@JosephWright ooh

I'm wondering why (tf) that some people use something like \listStart \listEnd instead of \begin{itemize}\end{itemize}. That is not wrong, but imho commands are not supposed to do such things.

@JouleV Maybe they like ConTeXt syntax where environments are used like \startitemize … \stopitemize (i.e. "commands" in your sense)…

@JouleV lazy slackers, perhaps

@TeXnician @ChristianHupfer A guy sends me his code for debugging because he fails to get rid of errors. I see some very long commands like \listStartCompanyStaffInformation. Time spent on such commands when typing is obviously huge.

@JouleV perhaps he was using an editor with code completion

Here's an odd find when I looked at our user base:

tex.stackexchange.com/users?tab=voters

Sorted on votes, there's an unnamed user with a lot of votes, and no real reputation.

It just looks odd to me.

@Werner: Apparently the user is named 'user69318' ...

@Werner The user seems to be using up all earned reputation on downvotes. That's some attitude!

@ChristianHupfer … which isn't really a name …

Hello @FaheemMitha

@DavidCarlisle I'm not sure what you mean by zzz. (Sorry for the late response.)

@PrabhjotSingh Hi. Are you visiting new chat rooms?

@FaheemMitha Yes, I wanted to know about the Beamer. If you could tell me how to use it

@PrabhjotSingh By "the Beamer" you mean beamer, the package? I hardly know anything about it. I might have used it, like 10 years ago.

What problem are you having?

@FaheemMitha Someone told me that this could help me creating clean documents. But I couldn't find stuff related to it's use

@PrabhjotSingh Did you look at the manual? texdoc beamer? And it shouldn't hard to find simple example usage. Though you realise it's basically the LaTeX version of Powerpoint, right? It's intended for presentations.

@FaheemMitha file location ?

@PrabhjotSingh texdoc beamer will bring up the document. I seem to remember that it also gives you the location of the manual, but I tried it and it doesn't.

texdoc -l beamer will give you a list. See man texdoc.

And that list does contain examples. But unless you are planning to give a talk using LaTeX, it's probably not what you want.

@FaheemMitha @PrabhjotSingh You'll have to work in a terminal to run texdoc. But here's a handy web presence: texdoc.net

@HaraldHanche-Olsen We're Linux users, so yes, terminal.

Actually, Prabhjot and I met in U&L chat. Prabhjot is now adventuring to fresh fields and pastures new.

@FaheemMitha Do you include @PrabhjotSingh in “we” here? If so, pardon the interruption. Too many computer users (especially on windows, but also on macs) have no idea that terminals exist.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes, I think you could include him as a Linux user. Though he can speak for himself.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes, I realise that not all operating systems include terminal usage as standard. Unfortunately.

@FaheemMitha Okay, good. I'll go back to what I was doing. (Much less fun than hanging out in chat.)

These days, that includes Linux too, unfortunately.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Doing math, I assume.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Thx . I have using only linux for three years or so.

No other os.

@FaheemMitha No, that is fun. I am doing administrative work, of the worst kind.

@PrabhjotSingh good for you!

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Oh, sorry to hear that. And yes, I forgot, that for a mathematician, doing math is fun.

I got a new palindrome:

Though I suspect you are very much in the minority here.

@FaheemMitha Well, even for us, it can be frustrating when we're stuck. But then it's even more fun when we get unstuck.

Math mostly inspires terror in the majority of humanity. But you already know that.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes, it can be satisfying when you get somewhere. You want to go around and tell everyone about it.

@Kurt Congratulation. And don't listen to the naysayers complaining about the misplaced comma or the fact it's not a prime. (Well, the comma is annoying, but it's not your fault.)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen wait, is it not the job of @DavidCarlisle to mention the wrong comma? ;-)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Well, that's a matter of definition, isn't it?

@FaheemMitha Math is fun, LaTeX is fun!

@CarLaTeX I used to find math fun, when I still did it.

I still read about it on the net, though I don't really understand anything.

Probably not a great career choice, though.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen if we get unstuck.

I sense there are some mathematicians here. Anyone doing arithmetic algebraic geometry? That seems to hit the news a lot.

@mickep Indeed. But we are usually stuck on enough problems, we get unstuck on some of them sometime.

@FaheemMitha Not me. I'm an analysls guy.

@Kurt I am trying to preempt him.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen So I gathered. PDEs, it looks like.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen :-)

@FaheemMitha It is conceivably important for string theory.

@FaheemMitha It depends.

@FaheemMitha Find the mathematician here: Digital revolution on the water (February journal article)

@marmot It seems to be where the glamour is at.

@StefanKottwitz Depends on what?

@FaheemMitha On if you do a career based on being a mathematician or on actually doing maths.

@StefanKottwitz To be clear, I'm talking about research math.

@FaheemMitha -- There at least used to be some pretty good opportunities in the general environs of math, even if not a practicing mathematician. I say "used to" because I think i fell into a particularly "open" area at a good time. I'd really like to see the pride in putting out an excellent product (math publications) return, but, sadly, it may be too late ...

I realise that there are other fields that involve math.

@barbarabeeton I think there still are.

There is certainly plenty of applied work. Though I don't know how hard it is.

@FaheemMitha -- I hope so. I know there are still a few mathematicians who do care, but there are also more bureaucrats who simply want to get the product out the door, and as long as real errors in meaning are avoided, don't much care about appearance.

@FaheemMitha Well, it is known that there are many things that we do not understand. They are certainly not restricted to strings, but there are "Moonshine" and other relations which seem to be too intriguing to be completely accidental, but are not really understood. And yes, helping to understand previously puzzling relations may bring glamour.

@marmot I just meant that the field seems to be generally considered glamorous. At least, that's the impression I get.

High profile research problems, lots of buzz, lots of prizes awarded. That kind of thing.

@barbarabeeton I do not know the situation in mathematics, but in physics the opinion has been for a long time that regardless how beautiful you typeset your paper, the publisher will always screw it up. Only more recently people read only the arXiv versions.

@FaheemMitha Well, these are also tough questions.

And number theory in general, perhaps. But the intersection with algebraic geometry, particularly so.

@marmot I'm sure they are.

@FaheemMitha And the results there have a chance to stay. If you add the 5000th phenomenological model of dark matter, this is less likely.

@marmot Yes, that's one of the appealing things about maths. If you've proved it, you've proved it.

@marmot -- It's very sad when publishers screw things up. I've done my best to try to instruct authors how to make their books and papers visually appealing, so that potential readers will not stumble over improvident presentation. And I'm really proud of the work I did on getting math symbols accepted into Unicode; it's not perfect, nor is it complete, but it's a great improvement over what used to be possible. But while I'm mostly out of that now, I'll still try to improve things.

@barbarabeeton I guess AMS is doing a much better job than, say, Elseviewer or APS. There are some journals (which sadly got taken over by IOP) who at least have a LaTeX class (JHEP.cls and JCAP.cls), which allow you to prepare the paper in the format that it will be published. (I am not saying that they are not going to change things, but you have better control.) On the other hand, in PRL and PLB they turned correct equations into incorrect questions in their efforts to improve things.

@FaheemMitha There are relations that seem very innocent, like Fermats last theorem, which are not at all innocent (or our way of formulating mathematics is not yet optimal). I do believe that if you prove one of those, you have really done something.

@marmot -- Much? I'm not sure. There are serious gaps in the education (copyediting and presentation standards, as well as the knowledge of how to correct things properly) of the local production staff; they're really capable of much more, if only given the necessary information. And very little "standardization" in the teaching of new LaTeX users. Maybe I can encourage the latter; I'm going to try.

@Kurt no I'm worried about @ChristianHupfer

@FaheemMitha I mean the string zzz is unicode text so saying that you saw some unicode text working dosn't say a lot, in any situation some subset of Unicode will work and the rest will not,

@DavidCarlisle Oh, why?

@Kurt just banter, eg:

@DavidCarlisle :-) (did not know "banter", had to look first for german translation. I have to remember that!)

@Kurt Es tut mir leid :-)

@DavidCarlisle Muß es nicht! Ich lerne gerne etwas dazu, und mein Englisch ist Schulenglisch. Ist ein paar Jahre her, dass ich in der Schule war ...

@DavidCarlisle Do you speak German?

@Kurt obviously not, else he would have wrote "Es tut mir Leid" :)

@Skillmon he have wrote? ;-)

@Kurt Google version of German ;-)

@DavidCarlisle No need to be worried...

@ChristianHupfer Yes, sometimes I use the google translater too with sometimes funny results (in German). Not sure if it is the same for english translations ...

@Kurt I use Google Translator only for Quenya or Klingon, but only traditional Klingon, of course...

@ChristianHupfer Well, did you already a school session in klingon? Must be funny ... Sheldon would enjoy it!

@Kurt Physics is Klingon enough for students ;-)

@ChristianHupfer rotfl!

@Kurt Eu falo tantas línguas como o Google

@Skillmon I was just shocked to put in a one word english phrase and get back German with three spaces. It seems against the natural order of things.

@Kurt I don't think that word (banter) even exists in American English. Except perhaps in the Boston area. @barbarabeeton might correct me if I'm wrong.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- "Banter" is (or at least was) more widely used than just New England. I was familiar with it growing up in Baltimore, which is south of the "greasy-greazy" line.

@DavidCarlisle One word translation of "sorry": "Entschuldigung"

@barbarabeeton Having recently copyedited and typeset a conference proceedings volume myself, I must say I have gained some respect for the profession (when they do their job well). Oh, what horrible latex code I had to contend with!

@Skillmon That's more like it

@DavidCarlisle or "Verzeihung", would work, too.

@barbarabeeton So I was wrong after all. Splendid! (But is it still in use among the younger generation?)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen no, they don't talk they just text each other.

@DavidCarlisle Well, better would be to find the babelfish Douglas Adams mentioned ...

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- If you have any particular examples of what shouldn't be done, I'm going to try to put together a talk for this summer's TUG meeting on "polishing" math manuscripts for publication. If I succeed, there will be a paper published in TUGboat that I hope will be usable as a teaching reference.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- Admittedly, my circle doesn't include a lot of very young people. I still need one more day to finish packing up. There is a small clunch of 20-year-olds, and I will ask.

@barbarabeeton Oh, a word not in my dictionary: clunch! I like the sound of it.

@barbarabeeton I don't know if I can bear going back and looking again. But I'll let you know if I find something teachable.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- This is actually a "nonce" word, that was used in the folk dancing group that I used to be active in. It means a "small, rather coherent, bunch of individuals". Yes, it does have a nice sound.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- I wouldn't want to distress you. But if you'd like to see what I come up with before its formal presentation, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

@barbarabeeton actually I read it as clutch (as in eggs:-)

@DavidCarlisle -- A little different, but related, I'm sure.

@barbarabeeton only meaning I can find for clunch is a type of limestone:-)

@DavidCarlisle -- I did say that it wasn't a standard term, just used by the small group where it arose. (I didn't know the limestone meaning.)

Hello guys!!

Do you know how to do this:

but using MathJax?

\require{empheq} is not a valid command since empheq is not on the list of usable packages

@barbarabeeton Sure, I'll take a look. I believe you have my mail address, unless it's tied up in your ams mail archives where you no longer (?) have access. But I am trivially found by googling.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- Thanks. It'll take me a while to get everything organized, but I'll stay in touch.

@StefanKottwitz Tell Frank

Lol

@JosephWright I found an acknowledgement page now, so I removed my screenshots above.

@Sebastiano Why did you delete your question? I think the best overview for usable fonts in LaTeX and its supporting packages is ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts

@manooooh if it's the whole expression just colour the background from tthe surrounding page css

@DavidCarlisle no, there is a multiple boxed in one formula

If possible, each one has a different color

Btw hello David!

@manooooh it's easy to do that using mathml input to mathjax not so sure about tex

I want to show it in math.SE page etc.

:49083884 I think they only configure mathjax for tex input but mathjax internally is pretty much mathml

@DavidCarlisle yes for sure. we are not the admin of the site so I do not know if we can use MathML for this purpose

Oh

docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/options/input-processors/MathML.html

There is saying that we have to use $\require{input/MathML}$?

If yes, I do not know how to use e.g. this code:

@manooooh you can't inject javascript into the stackexchange wiki/markdown markup