TeX, LaTeX and Friends

2:55 AM

One user here got upset and started editing his question to complain about other users here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/435891/…

I've reverted the question for the moment, but this might need the attention of a moderator.

marmot

4:11 AM

@Davislor I guess the official way to contact the moderators is to flag the post. The author is not unknown to them, though.

Davislor

I had. And apparently not.

Well, I tried to engage constructively.

marmot

@Davislor Many tried...

Johannes_B

6:58 AM

@JosephWright @StefanKottwitz I am flagging as off-topic and not suited for the SE network

Davislor

I actually answered the original question. What a train wreck.

AlexG

7:51 AM

@marmot Oh!

Ulrike Fischer

10:45 AM

@DavidCarlisle etex.sty uses/sets count 266 for marks: \count266=1 % globally allocates \marks classes 1, 2, .... Which count is used without etex?

David Carlisle

\def\newmarks{%
  \e@alloc\marks \e@alloc@chardef{\count256}\m@ne\e@alloc@top}

@UlrikeFischer 256

Ulrike Fischer

12:12 PM

@DavidCarlisle thanks. Is there no symbolic name? Or some other way to do \ifnum#1<\count256 ? (See tex.stackexchange.com/a/472710/2388).

@AlanMunn I added an answer ...

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Wow. That's an impressive piece of detective work.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer no, you are not supposed to need to know:-)

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle ;-). Which naturally leads to the question why bigfoot needs to know (and if its juggling with the marks will conflict with Franks marks ...).

Magisch

12:49 PM

tabularx does not have automated linebreaking within cells does it?

David Carlisle

@Magisch yes it does, there is no reason to use tabularx apart from automated linebreaking.

Magisch

I have a multicolumn inside a tabularx and it does not automatically linebreak

defined as \multicolumn{2}{p{0.39\textwidth}}{Text here}

David Carlisle

@Magisch but what did you specify the spanning cell to be, if you used c for example that is one line

@Magisch that will linebreak (whether it can linebreak your actual text to the specified width depends on the text of course, narrow columns are usually better set \raggedright

Magisch

The 2 cells joined by the multicolumn are both p{something}

The text is one continous word

but it needs to linebreak regardless

think DNA sequence

David Carlisle

@Magisch classic tex never hyphenates the first word of a paragraph

@Magisch we have lots of answers on site for linebreaking such strings. (also you multicol p width looks wrong)

@Magisch tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=linebreak+long+string

Magisch

12:54 PM

ahh so there's no native support for that. Will probably have to use a custom function then

Phelype Oleinik

Hello @barbarabeeton. Do you know about this issue? tex.stackexchange.com/q/472718/134574

David Carlisle

@Magisch not sure what you mean by native support or custom function, you just need something like \dna{ABBCABBGUTDIOKJHTDFHJ..WHATEVER} with \dna defined to allow linebreaking between each letter

Paul Paulsen

1:12 PM

hey everybody. I was looking at this question while trying to include macros for abbreviations myself. I like the second answer, because it also handles the punctuation and seems the more modern, elegant one. However, the answer does not give an example for a macro, and it's not trivial for me. Should I edit one in, or would this be better an answer on its own?

Ulrike Fischer

Seems to be bug day today: From endnote.sty: \immediate\expandafter\protected@write\csname efloat@post#1\endcsname

David Carlisle

@PaulPaulsen I wouldn't edit such an old answer the author has been on site this week so you could leave a comment suggesting he add one, or add an answer yourself (I think)

@UlrikeFischer eek has that always been there?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle no, in the previous version it used \write instead of \protected@write.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer something that had a chance of working, you mean

Paul Paulsen

@DavidCarlisle That's a good suggestion, will try the comment. Thank you!

Ulrike Fischer

1:17 PM

@DavidCarlisle if you don't use the curious chars with dots on them and things like that ;-)

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer I find z is usually safe.

@UlrikeFischer endnotes I have is dated 2003, is there a new update?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle sorry, not endnotes, endfloat ;-)

@DavidCarlisle tex.stackexchange.com/q/472705/2388

David Carlisle

1:32 PM

@UlrikeFischer ah.

Sebastiano

@UlrikeFischer @DavidCarlisle Good morning kindest users. My best regards.

@StefanKottwitz Kindest "Gentilissimo" moderator again the same user for a my old question tex.stackexchange.com/questions/343262/…. Your score is 251 and now is 249 (-2). He was connected 3 minutes ago. Thank you very much.

barbara beeton

@PhelypeOleinik -- thanks for alerting me to the problem. i've reported it to the tug office. i'm in the process of packing up my office for retirement, and don't have enough time to check questions at least until february 10, so pointing out things like this is a good deed.

Phelype Oleinik

@barbarabeeton You're welcome. Happy retirement :)

Magisch

2:24 PM

@DavidCarlisle is there a special definition for allowing line breaks in any char?

I've always done it via function by specifying the # of chars at which to break and then manually breaking

David Carlisle

@Magisch the link I gave you earlier will have several answers that do that, I'll find one of mine...

Magisch

@DavidCarlisle I had adapted something similar but not quite from an answer (not sure if it was yours) before:

\newcommand{\forcesplit}[2]{\StrLen{#2}[\mynum]\ifnumcomp{\mynum}{<}{\numexpr(#‌1)+1\relax}{#2}{\StrSplit{#2}{#1}{\myfirststr}{\mysecondstr}\myfirststr\linebreak‌\forcesplit{#1}{\mysecondstr}}}

was looking for an idea if there's a better or more official solution

David Carlisle

5

A: Linebreaks in long character strings

You can add a penalty after each character \documentclass{article} \newcommand{\hash}[1]{\texttt{\zz#1\zz}}%In a perfect world, this would be changed to allow linebreaks anywhere in #1 \def\zz#1{% \ifx\zz#1\else #1\linebreak[1]\expandafter\zz \fi} \begin{document} SHA-256 is a hash fun...

@Magisch definitely not mine:-) far more complicated than needed

David Carlisle

2:56 PM

@UlrikeFischer some Italian Bloke fills in the details of an immediate protected write here:

10

Q: How to write the € symbol into a file, when using Package [utf8]{inputenc}

With the following MWE, I can write the € symbol into the file euro.txt \documentclass{article} \newwrite\tempfile \immediate\openout\tempfile="euro.txt" \begin{document} Write Euro symbol into a file \immediate\write\tempfile{10 €}% \immediate\closeout\tempfile \end{document} My problem is ...

Ulrike Fischer

3:09 PM

@DavidCarlisle there is also a variant from an german bloke: tex.stackexchange.com/a/170238/2388

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer far more trustworthy:-)

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle but not reachable if you want to blame him ...

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer it's OK though because there is a github repo available where any blame needed can be passed to a lady from the same country.

Magisch

3:24 PM

Trying to move things in millimeter increments in latex is frustrating

barbara beeton

3:44 PM

@Magisch -- you might find this existing question useful: tex.stackexchange.com/q/116441/579 -- it deals explicitly with breaking genomic sequences.

Sebastiano

@barbarabeeton Good afternoon from Sicily. Good work and regards.

@StefanKottwitz @MartinScharrer @JosephWright Thank you very much and from the bottom of my heart for your understanding during these two years and for your precious help in this circumstance too. Once again I thank you, the moderators, and the whole community. My best regards and good work.

David Carlisle

4:57 PM

@Magisch \hspace*{1mm} seems easy enough:-)

Kurt

5:37 PM

Funny, got the next palindrome:

4

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I think my memory was wrong, there was a change but it affected biblatex and was then reverted again.

marmot

5:50 PM

@Kurt This one is much more special, it is a prime.

3

Phelype Oleinik

Ooh, if I had an answer to accept :/

Kurt

@marmot Ah, I missed your comments already. It is fun to fetch palindromes :-)

@PhelypeOleinik quick, hurry an create an question :-)

Phelype Oleinik

@Kurt The answerer would probably vote it before I had the chance to accept

Kurt

@PhelypeOleinik Well, but you can try. In Germany we say: "Nur der Versuch macht klug."

Phelype Oleinik

@Kurt :)

Skillmon

6:19 PM

@PhelypeOleinik ask a question, I'll answer it, you accept it, and we both hope that no one upvotes your question in the process..

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon Oh, too late now :/

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik I'm so very sorry :(

@PhelypeOleinik If you want I can downvote one of your answers :P

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon It's certainly a tragedy

@Skillmon Or I could downvote yours ;)

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik Does one lose reputation from downvoting?

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon If I'm not mistaken, yes. One or two points.

Skillmon

6:41 PM

@PhelypeOleinik hm, you would have to downvote some answers, and that would be a very unpleasant experience, as I consider most of my answers to be not too bad. I don't think we should make such a hassle just to get you a nicely looking imperfect palindrome.

Phelype Oleinik

7:00 PM

@Skillmon Better wait for 33333 :)

marmot

@Skillmon @PhelypeOleinik One can always award a bounty. (I am not suggesting this, but bounties could even be abused for reputation laundry. Say @PhelypeOleinik awards a bounty which will be received by @Skillmon and later @Skillmon awards a bounty that will be received by @PhelypeOleinik. I take 10% interests for pointing out this possibility. ;-)

Alan Munn

@marmot Since bounties aren't of arbitrary amounts, this has very limited usefulness.

marmot

@AlanMunn Why? Two users could agree on equal amounts. If I understood correctly, the scenario was that user A has a way to get 2 points that will allow them to get the target score, but timing does not work out because they continuously get reputation. Awarding a bounty will buy user A some time.

Alan Munn

@marmot I'm not saying it can't work, just that it's not likely to be so helpful.

Phelype Oleinik

@marmot It's one idea, but it's far too much hassle that it's worth.

Alan Munn

7:14 PM

@marmot Much more efficient is to downvote one of @DavidCarlisle 's non-answer answers. :)

marmot

@PhelypeOleinik One day you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you reached that score. ;-)

@AlanMunn As opposed to his questions. Oh, wait, downvoting questions may not cost reputation.

Phelype Oleinik

@marmot The runs the legend that grandpa's stories are boring :P

marmot

@PhelypeOleinik You could be the one who changes this. ;-)

Phelype Oleinik

@marmot With internet points it'll be tough

marmot

@PhelypeOleinik No, they will be amused to learn how the older generations used to waste their time.

Phelype Oleinik

7:20 PM

@marmot You officially won this argument

AlexG

9:37 PM

daleif

Anyone here using mactex? Then we have a question: did mactex add the installed texlive to the system path? It seems it is added to the terminal.

AlexG

5

daleif

Reason for asking: some users has issues with rstudio using rmarkdown and knitr. It cannot find pdflatex.

AlexG

@PhelypeOleinik : Ok like this? :)

daleif

I'm assuming the user is starting rstudio via a menu or icon, thus might only see the sys path from the login (similar to the bashrc vs profile issue on Linux).

I haven't yet had my hands on one of these macs

egreg

9:44 PM

@daleif I have

> ls -l /etc/paths.d/TeX
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  22 Apr 29  2018 /etc/paths.d/TeX

And the file contains /Library/TeX/texbin. So, yes, it is added to the PATH.

Alan Munn

@daleif I have no trouble with using RStudio and MacTeX, with a default installation of both.

@daleif Can the user run a .Rnw file (not Rmd)? I think .Rmd files require pandoc which isn't installed by MacTeX I don't think (at least I recall having installed it manually).

@DavidCarlisle Have you put copy protection into xepersian? ;-) tex.stackexchange.com/q/472774/2693

daleif

10:08 PM

@AlanMunn interesting, can you create and run an rmarkdown from rstudio? As far as I know starting a new rmarkdown file also makes a sample doc which then can be processed by knitr

@egreg then I'm guessing it is an issue with the mac it self, I'll need to have access to it. It was mentioned that many of these students had little to no skills with a computer. Probably only knows they're using a mac, nothing else. Everything has to be spelled out

marmot

@AlexG It is an amazing achievement to get more than 10k of reputation without getting any of these obnoxious badges. ;-)

Alan Munn

@daleif Yes, it works fine for me. And it's using a pandoc installed inside RStudio, not the system one.

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn quite possibly, given my deep understanding of the documentation of that code

Alan Munn

@daleif Actually it only uses the RStudio version of pandoc if it doesn't find one installed.

Phelype Oleinik

10:24 PM

@AlexG Oh, that's cheating :)

@AlexG I seriously did not expect that screenshot to cause this much trouble :P

7

@AlexG @marmot Perhaps this one's better ^^

marmot

@PhelypeOleinik You could use \infty, which would rob @egreg's sleep. ;-)

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle it says something about the package that we consider it possible that it sets such a password ;-(.

marmot

Until now I hadn't appreciated how much informations is in the "top users" lists. For instance, this list shows that @AlexG is very good at producing animations, this list that @samcarter is very good at producing presentations, and this list that @egreg and @DavidCarlisle are very efficient at producing errors. ;-)

David Carlisle

10:42 PM

@UlrikeFischer این بسته چیزهای زیادی را انجام می دهد

egreg

@marmot That's mainly due to hidden features in packages I won't mention the author of.

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle thus spoke zarathustra

marmot

@egreg Yes, I can see how this can help introducing errors. ;-)

Ulrike Fischer

@marmot and now find the tag where I have tenfold more answers than egreg ;-).

marmot

@UlrikeFischer ducks ?

David Carlisle

11:15 PM

@marmot but you should see how is fun to be with and who hardly gets on the list at all tex.stackexchange.com/tags/fun/topusers

marmot

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see. How often do we have to tell you that putting pineapple on a pizza is not funny? ;-)

David Carlisle

@marmot of course it's not funny, it's perfectly natural. (and the world's favourite pizza topping when combined with ham)

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle I have far too many answers in that tag.

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn and would you eat Hawaiian pizza if offered?

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle And now someone wants to substitute you:

2

Q: What Hebrew fonts can I substitute for David in LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX?

I need to write an abstract in Hebrew. With help I managed to get the next MWE to work (I use LuaLaTeX): \documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[english,bidi=default]{babel} %bidi=default with xelatex \babelprovide[import,main]{hebrew} \babelfont{rm}[Language=Default]{Latin Modern Roman} %\b...