could be an interesting comparison.)
 
@AndrewCashner I had the opposite issue, really: no actual guidelines at all
 
8:24 PM
@Joseph But then in musicology anyway we're expected to include all of these typeset music examples, and little smatterings of Greek and Hebrew and humanist Latin...
@barbarabeeton :D Early in my research I read several dissertations from the typewriter age and couldn't imagine how they did it, having to retype everything multiple times. But in the course of writing my thesis I've probably completely retyped or just rewritten all the chapters at least once in the process of revision. I also did a lot of drafting in manuscript at the beginning and I think it was productive in its own way.
 
yo'
the voting room opens in 30 minutes ;)
 
@yo' Indeed: I'll give a heads up as soon as it's open
 
@AndrewCashner -- in the "typewriter age" people still remembered how to pick up a pen and write. [grin] with good bond paper and a carbon ribbon, you can "correct" by carefully scraping the "ink" off the surface of the paper with a razor blade or x-acto knife; mercifully, photocopiers did exist, and copies were accepted, so i didn't have to suffer with carbon paper.
 
yo'
@barbarabeeton ah, so when you made a mistake (if that ever happened), you took one of these white inks and then made a copy?
 
8:40 PM
@barbarabeeton I have wondered sometimes if it might be more productive for me just to type things and scan them. Actually that was part of how I found out about LaTeX. I wanted a simple, no frills interface where I could focus on content and not form. Once I found LaTeX + Vim in the terminal I was hooked.
 
yo'
@AndrewCashner my supervisor, when she decides that the math results are ready to be written as an article, sharpens her pencil, takes a lot of one-sided papers, a rubber, and starts :)
 
@yo' -- no white ink (didn't exist). as i described above, good bond paper and tip of razor blade, scrape carefully, clean up with soap eraser if necessary (not if sufficiently careful), and be really careful not to make another mistake in the same place. even good bond paper can be scraped down too far, and holes are hard to patch.
 
@yo' I advised a colleague in musicology just to draw musical examples by hand. He was faced with either spending USD 400+ on Finale or Sibelius, or taking a year or whatever woudl be necessary to learn Lilypond with no programming experience.
 
yo'
@barbarabeeton ah ok
@AndrewCashner ALL my sheet music starts on a paper. Then LilyPond, print, pencil again and making corrections ;)
 
@yo' Look up "Christmas Music from Baroque Mexico" by Robert Stevenson on Google Books. Stevenson's books in the 1970s made 16th-18th century Mexican music available to the world for the first time. He drew them all by hand and paid out of pocket to have them printed. (Unfortunately he made some errors that I try to correct in my transcriptions, but that wasn't because of the technology, it's just that not very much was known about the music then.)
 
8:51 PM
@DavidCarlisle Foudn any more LuaTeX bugs in the last few hours? :-)
 
@JosephWright When is the deadline for submission to TUG2015?
 
@AlanMunn Ask @barbarabeeton: so far we don't even have full venue details :-)
 
@JosephWright Ah, yes now I recall clicking that link before.
 
@AlanMunn I check it every so often to know when to write something in my blog!
 
yo'
@AndrewCashner I will, just later. Now I try to solve my confusion with one website :-/
 
8:53 PM
@AndrewCashner Would it really take a year to learn Lilypond?
 
@AlanMunn My plan is to go if the finances allow
 
@yo' Oh I didn't mean you had to look at it right now. :)
 
yo'
@JosephWright I think this chat is more efficient for that than clicking F5 every 5 seconds ;)
 
@yo' :-)
 
@AlanMunn It depends on what you will use it for and your background, I think. I started learning it in March of last year and am now producing all of the historical editions for my dissertation with it.
I basically had to build my own "class" file with lots of funky Scheme functions, but that's because I need unusual scholarly things for old music and I have lots of scores that need to look the same and use a consistent programming interface. Also I don't have much programming background (I started with LaTeX about 3 years ago; before that I'd never seen a terminal).
 
8:58 PM
I just saw a documentary about a German Kindergarten... most of the stuff was written with Comic Sans .... /cry.... it's good most children could not read yet ;-)
 
@egreg You just added a comment that points out that using commands provided by LaTeX are favourable to TeX primitives. Do you happen to know where I can find a comprehensive reference on macros defined by LaTeX? texdoc latex just shows a document which points to introductory material.
 
@AlanMunn If the lilypond community would start using StackOverflow it would help a lot. There was a recent discussion of this on the e-mail list, but many people are reluctant to try it.
 
Voting is open
2
 
@AlanMunn -- i'm not on the meeting arrangements committee, but if i had to guess, i'd say that proposals will be wanted by sometime in march.
 
@HenriMenke Define 'LaTeX' here: the kernel?
 
9:05 PM
@JosephWright The format.
 
@HenriMenke Well definitive answers is texdoc source2e
 
Voted ;-)
 
@AlanMunn Last year it was May for a meeting end-July: tug.org/tug2014
 
@JosephWright Oh, that's a nice pointer as well. But in the moment I'm looking for which user-accessible macros are defined.
 
@HenriMenke Define 'user-accessible' ;-)
@HenriMenke I think you want LaTeX: A Document Preparation System by one L. Lamport :-)
 
9:08 PM
@JosephWright I don't have to alter the default catcodes to access macros.
@JosephWright Have you read the book by Lamport? Is it like a TeXbook for LaTeX?
 
@HenriMenke It's my impression that the original idea did not allow any customization at the user level. All modifications of section heading styles and such were to be done in separate style files.
 
@HenriMenke It's a user guide, quite short but definitive for the user interface of the kernel
@HenriMenke I have a whole shelf of (La)TeX books: I keep meaning to pick up a few more :-)
@AndrewCashner Yes: space reasons as much as anything
 
@AndrewCashner @PaulGessler I'd be interested in this too.
 
@Joseph Hey I got something right!
 
@barbarabeeton Ok. Thanks.
 
9:12 PM
@AndrewCashner \@startsection is a design interface
 
@JosephWright As opposed to a user interface? The user types \section and thinks about a good section title; the professional typographer uses \@startsection and thinks about a good section format -- is that the idea?
@AlanMunn You mean the thesis-class project? Please join us!
 
@AlanMunn @AndrewCashner I'll collect my thoughts and send an email to both of you tonight (I think all of us are on Central/Eastern US time) to hopefully get things started.
 
@AndrewCashner That's the idea, but we know this is underdeveloped
 
@AndrewCashner -- if a command name has an @ in it, it's for the "implementor" to fuss with. the user should type \section. yes, you've got the right idea.
 
@barbarabeeton At present it's a bit mixed, really: the team want to make things much clearer
 
9:19 PM
@JosephWright I see two problems with the original setup. One, there aren't always good hooks built in for the designer, in my opinion. (Why not just define \@sectionfont and \@abovesectionspace instead of hard-coding them in the section definition? Or maybe I missed these in the code.) Second, these days many of us have to be, or try to be our own designers.
 
@AndrewCashner I did say it's underdeveloped: space again (@DavidCarlisle will tell you how tight it was in 1994)
 
@Joseph Because creating all those extra macros takes up TeX's pre-allocated memory?
 
@AndrewCashner Of course: definitions have to be stored somewhere
 
@HenriMenke -- the manual by lamport is definitive, but (i think) it's not an easy read. when i want to find out all the details about a command, i hope to be able to look in just one place, but in lamport, it's often necessary to look in two. but i think this may be a matter of personal taste. (my own preference is for kopka & daly.)
 
@PaulGessler Ok. My email's on my web page.
 
9:22 PM
@AndrewCashner Remember in 1994 a desktop PC likely had 640 kb RAM in total
@barbarabeeton I see your point, but Leslie's book is definitive
 
@AlanMunn yup, already got it, and @AndrewCashner's as well
 
@barbarabeeton Kopka/Daly was the first LaTeX book I read
 
@JosephWright Is it sort of right to think of TeX a bit like a virtual machine? Since Knuth creates his own set of memory registers (\count0 and the like), so that TeX presents the user with something like the MIX computer from TAOCP? The TeX programmer writes in something like a machine language for this virtual machine. The \loop construct in particular is very close to what Knuth implements in MIXAL.
 
@AndrewCashner Ask a proper programmer (I've not yet read TAOCP, I'm afraid: it's not so cheap)
 
@JosephWright I'm holding the library's copy hostage. I don't understand a word of it, but it's very pretty to look at and pretend.
@DavidCarlisle I'll turn to you, is this notion totally off base of TeX as a kind of virtual machine? ^^^
 
9:29 PM
@JosephWright -- regarding flexibility in making (reasonable) modifications (like changing a section header from bold to small caps), probably almost 20% of the requests i've got posted to the amsclass update list are for things like changing an "internal" command to a user-usable one. amsclass.dtx was built to be flexible (to support the numerous different journals and book series ams publishes), but most commands of this sort are "internal", and many don't need to be. for the future ...
 
@barbarabeeton Like I say, the team do know this :-)
@barbarabeeton I said earlier today that probably the next priority for the team should be a 'LaTeX Style Sheet' concept to tackle the design situation
 
cfr
@JosephWright That would feel even more impolite that putting my name in in the first place.
 
@AndrewCashner not so much memory as slots in the csname hash table, if you used the first release of latex2e and tried to load amsmath you ran out of csnames using emtex (the main tex on DOS) we got it down so in the end you had about 50 csnames spare, so that's a total of 50 \label or \newcommand for your document. parameterising the skips in each section would take that down to ...
 
@cfr Entirely your call
 
@DavidCarlisle And there is no equivalent to destroying a local variable at the end of a function call, right? So if you use a macro once, it takes a place in the hash table for the whole document?
Well, you could overwrite the same macro with repeated \defs I imagine.
 
cfr
9:36 PM
@JosephWright I'll withdraw if you think I should.
 
@cfr I never said that :-)
 
@cfr Hey I voted for you!
 
@AndrewCashner all these things are sort of related you could view it as a virtual machine or an interpreter (the one thing I wouldn't normally call it is a compiler, but that seems to be the name in most common use these days, language is a funny thing, I blame @AlanMunn) . If viewed as a virtual machine it's really very limited there so no program pointer so no backward jumps: it's a macro expansion language so affects the tokens in the input stream there is not really a program running in a VM
 
@cfr: Please run ahead ;-)
 
@AndrewCashner not so useful for \label :-)
 
9:38 PM
@DavidCarlisle TeX82 the program, first sentence: "This is TeX, a document compiler intended to produce typesetting of high quality." ;)
 
No names shall be removed from das liszt! I haz to vote too! I am near home.
 
@AndrewCashner never read documentation:-)
 
@PauloCereda: We can't upvote you... why? ... Your name is not on das list;-)
 
Brace yourselves! The voting squad is coming!
2
 
@PaulGessler: Rather the voting quack ;-)
 
yo'
9:45 PM
@ChristianHupfer le die teh liszt
 
@DavidCarlisle Okay I am reading more in TAOCP I:202; Knuth calls TeX an interpreter of type "b", which means the "representation provides an excellent way to communicate between passes of a multipass process". But it also includes "a small interpreter of type (a)" to compute ligatures and kerning, where type a is "a machine-like language" that can "represent a complicated sequence of decisions and actions in a compact, efficent manner."
@DavidCarlisle I may even understand that in a few years! ;)
 
10:03 PM
@DavidCarlisle My pleasure. The funny things are what make life interesting. That and \expandafter.
 
@PaulGessler paul pls
 
yo'
@Paulo back home?
 
@yo' Yep. :)
 
yo'
@PauloCereda nice :)
btw, this years January sales are very strange here in Paris. Usually the shops are quite full by this time, now they're quite empty :(
 
@PauloCereda :-)
 
10:18 PM
@PauloCereda: Yay! ;-)
 
yo'
ugh.
@yo I don't think you read my comment properly: it says matrices should be bold (to distinguish them from variables). I didn't say every textbook will typeset them that way. Likewise, (same reason) vectors should be bold or have an arrow over them but I suspect you can find some books that do neither. — DJP 7 mins ago
 
10:35 PM
@yo' From a physicist's or engineer's POV, this may be right (but arrows are just awful). From a mathematician's POV, there's no need whatsoever for distinguishing matrices from numbers. And most pure mathematics books indeed don't distinguish.
 
@yo' That's too bad. Too many people don't realize that typography is determined by house publishing styles, which are based on convention and aesthetics, not logic. They pick one style they like and decide it is the correct one.
 
yo'
@egreg even a physicist has to be careful to be sure what is a matrix, what is a tensor, what is a pseudotensor etc. Most physicists I know use indexing to show the behaviour of a variable (or a constant)
 
@egreg: mum's machine name: padova :)
 
@PauloCereda I'd expected descargalasen
 
@egreg ooh
 
yo'
10:46 PM
@PauloCereda lol
how many machines will you have to get until you reach praga? :)
 
My dad wanted me to install Windows. Fat chance. :)
@yo' My next dev laptop will be prague. :)
 
yo'
@PauloCereda :)
btw, I should get a last Xmas present for myself. From a review: "The difficulty level is 6 out of 6 on the Hanayama scale and 10 out of 10 on the Puzzle Master scale - this means it is about as difficult as it gets - Gulp!!!"
 
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