@VincentVerheyen title = {title}, booktitle = {booktitle}. Formatting directives for titles (or anything else) should not be in your database, this is for content only -> instead use \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\textbf{#1}}

Hello everyone!

@kan Hello!

@egreg How are you?

BTW, I TA'd a term of Linear Algebra! It was fun! I don't understand why I found this hard when I started as an undergrad. ;) @egreg

@kan I was basically not taught linear algebra as a freshman, so I couldn't find it hard. ;-)

@egreg That could be the right answer! I learn Mathematics rather well by myself, than when it is taught. Sometimes, people contrive things -- well, atleast one of my teachers did (you perhaps know what they taught... ;))

@kan I still have the course notes for “Geometria 1”, which was abstract theory of vector spaces (with duality and all) in the first semester and general topology in the second semester.

@egreg Hah! I see, it is nice that you emphasise the geometric aspects. I am afraid my students don't "really" know what good are inner products for!

@VincentVerheyen Bourbakism is a disease of youth…

@kan That's was the program of the course I was taught.

@VincentVerheyen Interesting question. I think I know where you are headed with this. The principle behind Bourbaki's writings is to deduce the particular from the more general. This is distinct from the unachievable goal of catering to everyone's needs.

@VincentVerheyen So no! I don't think there is a reasonable "one size fits all" template.

@egreg My viewpoint is this: you read Bourbaki to organise and learn to organise knowledge. This is related to acquiring knowledge but should not be confused with it -- I am not saying you cannot learn from Bourbaki's writings but I am only saying that there are some things you need to be good at to learn from Bourbaki. Perhaps you disagree :)

@VincentVerheyen Actually, it is a very interesting analogy/thought. But, there are several completing "size 34"s out there. Each one closer to someone's style.

@kan People can learn much from Bourbaki, provided they already know what math is involved. One of my favorite example is the implicit map theorem on manifolds. I was taught it with a very complicated setup with local coordinates; then I saw it in Dieudonné's book, proved in a very easy way like in the two variable case using the product of two Banach spaces. Illuminating, but only because I already knew what it was about.

@VincentVerheyen Most American-trained mathematicians and lazy ones use ams classes for example. Some others in Europe use smf classes. There is the plain old article and book classes too...

@egreg Indeed, as I suggested. I'd say you'd need to be good at realising what lies behind some Mathematics you're reading as you're doing so. This is what familiarity with some piece of Mathematics gives you :)

@kan And this is why I call it a disease of youth: when you see some Bourbakist presentation, you think “oh, that's very easy!”. Well it isn't. ;-)

@egreg :)

OK TeX friends! I have some 500 CAD saved up and I am looking to buy a new laptop. My only two requirements are battery life > 10 hrs and the ability to install a full LaTeX distribution! Any suggestions or pointers would be very helpful!

@kan 'CAD'?

@JosephWright Canadian Dollars, sorry! :)

@kan That was my suspicion but I was not sure

@VincentVerheyen You only need to redefine the field formats. Check how the standard style write "URL" before an url. But I would hate such references. Such decorations only make it more difficult to read a text.

@JosephWright Hah! BTW, long time no see! How have you been?

@kan Broadly fine though I'm not at work today as I've not 100%

@JosephWright Oops, sorry to hear that! Take care!

@VincentVerheyen because author is a name not a field.

@VincentVerheyen I would hate it as a tooltip to. It looks as if the author thinks I'm an idiot and need such a tip to realize that this is the title of a book.

@VincentVerheyen I seldom have to delete something. And if you want to do complicated stuff in the bibliography, get used to biber and drop bibtex.

@VincentVerheyen At the cost of repetitions and longer documents. It is easy to add more and more data to a text, but really skilled authors know how to remove things.

@VincentVerheyen You need \DeclareNameFormat.

@VincentVerheyen There are different types of field: literals, lists, authors, verbatim, ...: handling depends on 'structure'

@JosephWright: How are you feeling today?

@PauloCereda Well I'm not at work, but improving and hoping another day just sitting will sort things

@JosephWright Glad to hear. :)

@PauloCereda National holiday!

@egreg Yay!

@egreg: any plans for today? :)

Good maen

@ChristianHupfer Hi!

@PauloCereda Master Duck ;-)

@ChristianHupfer oh no! :)

@PauloCereda Bad weather.

@PauloCereda Maybe we can have a party at 5pm (depending on the score of Roma-Napoli). ;-)

@egreg oh no!

@egreg ooh the Calcio title? :)

@PauloCereda :)

Hm Thunderbird added new arrows...

@PauloCereda What's Thunderbird? ;-)

@PauloCereda Thunderbirds shots arrows on you when a mail has come in? ;-)

@egreg ooh that's easy it's a New Zealand-British science-fiction television programme a mail program. :)

@ChristianHupfer Pretty much, I have to dodge them arrows!

@ChristianHupfer you can send hits by arrows to people you hate now as long as they use Thunderbird :)

Btw, a student just showed an ultimate way how to solve an integral: substitute $t=x$

@yo' Math is so easy. :)

@PauloCereda What do ducks know about math?

1 duckling, 2 ducklings, 3 ducklings, 4 ducklings, ... (is it like sheep, I feel soo sleeepy...)

@yo' oooh :)

@yo' Ducks know advanced stuff. :)

@yo' A better way would be $x=2$, it makes things much easier.

@yo' Well, I hate people that do not use Thunderbird ;-) It's a vicious circle now

@egreg or $1=2$ then everything's provable.

@yo' This is almost as good as "the answer is 42"

@DavidCarlisle I like this approach very much. :)

@DavidCarlisle Even Fish's Theorem: “every set of points in the plane consists of aligned points”, with the obvious corollary that “all conics are degenerate“. A colleague of mine proved it on an April Fools' Day. :D

@PauloCereda Party!!!!!

@egreg YAAAAAY

@PauloCereda Now it's Palmeiras' turn!

@egreg We are out of the Paulista and Libertadores. :( Let's wait for the Brasileiro. :)

@PauloCereda :(

@egreg <3

Have you seen the nonsense edit of the op of this question? What shall we do? Undo the edit?

@Kurt Easy case: rollback

@JosephWright Okay, perhaps better if a moderator did that?

@Kurt One did ;-)

@JosephWright :-) Thanks!

hi

just trying to understand the changes I made to my packages four years ago...

@MartinScharrer 'ello!

@MartinScharrer Oh I cannot even remember what I had for lunch today! :)

@PauloCereda well Mercurial remembered it for me .. it's about understanding it ..

@MartinScharrer :)

Oopsie wrong smiley. :)

May I ask for some support?

@JMP Yes, of course. Is it about cricket or football? ;-)

@PauloCereda Feijoada?

I am working on a solution for this question and I have some trouble to pass either a \pgfmathresult or a macro to an \ifthen command.

@egreg Oh I wish. :) It was a nice salmon. :)

@PauloCereda I had salmon for dinner!

@egreg yay!

@egreg: Psalmons like psalms. :)

@PauloCereda And Psmith

@egreg ooh indeed

@PauloCereda In Italian it's even better: “pallone” is “grande palla”, “cannone” is “grande canna”, “salmone” is “grande salmo”. ;-)

@egreg oooooh

I like this so much!

@PauloCereda We've a wealth of these “falsi accrescitivi”: burro/burrone, matto/mattone and many others.

@egreg When mum brought her recipe book, I saw the word burro. Burro in Portuguese is donkey. :D

@PauloCereda Like in Spanish, I guess: “spaghetti al burro”. ;-)

@egreg Exactly. :) The sentence in question was burro fresco, something like a... fresh donkey. :)

@egreg: worse: apellido in Spanish is sobrenome in Português (surname). and sobrenombre in Spanish is apelido in Portuguese (nickname).

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

@PauloCereda In Italian “Soprannome” is nickname; “cognome” is surname. In French, “nom” is surname and “prénom” is (given) name. What a mess!

@PauloCereda The Romans had a praenomen (Publius), a nomen (Cornelius), a cognomen (Scipio) and maybe also an agnomen (Africanus).