TeX, LaTeX and Friends

marmot

2:37 AM

7

CarLaTeX

3:57 AM

@marmot Congrats!

marmot

@CarLaTeX Grazie! (in the US Monday is a holiday, let's see what its implications on the activity on the main site is.)

CarLaTeX

@marmot You could dedicate all the day answering here :)

marmot

@CarLaTeX Nononono. (I already have a nice date, ;-)

CarLaTeX

@marmot Oooooh

marmot

@CarLaTeX So many ooooo's ... @PauloCereda will be proooooud ooooof yoooooou ;-)

CarLaTeX

4:06 AM

@marmot Ooooof cooooourse!

marmot

@CarLaTeX Psssht. You are waking him up and we will drown in ooh's ... ;-)

@UlrikeFischer It seems increasingly likely that we will be at your mercy concerning the weather in the late winter months....

CarLaTeX

@marmot I have to wake up myself before :)

marmot

@CarLaTeX Well, I guess you will not really lack good coffee....

CarLaTeX

@marmot Unfortunately I don't drink coffee, I don't like it, even the very good (for others) Italian one

marmot

@CarLaTeX Oh no! (Well, thinking of it, I live in California close to the coast, and do not surf....)

CarLaTeX

4:20 AM

@marmot :)

Faheem Mitha

4:54 AM

@marmot You may be living in the US, but I'm guessing you aren't American.

marmot

@FaheemMitha Yes, you are right. (They do not issue passports to marmots. They say they cannot take our fingerprints. ;-)

Faheem Mitha

@marmot If I had to guess, I'd say Europe. But that's more speculative.

They do have European marmots, right?

marmot

@FaheemMitha Oh yes, there are many marmots in Europe.

manooooh

7:49 AM

Hel-lo!

What happened to this user? His account was suspended, I did not know that the site could do that :O. He seems a good user based on his answers

Joseph Wright

@manooooh It's a network-wide suspension: presumably an issue elsewhere (this one is 'not us')

manooooh

@JosephWright oh you are right, thank you!

Paulo Cereda

8:06 AM

Coming soon in this site: "I installed TL 2008 from TL-historic and package foo is broken. FIX IT."

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda simple. install TL2007 before whoever it was broke it.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle The historic thingy stops at 2008. We might need a pre-historic thingy. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda excellent then definitely everyone should revert to a 2007 bug free state.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh no GH organisation taskforce thingy

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright @DavidCarlisle The sun is shining, the snow is good so I won't be there today. I wish you a nice meeting ;-)

Joseph Wright

8:26 AM

@UlrikeFischer Got it :)

@UlrikeFischer Before you dash out, I'd welcome thoughts on github.com/latex3/latex3/pull/524. In particular, should I look to 'globalise' all box operations?

Paulo Cereda

@UlrikeFischer ooh

Ulrike Fischer

8:43 AM

@JosephWright I did read the mails about this, but as I was updating luaotfload at the same time (and skiing), I didn't really tried to sort it all out. I guess that if I had a global box I probably would like to be able to rotated it globally too. But as you are mentioning box operations: What I was missing lately was a command to set a vbox of a specific width. I had to use \vbox_to_ht:nn{10pt}{\hsize =...}

egreg

9:01 AM

@UlrikeFischer So you read the mail and update luaotfload while skiing? Yes, I usually answer TeX.SX questions while driving my bike, but I never read the mail at the same time. :-P

5

Joseph Wright

9:37 AM

@UlrikeFischer Right ...

@egreg :)

@UlrikeFischer That's my feeling too: has to be addressed first.

egreg

@JosephWright That has to do with typesetting; what about \parindent and other parameters? It seems more like minipage if done that way.

Joseph Wright

@egreg True, true

Skillmon

12:10 PM

@JosephWright TeX seems to enter an infinite loop for the input \SI{$1/350$}{Rad} if in batch mode.

Joseph Wright

12:24 PM

@Skillmon Oops

Skillmon

@JosephWright don't know if that is a known issue. Or if you consider this an issue at all, after all it would throw an error before entering said loop.

yo'

An eggling:

4

Paulo Cereda

12:40 PM

@yo' ooh

@DavidCarlisle someone downvoted my grandma answer

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Happened to the grandma question too, yesterday.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz Oh sorry to hear.

David Carlisle

1:46 PM

@PauloCereda Not to worry, the best answer has had no downvotes.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle hm

yo'

@DavidCarlisle we can easily change this.

CarLaTeX

3:22 PM

@PauloCereda bad people around :'(

daleif

3:59 PM

@JosephWright Is siunitx known to have issues with miktex when cm-super is not installed? tex.stackexchange.com/q/471143/3929

Joseph Wright

@daleif I've never tried it, but it doesn't surprise me ...

Ulrike Fischer

4:34 PM

@daleif I just tried with \pdfmapfile{} and it worked fine. I also checked the fls-file and there is nothing from cm-super. Without log-file it will be difficult to find out what it going wrong. @JosephWright

Phelype Oleinik

5:39 PM

@StefanKottwitz Really sorry I left you mid-conversation :/

@StefanKottwitz From what I see, here in Brazil TeX usage is very limited to universities and "my advisor makes me use it" (that's how I started, after all :). So I think there is little public, unfortunately.

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik no problem

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz I agree with Alan Munn: it takes some time for people to get to even know the site exists. There are a few Brazilian TeX novices here, and quite a few of them struggle with the English language, so (I'm guessing) they would use a Portuguese site if they knew it exists.

@StefanKottwitz I agree with you taking down the site, there is currently very little public, and it's probably not worth the maintenance cost. However if you decide to keep it, I would be happy to help.

@StefanKottwitz By the way, congratulations on your baby :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik It's a possibility for Brazilian users. I made it as demonstration site, and I can spend a lot effort on it but I will continue only if it somehow makes sense

@PhelypeOleinik maintainance cost is small and it runs on a server that's covered by DANTE

@PhelypeOleinik users: chicken and egg thingy ;-)

@PhelypeOleinik If a small teams says, yes we care for answering users and until then we seed the site with a bunch of common easy questions and answers (that's how TeX.Se started too), than it can continue and content will be found and lead users to the site.

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz Of course, it doesn't make sense to work on something no one will ever use.

@StefanKottwitz What?

Stefan Kottwitz

Chicken or the egg

The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as "which came first: the chicken or the egg?". The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. "Chicken-and-egg" is a metaphoric adjective describing situations where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the cause and which should be considered the effect, or to express a scenario of infinite regress, or to express the difficulty of sequencing actions where each seems to depend on others being done first. Plutarch posed the question as a philosophical...

Phelype Oleinik

5:47 PM

@StefanKottwitz I can try to do that in my spare time. I can take some of the most viewed questions here and translate, if you think it's worth a shot.

@StefanKottwitz Ooh :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik to explain: how does a site grow - by users and content,

@PhelypeOleinik how can the content grow? by contributors answering questions. How does questions come? By users who find the site based on content that can be found

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz Got it. Content attracts users and users make more content.

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik Right, producing some content gets a site started. People like me and us love to answer questions, so already writing a bunch of questions in pt-Br is a start

@PhelypeOleinik How did it feel to you, when you browsed the q&a site? And how does it feel to browse through the pt-Br FAQ or glimpse through the PDF brtexfaq.pdf?

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz You mean the design?

@StefanKottwitz The appearance is strange, probably because I'm used to SE. I don't know exactly what because I don't spend much time there. But it's functional!

@StefanKottwitz The translation seems a bit Google Translate-y, so some parts of the text is a bit strange to understand. That could be improved, but it takes time.

@StefanKottwitz I never saw the FAQ (both pdf and html) before, but they look nice (with the same problem of the translation -- I imagine the source of the text is the same)

Stefan Kottwitz

6:03 PM

@PhelypeOleinik I mean the feeling to browse around the stuff in native language, instead of everything in English

@PhelypeOleinik Because for me, browsing German written stuff on texwelt.de feels so easy and relaxed. Reading and writing English is fine for me, but native language is like being on vacation instead of work.

@PhelypeOleinik And in my language I understand a full page in a second. In English, I have to read by lines.

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz Oh. Yes, it's certainly faster to read in Portuguese :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik That's why I think localized sites in one's native language are really fun and give easier accessibility and win users and help at the end also temporary TeX users such as students

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz Yes, I fully agree. Here at my university people struggle to use TeX because there is very little information in Portuguese, so they end up using it only when there's no choice

Stefan Kottwitz

@PhelypeOleinik Let's stay in contact and once we are are few fellows to support the site, we can push it. I'll be just the tech maintainer, the responsibility and ownership is with the men who drive the site publicly.

Phelype Oleinik

@StefanKottwitz Sure, I'll do what I can :D

Alan Munn

6:38 PM

@StefanKottwitz And women?

Ulrike Fischer

6:54 PM

@egreg well as soon boxes are created it is a bit difficult not to do typesetting. But here the problem is that even if one simply store the box, one gets an overful hbox message. So the question is how to one create a box of specific width and height?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expl3}
\begin{document}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\hbox_set_to_wd:Nnn\l_tmpa_box {3cm}
{
 \hbox_to_wd:nn { 3cm }
 {
  \vbox_to_ht:nn { 2cm}
  {
   x
  }
 }
}

\ExplSyntaxOff

\end{document}

Skillmon

7:06 PM

@UlrikeFischer shouldn't the other way around do the trick? \vbox_to_ht:nn { 2cm } { \hbox_to_wd:nn { 3cm } { x } } should be correctly sized.

@UlrikeFischer since \vbox{\hbox{foo}} will have only the width of foo.

@UlrikeFischer as long as the \hbox is inserted in vertical mode.

@UlrikeFischer and foo doesn't have to be typeset in vertical mode.

Stefan Kottwitz

@AlanMunn Currently only men. That statement would change if a woman joined.

Alan Munn

@StefanKottwitz Fair enough, but since it's really a generic statement, 'people' might have been more appropriate. :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@AlanMunn I wil make a macro for this, that can be adjusted.

Alan Munn

7:21 PM

@StefanKottwitz lol

Stefan Kottwitz

@AlanMunn My company now writes job offers for men, women, and divers

Skillmon

@StefanKottwitz I think this exists (sorry if I missed any pun).

Stefan Kottwitz

@Skillmon I'm sorry too ;-)

Alan Munn

@Skillmon Yes, I think @StefanKottwitz is referring to a package I wrote based on a question on the site.

@StefanKottwitz 'divers' isn't actually English here. (Well it is, but then it refers to scuba divers or the like). I think you mean 'others'. (But I got the point.)

Skillmon

@AlanMunn diverse (but according to linguee the spelling @StefanKottwitz uses is used more).

Alan Munn

7:31 PM

@Skillmon No, that doesn't work here either.

Skillmon

@AlanMunn miscellaneous?

Alan Munn

@Skillmon No, as I said, 'others' is the only thing that would really work here. The word 'divers' as a spelling for 'diverse' is completely archaic. And 'diverse' is an adjective, so it can't be conjoined with 'men and women'.

Skillmon

@AlanMunn one can't conjoin adjectives and nouns in English? In German there is the possibility to "nounify" an adjective...

Alan Munn

@Skillmon Not really possible in English without the help of some morphology.

Skillmon

@AlanMunn another win for the beautiful German language :) Which is an utter mess if you want to learn it as a foreigner.

Alan Munn

7:41 PM

@Skillmon Well when you can explain how the Mittelfeld works, let me know. :)

Skillmon

@AlanMunn in football?

@AlanMunn or the compositum in general?

Alan Munn

@Skillmon lol. No, in the clause.

Skillmon

@AlanMunn which clause? Sorry don't understand what you mean

Alan Munn

@Skillmon Sorry, this may be a more technical linguistics term than I thought. In German main clauses, the basic syntax requires some phrase at the beginning, then the tensed verb, and then the rest of the clause. E.g. Gestern hat Hans einen Apfel gegessen. But if we add more stuff, there is some flexibility of word order in the area where the direct object is.

@Skillmon E.g. Gestern hat Hans einen Apfel in die Küche gegessen but you can also say Gestern hat Hans in die Küche einen Apfel gegessen. This part of the clause is called the Mittelfeld.

Ulrike Fischer

8:10 PM

@AlanMunn Gestern hat Hans in der Küche einen Apfel gegessen.

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Oops. Sorry, yes. (Not really a speaker, although I understand a lot about the syntax).

Skillmon

@AlanMunn since in German the cases of a noun can be understood from the word itself and the (not necessarily mandatory) article accompanying it. So there is no need to have everything in perfect order. The only two necessary things is verb on second place in a main clause, at the end else. Everything else is easily understandable from the used cases (almost always that is).

Alan Munn

@Skillmon Well yes, that's a very kind of 'functionalist' answer. But some languages with rich case systems don't have this flexibility, and there are subtle interactions between the word order and other properties of the discourse. When you "decide" (implicitly) to use one order or the other, I'm pretty sure it's not totally random.

Skillmon

8:26 PM

@AlanMunn of course not! Humans are the worst random number generator I know. So complete randomness is very unlikely. Most of the time you just do it in the order your most used to, which tends to be the simplest possibility: Subject + Predicate + Objects, but you could put some emphasizes on specific things with an unusual order. And it's consider bad style to always use the same order, because a text sounds dull if you do (of course there are exceptions to this, e.g., anaphoras).

Ulrike Fischer

@AlanMunn my husband throws in the examples Hans hat einen Apfel in die Küche geworfen and Hans hat einen Apfel in der Küche geworfen.

Skillmon

@AlanMunn so in a text you'd try to balance used orders, and only really unusual orders will be considered emphasizing something (and I guess 300% of the people wouldn't recognize it, because it'd be just another possible order of a sentence). That is really unlike English where you always put location and time at the end of the sentence, unless you really want to emphasize that he did things on Tuesday.

@UlrikeFischer funniest example of German language: umfahren and umfahren. The former means to hit somebody with the car, the latter that you circumvent him. Isn't it obvious which one is which?

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Cute. That's a nice syntactic ambiguity that is reflected by the case difference.

Transcript for

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends