TeX, LaTeX and Friends

8:14 AM

@vlg expl3 isn't really so "new". A lot important packages use it already since years, e.g. siunitx and fontspec. I use it for every new code, and wish I had the time to use it for some old code too, see e.g. tex.stackexchange.com/a/458937/2388.

@vlg I have been using essentially that syntax since about 1992:-) It is mainly to improve programming possibilities, whether it improves performance depends on what you are doing, Will and Bruno (especially) have done a lot of work optimising that code, so it's unlikely (but of course not impossible) that you can get better performance offering similar features, ...

@vlg ... but like any high level language it is translated to lower level code so if you want a specific thing and are prepared to write that functionality in tex primitives it must always be faster to do that.

8:47 AM

My PhD advisor told me to put a ten dollar bill between the pages of my thesis in the university library. "So I can check to see if anyone read it?", I asked. "No, of course no one will read it," he replied, "but when you come back into town you'll always have money for lunch." https://twitter.com/NoahHaber/status/1097565095272636421

Tweeted by CT_Bergstrom on February 19, 2019 at 9:16 AM

9:28 AM

@Raaja You can't hide \multicolumn in a command with optional argument defined through \newcommand, but this is possible with \NewExpandableDocumentCommand.

@UlrikeFischer One small worry about using expl3: If I use it in writing classes or style files for my colleagues, I'd be afraid of inadvertently using a recent addition to the language. The problem being that many of said colleagues tend to have very old TeX distributions. Usually, they'll install some distribution when they get a new computer, then they'll never update it. Do I worry needlessly?

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Well no, if you use a new command and they have an old system they will get an error. But this problem is not restricted to expl3, you get it with every package that evolves. You can't use all the goodies from tcolorbox if you don't keep your system up-to-date. People really need to get rid of the idea "latex doesn't change so I never need to update". This was never true and today even less.

@UlrikeFischer that might be quite interesting. We need to test this in as many PDF viewers as we can. I was testing it using Evince on Linux. Works fine. And using the uncompressed version of the saved PDF, the data seems easy to get out.

Anyone know if there are general CLI tools that can get form data out of a PDF?

9:44 AM

@daleif I know qpdf has some interesting features, but I am not sure if it can handle form data extraction... Maybe it's worth a check...

Here is from Emacs

/FT /Tx
/DA (/Helv 10 Tf 0 0 0 rg)
/Subtype /Widget
/Type /Annot
/V (\376\377^@2)
/F 4
/T (test3)
/Rect [270.349 643.646 314.861 657.593]
/Q 0
/DV ()
/BS

Had to type out some control sequences

The value here is 2

So at least in this case the data is parsable

@daleif tex.stackexchange.com/a/386853/2388 (this users has quite a number of useful answers to this topic).

Joseph Wright

@HaraldHanche-Olsen We document ever addition: you can check which commands you use and set a warning. See for example the start of siunitx.sty.

@UlrikeFischer Lol is already using pdftk to decompress, never occurred to try an dump the data. I just tested Edge, FF and Chrome on Windows. They are a no-go. The first two could not show the fields. Chrome could show the fields, but does not seem to be able to save the data into a PDF. (using a form send to is a no-go in this case, the exam system does not support it)

10:02 AM

@daleif imho you will need a "real" pdf viewer, the plugins in the browsers miss a number of functions.

@UlrikeFischer that is my impression as well. A recommendation would of course be save the PDF to disk, and double check the filled in data before you upload.

and pdftk + dump_data_fields is SO much easier

10:23 AM

Dear all,

how to do to obtain the bibliography on blue ?

" I use polyglossia

10:57 AM

@JosephWright Took me a while to figure out where to look, but it seems that source3.pdf is the best place to find out when a function was added. Or did you have anything else in mind? (I notice also l3syntax-changes.pdf has useful information. l3obsolete.txt, maybe not so much.)

@UlrikeFischer True, but when things do break, guess who gets to deal with the fallout? (The package author, that's who.) I think the best self-defence is to not use features added in the past year or two, say, and to make sure the package yells at the user if their installation is too old.

11:14 AM

@HaraldHanche-Olsen you can't avoid that things break. If you stick to old stuff, documents of users with new systems can break, if you use new stuff old documents break. You only need to look at the recurrent problems of miktex users with differening user/admin states. I tell people to update their stuff when something breaks - and normally they are quite reasonable and do it.

any idea?

@Vrouvrou blue?

@JosephWright I'm just trying to import the new unicode-math test files from Will's repo, and he has at the end of every tlg the line Compilation 1 of test file completed with exit status 0. Do you have an idea where it is from? I don't find it why my log doesn't add it.

@JosephWright one only has to ask a question to find the answer, recordstatus = true;-)

11:54 AM

@UlrikeFischer bug repport on hyperref. Why is field height zero inside a matrix?

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[]{hyperref}
\parskip=1em
\newcommand\BOX[1]{\text{\TextField[name=#1,width=15mm]{}}}
\begin{document}
\begin{Form}
\[
\begin{pmatrix}
1 & 2 \\
\BOX{test1} & 4
\end{pmatrix}
\]

Test2: \BOX{test2}

\end{Form}
\end{document}

@daleif probably because \baselineskip is zero there.

@daleif is it different in a normal array without amsmath

@DavidCarlisle normal array + \textrm instead of \text => same result. I can just set a \baselineskip inside the \BOX

and that helps

@DavidCarlisle a bibliography in blue

or in red

@Vrouvrou \color{blue}before the bibliography.

Raaja

@egreg thanks for the explanation ;) now I see the difference

12:08 PM

@daleif OK we should probably check for that being 0 and use \normalbaselineskip in that case.

@DavidCarlisle only the title is in blue I want all the table

Good morning all users into chat.

try `\renewcommand\DefaultHeightofText{\normalbaselineskip}
`, and make a bug report at ho-tex, imho that would be a better default.

@Vrouvrou then something is wrong, as I am sure has been mentioned to you before it is far easier to help if you make an example that reproduces the problem and post a real question on the main site.

@DavidCarlisle Ah ok, thank a lot same.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage{boondox-calo}
\begin{document}
$\mathbcal{A}(\theta,\phi)=$
\end{document}

12:11 PM

@Sebastiano no I don't have that package

@DavidCarlisle \usepackage{BOONDOX-calo}

A: Does anyone know how to write this symbol?

@DavidCarlisle Thank you very much the same.

@UlrikeFischer Hi and good morning.

0

N.B. Yet this is not tested because I'm using not register LaTeX online. \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} \usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath} \usepackage{boondox-calo} \begin{document} $\mathbcal{A}(\theta,\phi)=$ \end{document}

@Sebastiano no, the symbol from boondox look different:

@UlrikeFischer Thank you I remove my answer now. But I saw that calligraphic A from somewhere, but I don't remember where. Maybe Stix-font.

@Sebastiano why post an untested answer?

12:16 PM

@DavidCarlisle Because I thought that logging in with another online editor with github I had the required package.

cocalc.com/doc/latex-editor.html

GermanShepherd

While typsetting a vernacular language (kannada), there are issues in alignment. Some words spill out of the margin. Any ideas on what to do? @DavidCarlisle

@UlrikeFischer it does not seem that such a widely used PDF viewer as Preview on the Mac can handle such PDF files. No boxes appear. One can write on the PDF using the commenting tool, but that makes the PDF harder to parse

@daleif a fast search for "mac preview pdf form filling" suggests that it should be able to handle form fields.

12:33 PM

@UlrikeFischer Hmm, maybe we need to test on a newer Mac

@UlrikeFischer any idea why the hyperref bugtracker is not listed in doc/latex/hyperref/manual.pdf, which is the default result for texdoc hyperref in TL18. It is listed in hyperref.pdf from the same location.

@daleif ask @DavidCarlisle. But the easiest is to add an issue to the bug tracker so that the manual is corrected ;-)

@UlrikeFischer I was going to until I noticed that it was there in hyperref.pdf and there might be an idea behind that.

@daleif if the main manual (which is manual.pdf) doesn't contain this info, there is no idea behind it, it simply has been forgotten.

@GermanShepherd xetex?

@daleif as @UlrikeFischer says:-)

1:10 PM

@DavidCarlisle already added

1:22 PM

@daleif thanks

1:49 PM

@UlrikeFischer I am not trying to completely avoid breaking stuff, only to minimise breakage. So I figure, if I use features that have been in for ≥ 2 years and are not marked obsolete or deprecated, I have a better chance at achieving that. (And people can be remarkably unreasonable when they're facing a deadline and can't typeset their documents.) I also imagine that the expl3 authors are better than most at avoiding breaking changes.

user0

@StefanKottwitz Now I wanted to finally answer cis, but found my texwelt account blocked. Since our last conversation, nothing happened from my side. Anything wrong?

yo'

2:11 PM

@egreg Why in the world do people write blabla ~\cite{foo}.

@yo' because they want to get a linebreak before the citation which is then indented by one word space?

yo'

@DavidCarlisle I dunno. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would you use a tilde at all then?

@yo' I think at one point we did consider making ~ do an unskip but worried it would change too much existing stuff.

@yo' yes sorry it makes no sense I was just trying to get inside a user's head:-)

yo'

2:47 PM

@DavidCarlisle I know, after all, we could blame @JosephWright for users' illogical behaviour :)

Q: How to get automatic line-breaks using tabularx and makecell?♀

3:04 PM

@yo' seems like a reasonable plan.

Skillmon

3:29 PM

@StefanKottwitz I can't open texwelt.de/wissen/fragen/24167/… , I get a OperationalError do you want me to send you the traceback or is there any known incident?

Stefan Kottwitz

@Skillmon I worked on the database - is it ok now?

JouleV

0

I'm using the tabularx and makecell packages for the aesthetics of my tables. I used the X column type for columns with long texts and \makecell{...} for line-breaks into the cells. But when I try to use both together, the effect of the X columns doesn't work. In the MWE I'd like that the long t...

My god, three answers within one minute and two answers within 5 seconds :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@user0 Software issue, cannot simply unsuspend - manual change in the database is not possible right now. Perhaps use the other account user-0

Skillmon

@StefanKottwitz yes, back up and running :)

@StefanKottwitz maybe it's a good idea to switch to some "Maintenance..." screen while making changes to the database.

Stefan Kottwitz

@Skillmon yes, sometimes I'm too casual...

marmot

3:54 PM

@JouleV This doesn't prove that time is quantized. ;-)

Hi folks.

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle lol, I got the tick: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/475838/… :)

@FaheemMitha hello

@Skillmon Hey.

4:22 PM

@yo' The first incarnation of amslatex did remove spaces before ~

I've got a short document (a letter). If I put a tabular inside a quoting environment on what should be the first page, it pushes it to the second page. I assume the quoting environment puts an invisible box around the quoted text, which pushes it over the edge.

I'm mostly using the quoting environment because it puts a nice clear black border around the text. Suggestions for workarounds?

Anyone want to add something? https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/475707/environment-for-chemical-reaction-with-reference/

@egreg your solution from another question is better IMO but I h ave to choose some answer...

@G.Bay Should we close it as duplicate?

Maybe... it would e shame but I guess it applies.

4:38 PM

@G.Bay I should make some test. Stay tuned.

@G.Bay NO, HEAVENS NO

@PauloCereda Dollyinho is your friend :) don't worry

@G.Bay you will be stabbed

Thats evil, whats wrong with dollyinho meme?

4:43 PM

@Skillmon the teachings of @egreg are spreading...

@G.Bay It's the awful soft drink with an annoying commercial

@FaheemMitha \enlargethispage{1cm} ?

@egreg I thought I remembered something along those lines

@PauloCereda LMAO, its so funky and brega... that becomes funny on its own

I don't drink any sort of soda anyway so...

@DavidCarlisle I tried \setlength{\textheight}{1.2\textheight}, which had no effect.

@DavidCarlisle Where would I put that. In the preamble?

@FaheemMitha that would work before `\begin{document}

@FaheemMitha no \enlargethispage just applies to the page it is on

4:46 PM

@DavidCarlisle Ok, I'll try it. Isn't it possible to stop the quoting environment from gobbling space?

@DavidCarlisle And \enlargethispage{1cm} would apply to every page?

@FaheemMitha no idea, you could always precede it by \vspace*{-1cm} to move it up a bit

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

@FaheemMitha a lot of things are possible, but if you don't show a bit concrete code one can only guess.

@DavidCarlisle No visible difference.

@UlrikeFischer Yes, I realise that an example is better.

@FaheemMitha you did something wrong or it is more overfull than 1cm or there is a page break for another reason or something else or....

4:50 PM

@DavidCarlisle hm

@DavidCarlisle Yes, lots of possibilities.

@FaheemMitha blame @PauloCereda

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle Ok, I'll do that.

@PauloCereda ^^

4:52 PM

@DavidCarlisle oh no

Jun 29 '17 at 16:15, by Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle you are not mean :)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen oh

@DavidCarlisle This is in amstex.sty: \def~{\unskip\nobreak\ \ignorespaces}

@G.Bay Here's what I get by just adding my code from \makeatletter up to \makeatother to yours

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{chemmacros}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\makeatletter % patchcmd from etoolbox, loaded by chemmacros
\patchcmd{\hyper@makecurrent}
 {\edef\Hy@param{#1}}
 {\xHy@param@def{#1}}
 {}{}
\def\xHy@param@def#1{%
  \edef\@tempa{\csname theH#1\endcsname}%
  \edef\@tempa{\expandafter\@car\@tempa\@nil}%
  \edef\Hy@param{\if R\@tempa reaction\else#1\fi}%
}
\makeatother
\newcommand\reactionautorefname{Reaction}

\chemsetup{
    modules = {reactions} ,
    formula = mhchem

@egreg That looks great, if you replace the curly braces I would have to accept your answer. Thats what I did actually. But if you want to make as duplicate its ok for me too.

5:08 PM

@G.Bay I'm not sure that you really want to replace the curly braces, unless reactions share the counter with equations, so you'd get (1) for the equation and (2) for the reaction. Otherwise readers would have a hard time in interpreting which is which.

I see, that makes sense. Maybe then I should add like "Eq" in front of equations or something like that.

You can use

\chemsetup{
  modules = {reactions},
  formula = mhchem,
  reactions/tag-open=(,
  reactions/tag-close=),
}

@G.Bay But I'd really share the counter.

@egreg I gotta check that damn ABNT standard... but I have to agree you got a very good point there.

@egreg better not use it at start of a para then:-)

@G.Bay Unfortunately there does not seem to be an option for chemmacros to share the counters. :-(

@G.Bay There should be. It might be a feature request.

5:17 PM

hehehe

ABNT only says to number "equations and formulas" thats very vauge

@G.Bay use different counters, trust me

@PauloCereda For sure, but some reader might be confuse with both counters, maybe "(Re 1)" is better then just (1)

@G.Bay Ah yes, you need to preceed them. :)

I think I got Cerada's blessing now, lol

@DavidCarlisle did you see the mail?

5:23 PM

\chemsetup{
  modules = {reactions},
  formula = mhchem,
  reactions/tag-open=(R,
  reactions/tag-close=),
}

@G.Bay ^^^^^^

@egreg Thank you! Do you want to post as an answer or make it dupe? I gtg now, be back in 2 hours

@UlrikeFischer yes will try to look later (although I may have to generate a suitable windows texlive tree to drop it in to)

@DavidCarlisle I can try too (after all I already have a suitable windows texlive ...), but what I'm not quite getting is, do I need all the mingw stuff when I have working windows texlive?

@UlrikeFischer possibly or at least you'll need a mingw luatex not the win32tex one so the dlls are compatible

5:40 PM

@DavidCarlisle hm yes, so I will use the whole folder. But I should really at first sort luaotfload.

@DavidCarlisle but it is good news that there is something going on ...

6:04 PM

@AlanMunn: journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/jist/article/view/722

The power of language, to the extreme. :)

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda wtf? Is this a joke? It seems like a totally ridiculous question.

@AlanMunn I think it's a joke...

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Not completely a joke, but not completely serious, I guess:

The journal is published as an educational tool by students on the Natural Sciences/Interdisciplinary Science undergraduate degree programmes at the University of Leicester (UK) and iScience students at McMaster University (Canada).

The journal accepts brief articles on topics original to the authors. It does not accept reviews or summaries of other peoples work. It is managed by an editorial board which rotates around the student body and is overseen by a member of staff. The journal forms part of the assessed element of both the BSc and MSc degree (UK). Assessment is by number and qualit…

@AlanMunn oh that explains it.

Phelype Oleinik

@PauloCereda Looks like it came from what-if.xkcd.com :)

6:23 PM

@PhelypeOleinik :)

8:11 PM

@PauloCereda @AlanMunn “Blistering remark” is a common figure of speech. So a natural question is, what does it take for a remark to actually raise a blister?

@PhelypeOleinik Speaking of which, my favourite is What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? Pretty apocalyptic, as it turns out.

Werner

10

Circumscribe

@Werner Nice!

Werner

8:26 PM

@Circumscribe Fooooooooouuuuuuuurrrr!

...four the golfers.

Or gholphours.

Circumscribe

@Werner :)

Phelype Oleinik

@HaraldHanche-Olsen That's an excellent one :) Those articles have the bad habit of being apocalyptic.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Even Sunless Earth, which looks promising for most part of it, ends with a “We would all freeze and die”.

barbara beeton

@Werner -- following up on that theme, it's quite nice "foursome".

marmot

10:38 PM

@Werner May the fourth be with you!

vlg

11:46 PM

Read in [1] that one shouldn't make set count values directly rather use `\advance`. First, why? Second, to set to zero, just advance by negative itself, right?

[1] https://www.texdev.net/2009/11/17/tex-counts-and-latex-counters/