@AnnaKirkpatrick Hi Anna, that's a fantastic answer. It would be great if you could add a copy of it as an answer to our own site's question about that topic:

@Johannes_B ????

@ChristianHupfer Have you read the message?

@Johannes_B Yes -- somebody asked you for support via FB?

@ChristianHupfer That user was writing me stuff like: Tables don't work. Can you explain how tables work without me having to read anything?

So he finally got that message.

@ChristianHupfer Exactly. Multiple times, and i multiple times said: Go to a forum.

@Johannes_B I see -- and was there any reply by him so far?

@ChristianHupfer Nope.

@Johannes_B Well done by you then!

@Johannes_B: Ich muß noch eine Physik-KA fertig korrigieren, ich bin später wieder da!

@ChristianHupfer I have to go to, see you later.

Just got an abstract book (electronically) for a conference I'm at in a couple of weeks. Thought to myself 'How did they make this?'. Checked document props: 'LaTeX with hyperref package' :-)

@egreg I'm actually sure it's a dupe.

Hi.

Remember me trying to deal with NEL character?

Well, it turns out I was completely wrong.

I guessed wrong encoding. While 0x85 is NEL in ISO-8859-1 and -15, it is ellipsis in Windows CP1252.

@AnnaKirkpatrick Hello Anna! Sorry I was already away. As @AlanMunn points out: we have some questions about accessibility, and it would be great to have someone with a first-hand experience around to help us with these.

@yo' Very likely

Is anybody working on an English translation of TikZ pour l'impatient? If not, is anybody interested in collaborating on one?

is something wrong with the site? Each time I click on ask question, it open window with the last question I have asked to edit it (i.e. the window open with the last question there on the screen), which I have already asked and closed before. I cleared the browser buffer. Closed the browser and logout out and in, and same thing happens

@Nasser Works fine here.

@TorbjørnT. If you click "ask question" does open a blank window for you, or the last question you asked?

@Nasser Haven't asked a question in a long time, but I get the empty form.

Ok, I do not get an empty form,. That is the problem. I get the last question poped up to edit, as if I am still working on it. But that question I closed and asked it before and cleared the browser, etc... Very strange.

Bug in stackexchange software.

Now I am worried if I write new question, it will erase the old one.

I will try rebooting my pc.

Here is a movie showing the problem! I click on ASK QUESTION, and it opens the old question to edit.

see? I tried both firefox and Chrom and cleared all cache. So the problem is with stackexchange.

@Nasser Well, then nothing we can do here in chat. Why not ask on Meta?

@TorbjørnT. No big deal. I'll clear the forum and write the new question. I was just worried it will delete the question I already asked. I do not know. I am writing new question now, as I have to do it now. I just hope it does not delete the old one which I already asked.

@Nasser I very much doubt that will happen.

@yo': Paper was praised, but not accepted. I won't go to Prague. :(

@PauloCereda :(

@PauloCereda oh no :(

@egreg, @yo': C'est la vie, I will try in other place. :)

@Nasser I don't think it's technically a bug, more of a nuisance. The forms might be reused for new entries as well as editing existing ones. If a content is not updated, they might keep persistent data as a "feature". I see what you get, and I believe their position might be, "there are unfinished entries that need resolution before entering new input". They probably won't "fix" this because of the potential annoyance of the SE structure becoming a big scratch pad. :)

@Johannes_B -- some really good points made there. i agree with just about everything. why is it so hard to get people to understand? (at least the ones who do read the documentation. folks who don't are hopeless, i'm afraid.)

@barbarabeeton :)

@PauloCereda it's sad that you won't come :(

@yo' It is. Hopefully I will go through another path. <3

When I do this, it works:
\documentclass[12pt]{book}%
\begin{document}
\the\textwidth
\end{document}

But what do I have to do, to print 0.9\textwidth? I tried \the\{0.9\textwidth} and \the\0.9\textwidth and nothing works. Do I need the calc package to do this?

@Nasser \the\diimexpr0.9\textwidth\relax

:30673709 \documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expl3}

\begin{document}
\the\dimexpr 0.9\textwidth\relax

\ExplSyntaxOn
\dim_eval:n{0.9\textwidth}
\ExplSyntaxOff

\end{document}

@yo' do I need a package for this? i get an error under lualatex
\documentclass[12pt]{book}%
\begin{document}
\the\diimexpr0.9\textwidth\relax
\end{document}

it says Undefined control sequence. \the\diimexpr

@Nasser One i not two

Thanks! one i worked

@Nasser You could also use a scratch value \begingroup\dimen0=0.9\textwidth\the\dimen0\endgroup

@UlrikeFischer thanks. I looked at expl3, but the syntax scared me away.

@JosephWright nice !

@Nasser ah sorry for the typo

I find it is easier now to call lua function to do what I want, and have it do tex.print() to return the result, than trying to figure the Latex syntax for it :)

I just did not know how to pass 0.9\textwidth to lua, that is why I asked.

@Nasser You'd want \the\dimexpr there anyway (or assign to scratch dimen), so wouldn't help

@JosephWright why your code gives different value than \the\dimexpr0.9\textwidth\relax? Am I doing something wrong? Here it is

\documentclass[12pt]{book}%
\begin{document}
\the\textwidth\par
\the\dimexpr0.9\textwidth\relax\par
\begingroup\dimen0=0.9\textwidth\the\dimen0\endgroup
\end{document}

@Nasser Example?

what happened to the 3 ?

@Nasser Something odd there with your version: I get as expected the same result for the two entries

@JosephWright I am on windows. Using miktex on texstudio

@JosephWright it works ok now! Sorry, GUI problem.

texstudio always confuses me so much. I never know which file it is compiling.

Is this because outside the group, \dime0 can have anything?

@Nasser When the group ends, \dimen0 gets back whatever value it had before.

@egreg ok, thanks. this explains it.

Since it is a scratch register, it can be anything.

@wilx can't say I'm surprised: no one ever uses NEL :-)

@Nasser Well, it will still be a dimen but other than that you can't have any expectation of the result

@Seamus Hi @Seamus! I was wondering the same. Have you asked the authors, what they think about a translation? In case they second it, I would love to participate in this project.

@Seamus -- i wouldn't help with the translation, but when it's finished, i'd be willing to (proof)read.

@barbarabeeton I've been trying to resist the temptation to helpfully translate "TikZ pour l'impatient"

@DavidCarlisle Reading a manual? You? ;-)

@egreg of course not I meant translate the phrase, I had some help and came up with "TikZ for the impatient"

@DavidCarlisle That needs a skilled translator!

@egreg have you seen @barbarabeeton's latest answer? she suggests the OP read a package manual. So naive.

@egreg I was quite proud of it.

@DavidCarlisle -- maybe naive, but it helps keep me employed to be able to tell someone "we told you so, and here's where we told you". (i learned to read when a "computer" was a person who did scientific calculations, and was probably female.)

@barbarabeeton Sounds a bit like Brexit

@JosephWright -- can't blame that on me. i'd have been firmly in the "remain" camp. (but i'm used to being an outlier.)

@DavidCarlisle Interestingly there is a subtle difference in meaning in the English translation.

tex.stackexchange.com/questions/317056/…

@ChristianHupfer Hey! You removed your comment.

@ChristianHupfer I just wanted to upvote it.

@HenriMenke No, I didn't -- I suspect a mod has done this!

@HenriMenke: If you want to upvote something anyway look for some of my answers ;-)

@ChristianHupfer That's rude. Even though the comments might have looked funny, the asked the OP to improve his question in an ironic manner.

@HenriMenke Hm, it's not the first time this happened (of course, not only to my comments.) tex.stackexchange.com/users/26134/… comment was removed too ;-)

@ChristianHupfer There you go ;)

@ChristianHupfer Is this our moderators or external mods? @JosephWright can you shed any light on this?

@HenriMenke :D (+1) for your answer on the Where do I find my computer with LaTeX ;-)

@AlanMunn I'd rather not discuss individual cases, but in general we see very little intervention from the staff

@ChristianHupfer There is also the getmap package. If one could manage to obtain the actual external IP and look up the position with geoip, one could embed the map with the current position in the PDF.

@AlanMunn I don't know ...

@JosephWright Well, I don't worry actually.

@JosephWright I guess this is due to the overwhelming friendliness of TeX.SX. Other SX communities are really vicious compared to us.

@JosephWright Ok, just curious. I don't have a very strong opinion on the matter. The comments were kind of funny and to the point, but could easily attract a kind of piling on which would appear unfriendly.

@HenriMenke I don't know how much staff intervention there is generally: my impression is they act mainly on things like vote fraud, where there are objective ways to tell there is an issue

@HenriMenke: new feature: asciinema.org/a/c1ldgapead4cmfgq2o6bxu3pj :)

@PauloCereda Why is there no Ragtime background music? :(

@HenriMenke oh sorry, it's ascii. :)

@PauloCereda Just send an additional YouTube link next time ;)

So, I checked on a new install

With everything but the documentation and source trees checked (Why would I want those?)

TeXLive is only 7% windows executables

21% Postscript fonts

12% VF files

8% TFM

8% AFM

7% OpenType Fonts

5% TrueType Fonts

And everything goes down from there

So LaTeX is mostly fonts

@Canageek Mostly documentation, but after that it's fonts, yes

@JosephWright I didn't bother with the documentation.

Or the terrible TeXWorks editor

I have TeXStudio, TeXMaker and emacs installed

@Canageek TeXworks is great :-) (It's also very small)

@JosephWright Vs TeXStudio or emacs?

@JosephWright I tried it once and it seemed to be worse then TeXStudio for the same thing

@Canageek Not used either to any great extent

Or Notepad++, I've worked in it a lot

@Canageek Too many toolbars (I used to use WinEdt, but same issue there)

@JosephWright If you like keyboard shortcuts, emacs is great. If you want a more Windows based experience, TeXStudio was quite nice, but I found since I moved to compiling on the command line, I never used any of the features anyway.

@Canageek As I say, in size terms it's neither here nor there

My only problem is that emacs doesn't seem to use much kerning

@Canageek Huh? It's a command line tool, so what kerning?

@JosephWright I use the GUI version.

@Canageek I really don't get that: I believe it's common, but the whole point of Emacs or Vim or Pico or ... is they work at the terminal

@JosephWright If I wanted highly minimal LaTeX I'd use Notepad++ (7 MB once installed)

@JosephWright Not all of us have perfect memories and I'm on windows. The terminal is terrible.

@JosephWright I've USED it with -nw, but I want something that works nicely with my desktop enviorment

@JosephWright I edit in emacs then compile with latexmk in Powershell

@Canageek Gnu On Windows doesn't have Emacs, only Vim and Nano, so on Windows I can't comment. Would have to check here on the Mac.

@JosephWright I just download the binaries and stick them in a directory myself

@Canageek ?

@Canageek emacsbinw64.sourceforge.net

@JosephWright I like having menues I can click since I don't know all the commands by heart

@Canageek Sure, that's where I don't see the usefulness of Emacs, but then I don't regard that screenshot as being Emacs so ...

@JosephWright Keyboard shortcuts. Ability to hit C-K and kill a line, for example

@HenriMenke What is the upside over gnu.mirror.iweb.com/emacs/windows ?

@Canageek Ctrl-K works fine in Pico :-)

Bakc in a bit, have to put a new crystal on

@JosephWright Does that play nice with LaTeX?

@Canageek Cool

@Canageek No idea, it's a very basic text editor: the one built into Pine

@Canageek I don't know. It seemed like you were looking for Win32 builds.

@PauloCereda As long as she's not draped in a Union Jack, definitely!

@cfr No, she is in a blanket. :)

@cfr: how's Lucy?

@JosephWright Indeed, and both are now saying 'we didn't mean ...'

@PauloCereda Not here right now, but she was fine this morning!

@cfr awww <3

@cfr Oh goodness only knows what Nigel Farage meant

Back

@JosephWright Yeah, the nice thing about using it in a window is it can give superscripts and subscripts and things when using latex. Also I can use a mouse to select text and things, which is often faster.

@JosephWright Doing PXRD on an Mo source sucks.

@Canageek I only ever use Mo, but then I'm doing single-crystal work on organometallics

@JosephWright PXRD is useful for telling if you made the same thing again, so I don't have to root through a pile of tiny crystals trying to find the ONE good enough for a unit cell.

@JosephWright But our Cu source is dead, and my boss doesn't want to pay $10K for a new one, so he is haggling

@JosephWright Mo gets better data, but Cu throws out 10x more x-rays, and ours was a microsource, so even more intense then that.

@JosephWright My crystals are so small I have trouble seeing them on the camera, so sometimes Mo doesn't diffract well enough :D

Fortunately the software I use never makes mistakes like this:

bbc.co.uk/news/business-36638929

@DavidCarlisle True, you just have undocumented translation features.

@AlanMunn Forse sono semplicemente documentati in una lingua che non si capisce.

@PauloCereda <3

@JosephWright Yes. There were some large carrots involved, indeed. But now they all deny that they ever made that claim.

@DavidCarlisle Mais eu sou linguista, e eu sei todas as linguas do mundo.

@AlanMunn you and me both then!

@cfr <3 quack quack

@DavidCarlisle A Monty Python's quote is mandatory!

@egreg Sono italiano di Oxford. :)

@JosephWright Be fair. There are many plans B emerging. B1 is to throw insults in the European Parliament. Obviously, that's only a beginning, but at least it is a start. B2 is to continue to claim that we can take our pick of the European family silver because the rest of the family can't possibly do without us and will, therefore, let us dictate the terms of the divorce without protest. B3 is to start a civil war - or possibly several civil wars - possibly confined to Westminster or possibly not.

B4 is to ignore the whole thing and hope it goes away. B5 is like B4 but involves a general election which will (somehow) show that actually people didn't really mean it.

can one in lualatex, load any lua module they find on the net, just like they would in standalone lua console and use it inside the luacode* environment inside lualatex? Or there are any restrictions on this? I see number of lua modules out there. I am new on this and know nothing really about lua. I will try it ofcourse, but thought to check also.

i.e. do require "some_lua_module" from inside lualatex lua and have it load and use it?

@Nasser Have you tried? :)

In general, you can load external files, so technically yes. :)

Hey! Somebody is using my famous steinmetz package!

@egreg ooh the very famous steinmetz & sons. :)