TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2015-04-06 (page 2 of 3)

David Carlisle

8:01 PM

@FaheemMitha it's on ctan

egreg

@JosephWright Well, I added an answer nonetheless.

Joseph Wright

@egreg No \unless?

egreg

@JosephWright No, Knuth TeX and no \escapechar. :)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see. it. Debian doesn't include it because it is non-free. Along with a bunch of other stuff. Is it in TL?

@AlanMunn So, did you have a good time?

egreg

@JosephWright The usual TT\fi trick.

David Carlisle

8:02 PM

@FaheemMitha ctan lists it as " Public Domain Software" which sounds free?

Joseph Wright

@egreg Like I said, the \escapechar business can be dealt with, I just can't be bothered at the present to copy the code

Alan Munn

@FaheemMitha Yes, I really enjoyed my year there.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle What are we talking about?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright webomints (not sure why, I just caught the end of @FaheemMitha's comments:-)

egreg

@JosephWright But the main problem is that the code can't survive skipped text in conditionals.

@DavidCarlisle How was MAD?

Faheem Mitha

8:04 PM

@DavidCarlisle Apparently Debian doesn't agree. I haven't got to the bottom of it. They also have this weird rule that all software must include sources / preferred form for generation. Which is Ok, except their interpretation of it can occasionally cause trouble.

Joseph Wright

@egreg Like I've commented, that is not possible with the syntax requested

Faheem Mitha

Maybe they thought the source for generation of the fonts was not available or something?

@AlanMunn That's nice.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Won't go in TL if it can't go in Debian, more-or-less

Canageek

Step 1 when writing a paper. Disable 75% of what actually makes TeX worthwhile.

David Carlisle

15 mins ago, by David Carlisle

@PauloCereda couldn't get him out:-) It's very weird with lots of cogs, marble runs, automata of various sorts, weird clocks. Well worth a visit:-)

Faheem Mitha

8:05 PM

The weather in that part of world is pretty good. About as good as it gets, imo.

@egreg MAD?

@JosephWright Oh? Why?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha themadmuseum.co.uk

Canageek

Painful removal 1: chemnum

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha So that TL can be used in Debian

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Well, that's remarkably obliging of you folks.

@DavidCarlisle I see. Fun, was it?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Lots of effort by the TL team, CTAN, ...

Faheem Mitha

8:08 PM

@JosephWright That famous 800 message long thread?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha No, that is the LPPL thread and its 1600 messages

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Different story?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Yes: one is about checking which licenses apply to things, the other is about whether one license is acceptable

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright ok

Does tug.org/fonts/getnonfreefonts install into a user directory?

egreg

@FaheemMitha If you run getnonfreefonts-sys, files are installed in TEXMFLOCAL

Faheem Mitha

8:18 PM

@egreg I see. I ran what I thought was help, and the program installed itself!

./install-getnonfreefonts -h
Detected System: unknown linux
Detected Installation: /usr (installing in /usr/local)
Installing /usr/local/bin/getnonfreefonts ... [done]
mkdir /usr/local/share/man/man1 ... [done]
Installing /usr/local/share/man/man1/getnonfreefonts.1 ... [done]
Installing /usr/local/share/man/man1/getnonfreefonts-sys.1 ... [done]
mkdir /usr/local/share/texmf/doc ... [done]

That's ... unexpected.

egreg

@FaheemMitha Yes, you run install-getnonfreefonts that installs the script in a directory in the PATH. Then you can safely run it. Otherwise you can't.

Faheem Mitha

@egreg Ok, but I ran it with -h.

Which is normally a no-op.

egreg

@FaheemMitha I don't think -h has a meaning.

Faheem Mitha

@egreg apparently.

I wonder if I should be installing non-free fonts. It might make me a Bad Person.

But TeX Live already has a Garamond. Here are two more, apparently.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- the font is on ctan as "webomints" (no hyphens). not in tex live, for some reason, although the catalog says it's "public domain". not really new -- dated 2002.

Paul Gessler

8:26 PM

@FaheemMitha you are not a Bad Person. :-) Have a read at tug.org/fonts/getnonfreefonts

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Worth investigating?

@PaulGessler Yes, I saw that.

@barbarabeeton I looked at the README. There is no clear statement of the rules of distribution, nor is there is license. Where does the Public Domain Software thing come from?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha That might be the issue

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Yes, that company's web site still exists. Might be worth asking them for an explicit license.

Debian has had reasonable success doing such things in the past.

Paul Gessler

I lol'ed:

@egreg It passed all the supplied tests:-) (I'll edit) — David Carlisle 5 mins ago

David Carlisle

@PaulGessler test driven development is the modern way I believe.

Joseph Wright

8:34 PM

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@DavidCarlisle Good job we ignore that, then

Paul Gessler

@DavidCarlisle so indeed it is. :-) Had a similar comment made at work just the other day.

The situation was that through an unfortunate MS Project mixup, I was scheduled to complete testing for a module before it was implemented or even designed. :-)

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- that's what it says on the page ctan.org/pkg/webomints but i didn't see anything in any of the files themselves. (i didn't actually look in the .afm file.) miktex thinks the situation is clear enough to make it available. it's only debian that is the holdout.

yo'

> “Italians are musical idiots!”

@egreg ^^ :D

egreg

@yo' Nice! Who's the genius?

yo'

@egreg Mozart? :D

egreg

8:40 PM

@yo' I doubt it.

yo'

@egreg well, blame Forman :)

egreg

@yo' Or Puškin.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Debian likes things explicit. I'll write to the company. Maybe they'll add something explicit. @barbarabeeton @JosephWright what would you suggest - a statement that the fonts are in the public domain?

yo'

@egreg or @David

egreg

@yo' That's always implicit.

David Carlisle

8:41 PM

@yo' yes or no

yo'

@DavidCarlisle :-D

Faheem Mitha

I remember when I was using TeX long ago, on Suns I think it was, occasionally when compiling, it would generate what appeared to be fonts on the fly. I haven't noticed recent TeX distributions do that. This would have been in the 1990s. Does anyone know what was going on there, and what changed?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Those would be bitmap fonts

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha you started using scalable fonts instead of metafont generated bitmaps

Canageek

is typing in 25 mg like a plebian and wondering why I'm not just using Word

Faheem Mitha

8:51 PM

@DavidCarlisle oh

Joseph Wright

@Canageek :-)

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright I see.

And is that how it was done in the 1990s?

Canageek

@JosephWright I might as well be on a typewriter.

Faheem Mitha

It was kind of fun to watch, actually.

Joseph Wright

@Canageek Well you are writing a manuscript, so ...

yo'

8:52 PM

@Canageek with double-spacing full stops

Faheem Mitha

@Canageek 25 mg?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha all the code is still in texlive, if you try to load a font into tex but there is no tfm file but the mf sources are available it will run metafont to make the tfm, and if you try to view or print the result it'll run metatfont to generate suitable bitmap (pk) format fonts

Canageek

@FaheemMitha Instead of \SI{25}{\mili\gram}

yo'

@Canageek no, 25\,mg, at least for me

Joseph Wright

@yo' Waste of time in this context

Faheem Mitha

8:54 PM

@Canageek I didn't realise that was how you were supposed to do it.

I write 25 mg like a plebian too.

Canageek

@yo' They'll probably print it out and retype it anyway.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha You don't have to :-)

@Canageek They re-typeset, certainly

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I've never noticed that happening, though. Guess I haven't been using the "right" fonts.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha In plain $25\,\mathrm{mg}$

Canageek

@JosephWright Then why not allow literally any package and only look at the PDF?

Faheem Mitha

8:55 PM

@JosephWright I know I don't have to. But I've always wanted to be one of the cool kids.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha all the common fonts available from texlive packages are available in scalable form by now

Joseph Wright

@Canageek I'm not 100% on the backend workflows, but I assume they do a parse over 'minimal' TeX sources

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I see. But that was not always the case? And once generated they are stored, right?

Canageek

@JosephWright I've seen claims it takes several thousand dollars to publish each paper. If that were true, they could afford to have someone sit there and rewrite me TeX if they didn't like it.

Faheem Mitha

@Canageek They just make up those numbers.

Joseph Wright

8:57 PM

@Canageek Depending on the publisher, it can be up to about $4000 for open acess

Faheem Mitha

What PLOS ONE does and what they charge has no resemblance to each other, for example.

@JosephWright Ridiculous amount of money.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha originally none of the fonts usable with tex were available in scalable form

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha I suspect you have a point, simply because with a mixed situation it's hard to really tease out what pays for what

@FaheemMitha Without seeing the books it's very hard to say: I know that my professional body charge between £1000 and £2500 (+ tax) for open access work (rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/OpenScience/Fees.asp)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle But that changed, apparently. Does it have an advantage from an appearance standpoint?

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