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12:09 AM
I don't know if I'm in the good place for this question: I will ask an used to provide a MWE, and add link to a good ressource about MWE on tex.SE. What URL do you use? Searching for MWE on tex.meta.SE give 268 results.
*user (not used)
 
@quark67 The standard one many people use is: tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/228/2693. Personally I'm more inclined to just explain basically what would help and don't link to the meta site.
 
@AlanMunn Indeed, one should not be antagonistic towards marmots.
 
12:27 AM
@AlanMunn Thanks, very useful link. As my comment is slightly long (with other stuffs) I will use it as an explanation for the "MWE".
 
12:57 AM
@DavidCarlisle Indeed!
 
 
3 hours later…
3:33 AM
@AlanMunn @FaheemMitha You forgot Advanced Marmot Safety (AMS). ;-)
 
 
5 hours later…
8:04 AM
@JouleV did you delete a comment/answer in a @marmot 's answer O.o? If so, please don't delete anything useful, because the answer is decontextualized
 
8:23 AM
@manooooh Well, it is a (silly) comment: "Hi! I don't think top left = north west." and clearly it is wrong, so I deleted it. It is not useful!
 
@quark67, Y a pas à dire ! Ce sont les français qui expliquent le mieux et le plus simplement ce qu'est un exemple complet minimal. Pour preuve celui de texnique : court, simple et précis : texnique.fr/osqa/faq/#custom-id-ecm
 
@AndréC I'm afraid we must speak in english here.
 
@quark67, non remontez dans l'historique, cela cause en allemand, en espagnol très souvent
 
@AndréC D'accord. Je pense qu'il vaut mieux que l'on supprime nos commentaires respectifs (qui sont hors sujets dans la réponse tex.stackexchange.com/a/477308/132405). Et le mieux serait que vous supprimiez le premier commentaire, qui était lié à une mauvaise traduction de votre part. Ou alors, supprimez à partir de "and then?" en remplaçant par "Thanks, it's more clear yet" par exemple.
 
@JouleV with that criterion, I would like to delete an answer from me in math.SE that does not answer the question at all but I can not do it since you can not delete answers "from the pull". If you have made a mistake do not worry, someone else will correct you and, if not, you will clarify it in a later message. Wrong is a quality of the human being
 
8:37 AM
Je préfère laisser mes erreurs visibles plutôt que les effacer, ce qui est contraire à l'esprit régnant majoritairement sur ce site. C'est ce que j'apprends à mes élèves : comprendre ses erreurs, donc ne pas les nier, les reconnaître. On progresse lorsque l'on comprend ses erreurs.
@quark67 Je préfère laisser mes erreurs visibles plutôt que les effacer, ce qui est contraire à l'esprit régnant majoritairement sur ce site. C'est ce que j'apprends à mes élèves : comprendre ses erreurs, donc ne pas les nier, les reconnaître. On progresse lorsque l'on comprend ses erreurs.
 
@AndréC Le problème est que vous n'avez compris qu'avec mon explication en français. Or je ne pense pas que l'explication en français reste présente. Cela dit, si vous avez réellement des difficultés en anglais, le mieux est d'éviter de poser des questions « polémiques » potentiellement liées à une mauvaise traduction. Moi-même, je préfère en rester à des questions techniques, c'est moins grave de se tromper sur ça.
@AndréC "sheß" vient de s'inquiéter dans les commentaire en demandant ce qui se passe ici...
Is there a way to "call" an user, so he will go in this chat?
 
@quark67 I think you can use @
 
@quark67 If the @-ping prompts the user name that have been here recently and it will work. Otherwise no, you have to ping them from one of their posts and just ask that they come here, or open a room specifically for the two of you.
@manooooh ^^
 
8:53 AM
@DavidCarlisle oh, I have never noticed about that, thanks! (@JouleV, just see how I can be wrong, it feels so good! :P)
 
@DavidCarlisle Thanks. It's about the comments of this answer: tex.stackexchange.com/a/477308/132405. AndréC (a french user) misunderstand a sentence from sheß, I (also a french user) have explained first in english, then in french, and yet sheß is worried about this activity in comments.
 
@marmot Gosh, how could I have overlooked that?
 
@manooooh Yeah, we can never avoid mistakes and those mistakes are developing us! After that comment I think I will remember the meaning of left and west for the rest of my life :D. However, it is too silly, clearly it is not contributing to the question at all, right? It is not necessary, and above all, it is useless for other users -- and that is the reason I deleted it.
 
@quark67 you can ping sheß in a comment there with a link to here
 
@DavidCarlisle as under comments, the message "Please avoid extended discussions in comments. Would you like to automatically move this discussion to chat?" is displayed, I fear adding more comment to explain what happens to sheß.
 
9:04 AM
@quark67 yes sometimes it's better just to let things drop, life carries on:-)
 
@manooooh Your answer on Math.SE is at least somewhat useful for others even though it is not answering the question, therefore there are some reasons not to delete it (although I would delete it in my case). Well, I don't want to see one of my favorite SE users getting so many downvotes, so I just upvoted your answer.
 
@DavidCarlisle Must I delete my message in french in the comment?
 
@quark67 I take a rather relaxed approach to comments, if you don't think it's useful delete it, if you think it's useful leave it there, but either way note that the site does not value comments (unlike answers) and they can be removed automatically by the system or by the moderators at any time, so don't feel aggrieved if they vanish.
 
@JouleV I think you're confusing friendship with the quality of answers. My answer does not have any kind of foundation, it has even been totally denied by a later comment, ergo, it deserves a negative vote (or case no, if you prefer to see a maximum of -1). What happens is that if one deletes a contribution that is being used by another, the ideal would be that it is not deleted because it is decontextualized
@JouleV currently, I do not see any difference between your comment and my response. We were both wrong, and maybe having tested our solutions we would not have made the mistake
 
@DavidCarlisle I will keep the english explanations for AndréC, but delete the french, as the site language is english. Thanks.
@AndréC I have deleted my french explanation.
 
9:19 AM
@manooooh I agree.
If you want, I will unupvote your answer. In case your answer has a score of -3 or below, deleting it will give you a bronze badge.
 
9:33 AM
@JouleV for me, it does not make sense that you vote positively on a response that has no basis or precision in the solution, so I encourage you to take away the positive vote. Regarding the badge, I do not care if I have all or none
 
@manooooh I totally agree with you. As for the vote, your reply is too late that my vote is now locked.
 
@JouleV oh no! Hahaha. No problem! I like your profile photo :D
 
@manooooh :-D
 
9:54 AM
@quark67 "sheß" a été averti car tous les commentaires qui sont placés sur une question ou une réponse sont automatiquement adressé à celui qui a écrit cette question ou cette réponse. En outre, vous pouvez l'adresser à quelqu'un d'autre avec le arobas devant le pseudo. Voir : meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/…
 
@AndréC Oui, je sais qu'on peut s'adresser à quelqu'un en particulier dans les commentaires avec "@nom" (ce que j'ai fais en vous répondant). Mais je suppose que ce qui a "inquiété" sheß, c'est nos commentaires en français.
 
10:26 AM
@quark67 Le français pose beaucoup de problèmes ici et pas l'allemand, allez savoir pourquoi...
 
10:48 AM
@DavidCarlisle Давайте поговорим по-русски, чтобы прервать этот разговор.
@AlanMunn LOL
 
@PauloCereda Это очень хорошая идея
@PauloCereda そして、なぜ日本語ではないのですか?
 
11:31 AM
@PauloCereda Wazo nzuri
 
Did this suddenly stop being an English chat room?
 
@FaheemMitha Nej, det är bara folket här som blir lite "tokiga" då våren kommer.
 
@mickep My worse fears realised.
 
@FaheemMitha Hehe, sorry, I could not resist.
 
I'm guessing this is liberal abuse of Google Translate or similar. Unless you all actually know those languages.
 
11:43 AM
@FaheemMitha is there a difference between "knowing all those languages" and "using google translate" ? :-)
 
@DavidCarlisle There probably is. At least until Google Translate gets good enough, and we all have neural implants inside our heads, courtesy of Google.
 
:O
For @DavidCarlisle to reach 20M, should we expect more users to register or to win more rep?
 
@manooooh I suspect they just make those numbers up, so I'm not sure if either is a reliable indicator, ask @egreg they have him down as over 40m
 
@manooooh VVVV
 
11:59 AM
Ohhh WOW!
 
I have one question: why our site is always the first target of answers like this?
In less than one hour I have seen two such answers. Both the posters have 1 reputation, participate in many sites, but only post such answers in our site.
 
12:20 PM
I got a new palindrome:
user image
4
 
@FaheemMitha J'abuse beaucoup de deepl.com pour traduire toutes les questions, les réponses, les commentaires et les conversations en français.
 
12:50 PM
@DavidCarlisle for a minute, I was expecting "roast duck" or "dinner time" :)
 
@Kurt we should downvote one of your posts to stop you posting palindromes so frequently:-)
2
 
@DavidCarlisle LOL, and I waited for an comment of you regarding the comma :-)
 
@Kurt wait for it, wait for it...
 
@PauloCereda Dinner
 
@DavidCarlisle oh no
@DavidCarlisle you are mean
 
12:54 PM
Jun 29 '17 at 16:15, by Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle you are not mean :)
 
@DavidCarlisle oh
 
@egreg How many LaTeX users are there world wide?
 
@marmot more than 4, less than 8 billion
7
 
@DavidCarlisle ooh
 
@DavidCarlisle Yes. Could you increase the precision a bit?
 
12:58 PM
@DavidCarlisle A pretty accurate estimate!
 
@marmot no
 
@marmot He could use double instead of float...
 
I've seen @egreg trying to be a mathematician over at Math.SE, are the people who have happened to stumble upon him there included in the 43m?
 
@mickep No, the figures are separate. I have 3.1m on Math.SE
 
@egreg I see, you reached 43 m out of 10 m TeX users. ;-)
 
1:00 PM
@marmot ooh metres
2
 
@egreg Oh, cool!
 
@PauloCereda For meters I'd have used siunitx.
 
@marmot ooh chemistry
 
@PauloCereda Oh no!
 
@marmot actually it counts IP addresses so if you reckon on 4 or 5 IP addresses per user, 43m out of 10m is about right
 
1:03 PM
If Herman Melville were a mathematician, he would have written Möbius Dick...
 
@PauloCereda but would he have used [oneside] or [twoside] ?
3
 
@DavidCarlisle oh no
 
@DavidCarlisle IP addresses of registered users or of anyone looking at the site. And you are saying if someone looks at one of @egreg's posts, the system will check if this IP address has looked at any other of his posts and increase the counter only if that's not the case?
 
Speaking of random things, do you guys remember youtube.com/channel/UCnFP0IU4gpnmcLnVzDLUtfw ?
 
@DavidCarlisle No, \pagestyle{nonorientable}.
 
1:07 PM
@marmot as I say I think they make the numbers up, but for unregistered users counting ip addresses is all they could do but I doubt they really keep track of that, I suspect they track a months usage and extrapolate backwards assuming new users or something. I don't think they reveal exact;y what it counts.
 
@DavidCarlisle My guess is that these numbers are very shaky. You could also multiply reputation by the day of birth and would get a similarly meaningful result.
 
@marmot But they're nicely big numbers in a CV
@marmot Probably meant for SO
 
@egreg Anybody really using these for their CV? Really? OMG!
 
I rather feel sorry for the ~55k people who have suffered through my silly questions. :D
 
@marmot I guess so. About SO users, I mean.
 
1:12 PM
@egreg That's clearly worse than counting citations.
 
@marmot Possibly similar in meaning.
 
@egreg Perhaps worse, given the shakiness.
@egreg @DavidCarlisle @mickep I find the statement "... people reached" very disappointing. How about ducks and marmots?
 
@marmot Difficult to reach. I do not dare to pet them.
 
@marmot regarding duck matters. Do you have the code the dark duck matter somewhere or the pdf?
 
\documentclass{beamer}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\usepackage{tikz,tikzducks}
\usepackage{tikzlings}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes.geometric,shapes.callouts,calc}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
\fill (current page.south west) rectangle (current page.north east);
\begin{scope}[shift={(current page.south west)},%
x={($(current page.south east)-(current page.south west)$)},
y={($(current page.north east)-(current page.south east)$)}]
\only<3->{\foreach \X in {1,...,84}
@UlrikeFischer ^^^
 
1:47 PM
@DavidCarlisle Of course they make those numbers up. It's not like SE is going out and taking a poll of TeX users.
@marmot Perhaps also a Marmot Anti Discrimination League
@DavidCarlisle I think one could reasonably move both that lower bound up, and that upper bound down. They are both way too conservative.
I think that lower bound could be at least be double digits.
 
2:03 PM
@FaheemMitha they do not have to poll, they have the server logs (but I doubt they really keep enough information from them to make realistic numbers here)
 
@marmot thanks!
 
 
1 hour later…
3:20 PM
@DavidCarlisle To get a clearer picture of the number of LaTeX users, isn't it enough to count the number of downloads of MikTeX and TeXLive?
 
@DavidCarlisle Would the server logs have enough information to make any useful estimates?
 
@AndréC And how does one measure the interactive installer?
Or network installs.
@FaheemMitha I personally don't think so.
 
@PauloCereda Why not ask the MikTeX and TeXLive maintainers, they probably have an idea of the order of magnitude of the use of their distribution.
 
@AndréC I am not remotely curious about the numbers, to be honest. :) I am simply stating there's no reliable way of getting such info apart from a direct approach, like asking. :)
 
@AndréC I suspect the LaTeX developers probably have an idea too.
Probably quite large numbers of people.
 
3:29 PM
@FaheemMitha well, I have some suspicions about the usage of my software, but that is as far as one can go. :)
I'd state that Germany is the top country on using arara. :)
 
@PauloCereda Care to hazard an order of magnitude estimate?
 
@FaheemMitha ooh this is challenging... I am tempted to use the range proposed by @DavidCarlisle. :) I'd say something between 200 and 500.
 
@PauloCereda Order of magnitude estimate means 10^k for some k.
 
@FaheemMitha I know what it means, I just don't want to complicate things. Or would you prefer me to say, eg, 2?
 
@PauloCereda It sounds like you're going more for like 2.5.
 
3:39 PM
@AndréC I've downloaded TeX Live 2018 on well over than 15 different (virtual) machines.
 
@egreg Well, you probably count as, like, 15 users, so...
 
@FaheemMitha it makes sense, as @egreg is not a real person, but an organisation of high skilled TeX users. :)
3
 
@PauloCereda Exactly.
 
@egreg That is why we are talking about order of magnitude....
 
4:02 PM
@FaheemMitha 3,900,000 users of overleaf worlwide : fr.overleaf.com/about
 
4:20 PM
@AndréC it's funny, I cannot buy it. Granted, an online platform contributed to spreading general awareness, but I do not believe the number is that big. In my academic life, I've only met 15 LaTeX users, at most.
 
@PauloCereda How many non-Brazilian users came to the TUG 2018 in Rio?
 
@AndréC the list shows me 16 people.
 
@PauloCereda I strongly suspect LaTeX has more than 15 users.
 
@PauloCereda How many took the plane and paid for the hotel?
 
@FaheemMitha :)
@AndréC Probably the same 16 people.
Well, I also took the plane and paid for the hotel. :)
And @JosephWright is really tall.
:)
 
4:26 PM
Can someone take a moment to ask SE how many users of TeX SE earned any rep on the site? I think there is a Data query thingy.
I'd say that would be a pretty good lower bound for TeX users.
 
@FaheemMitha Also, filtering users with rep > 101.
 
@PauloCereda Why?
 
@FaheemMitha it's the rep you earn when you join a site from another network.
 
The 100 point association bonus doesn't count towards rep earned on the site.
 
@FaheemMitha It does, IIRC.
 
4:28 PM
@PauloCereda It shouldn't. But maybe someone with more experience can clarify.
 
@FaheemMitha well it doesn't matter, anyway. We can happily live without this bit. :)
 
@FaheemMitha We are currently having 149,025 users.
 
@JouleV And how many of them earned any rep on the site?
 
@FaheemMitha All of them
Every single user must have more than zero reputation.
 
@JouleV All users start with rep 1.
So, no.
 
4:30 PM
@FaheemMitha oopsie :)
It's version 1.0, calm down guys. :D
 
@FaheemMitha Wait me a bit then
 
The bloke will fix in the next release. :)
@TorbjørnT. hi, long time no see! :)
 
Most users on any SE site don't have any activity.
 
@PauloCereda Apropos release ;)
 
@TeXnician ooh a secret remark
In other news, I am wearing the L3 tee, quite comfy! The TUG 2018 tee is not exactly of good quality IMHO, it does not even work as a proper pajamas....
 
4:33 PM
@FaheemMitha We are currently having 149,025 users, 61,130 of them are having 1 reputations.
Counted from this page to the end
 
@JouleV Just out of curiosity, could you rerun with rep > 101?
 
Minus user Community.
 
@JouleV You don't need to count anything. You can submit a query.
 
@FaheemMitha I don't know how to write a query, and I don't plan to learn it.
 
@JouleV Ok.
 
4:36 PM
@FaheemMitha Anyways it is only simple counting
 
21566
@FaheemMitha, @JouleV ^^
Reputation > 101
 
@PauloCereda Great!
 
@PauloCereda Did you run a query?
 
@PauloCereda I got a different number :|
 
@FaheemMitha Yes.
 
4:38 PM
Look at here.
We have 1312 x 36 + 35 users with more than 101 rep, which is, 47267
am I doing right?
 
@PauloCereda Which one? I get different results...
Okay, just noticed it. But @PauloCereda ignores everyone who has between 1 and 101 rep points...
 
@PauloCereda Oh my bad. I'm counting >=101, not >101.
 
SELECT sum(case when REPUTATION > 101 then 1 else 0 end) as "Total > 101",
sum(case when REPUTATION > 1 then 1 else 0 end) as "Total > 1"
from USERS
 
@PauloCereda More realistic:
 
Good ol' SQL-fu to make things complicated and run stuff in just one query. :)
 
4:40 PM
SELECT COUNT(id) FROM Users
WHERE REPUTATION != 101 AND REPUTATION > 1
 
@TeXnician I wub you.
 
How many LaTeX users? Let's make some assumptions, based on my experience at AMS. AMS has four primary journals; all are produced in LaTeX, and most files are submitted in LaTeX by authors. Two journals each have 12 issues per year; a random issue of one (long papers) has 20 articles; of the other, 40 articles. Let's be conservative and say 25 articles per issue. 25 x 24 = 600. Two smaller journals each with 4 issues per year and perhaps 8 articles each; another 64. Round to 700 = minimum.
 
@TeXnician People with 101 rep might have earned that on the site.
 
@TeXnician ooh :)
 
@FaheemMitha Yeah, but most of them didn't. I did not say it's the correct number but it is most probably closer to what actually should be counted...
 
4:45 PM
I think we should move TeX people to a place and then count these people... say, an island...
@TeXnician ^^
 
@PauloCereda I guess you are on the right track :)
 
@TeXnician stealth ducks :)
 
@PauloCereda Hello. (I still pop in from time to time, just less frequently than I used to.)
 
@TeXnician select count(*) from Users where UpVotes > 1 or DownVotes > 1 returned 31801.
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Sounds even better :)
 
4:50 PM
@HaraldHanche-Olsen 30,000? What about @TeXnician's query?
I think a count of people with non-zero rep is a better measure, personally.
 
@FaheemMitha It says 58495.
 
@TeXnician Hmm, interesting. So between 30 to 60 k approximately.
I wonder what the union of those two sets is.
 
@FaheemMitha Try oring these queries...
That gives 68842.
 
@TeXnician So an upper bound of 70000.
I suppose not all TeX users have an account on TeX SE.
 
Oh wait, I think Up/DownVotes count the number of votes a user has cast, not received.
 
4:56 PM
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes. I thought that's what you were going for.
 
If you use the Teacher badge count, (first answer with one upvote) you get 14888. Answerers might be more likely to be actual rather than one-time users.
 
@FaheemMitha Also, there are some groups in these numbers that either registered by accident or do not use TeX anymore (e.g, gave up on trying something).
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes. But that might be a good stat for "active member".
 
@AlanMunn ooh
 
select count(distinct OwnerUserId) from Posts returns 63448
 
4:58 PM
I like @AlanMunn's approach!
WELCOME TO SQL.SX
2
 
@AlanMunn Yes, that's a good measure. Or maybe even those who have answered a question, not necessarily with any upvotes.
@HaraldHanche-Olsen That's anyone who posted anything?
 
@AlanMunn Too bad he's not around, but we should definitely invoke @percusse to add some spice to the discussion. :)
@FaheemMitha looks like it, question or answer...
 
@FaheemMitha Yes, that's questions and answers.
 
@DavidCarlisle do you have a badge?
 
That seems quite comprehensive.
 
5:00 PM
@HaraldHanche-Olsen How do we subset this to answers only? (I'm SQL impaired.)
 
Replace Posts with Answers, I suppose.
Or something like that.
 
@AlanMunn select PostTypeId,count(distinct OwnerUserId) from Posts group by PostTypeId
… hang on …
56741 users with PostTypeId=1; 17833 for 2; really small numbers for remaining values (3…7). Shall we assume 1=question, 2=answer?
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Isn't that documented?
 
17833?
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yep.
select count(distinct OwnerUserId) from Posts where ParentId is not null
Got it through the lovely NULL reference trick :)
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen There are 7 different kinds of posts?
 
5:04 PM
@PauloCereda Yes, that's what I just got too. Amazingly reading the documentation helped. :)
 
@FaheemMitha Yep. I have no idea what the other five are.
 
@AlanMunn Reading docs?! Preposterous! :)
 
There are only one each of type 3 and 7.
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Deleted questions/answers maybe?
 
@PauloCereda blasphemy!
 
5:05 PM
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Community-answered, deleted (both question and answer). We need one more...
@HaraldHanche-Olsen :)
 
@PauloCereda Community wiki deleted? Or community wiki question? Is that possible?
 
@AlanMunn OH MY
 
Does anyone know TeX users who don't have an account here?
 
There are 211 type 4, 181 type 5, 9 type 6.
 
@FaheemMitha At least 40...
 
5:07 PM
@TeXnician Oh? That many?
 
@FaheemMitha I'm sure there are plenty of people who use the site as a passive resource and never ask questions, so yes.
 
@AlanMunn And never bothered to create an account?
 
@FaheemMitha Given the number of TeX users I know it's quite a low number.
 
Ordinary question, ordinary answer, CW question, CW answer, deleted question, deleted answer, deleted CW question, deleted CW answer...
 
@FaheemMitha Yes, I would bet yes.
 
5:08 PM
It seems a bit surprising to me.
Unless they are really expert, I mean.
 
select Id as [Post Link] from Posts where PostTypeId=3 returns a bunch of links saying undefined, and an error message when I try following a link.
 
@FaheemMitha TeX.sx in TUG 2018 were Tom, Joseph, Ulrike, Will, Frank and myself, probably. The rest didn't have an account.
 
@FaheemMitha I don't think so. Unless you feel the need to ask a question, or like answering questions, there's not much need to create an account.
 
@AlanMunn Yes, I was meaning the asking questions part.
 
5:09 PM
@HaraldHanche-Olsen probably "really" deleted questions, as they are invisible to us non-mods...
 
Surely most users would have a question at some point.
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen LOL
 
@FaheemMitha But there's so much good information already, you could spend a long time without having to ask your own question, even for non-expert users.
 
I'd never expect that!
 
@AlanMunn Hmm. If you were only doing really simple things, possibly.
 
5:10 PM
@samcarter Welcome back!
 
I've not found that to be the case, myself.
 
@HaraldHanche-Olsen wow
 
@FaheemMitha I would say the vast majority of tex users do not have an account here.
 
I miss Nelson... :(
 
5:11 PM
@FaheemMitha Not necessarily. Documentation exists, I hear. :)
 
@FaheemMitha TeX.SX have about 150 000 users. Overleaf claims it's "used by over 3,900,000 students and academics".
 
@DavidCarlisle Ok. Is this based on real life interactions? Or something else?
 
@FaheemMitha both
 
@AlanMunn Sure. But documentation only gets you so far.
 
@FaheemMitha Right, but you're talking about the tails of the distribution now.
 
5:12 PM
For example, if you want a bit of custom code, your options are (a) write it yourself (b) ask for help.
And given TeX is TeX, you have to be quite expert to manage (a).
Anyway...
 
@FaheemMitha sure but much tex use is thesis writing and if you ask for help, you ask your fellow students.
 
@DavidCarlisle I guess so. To some extent.
 
@DavidCarlisle Beer at Frank's? :)
 
@FaheemMitha it has always been this way comp.text.tex usage was a tiny fraction of total tex usage (as is membership of user groups) both really so low as to be negligable compared to overall tex usage I would expect. but really until the likes of overleaf we had no way to measure tex user numbers
 
I think the number of people who can write TeX programmatically worldwide is quite low. Probably well under 10,000.
 
5:16 PM
@FaheemMitha but that gives no indication of the number of people writing tex documents.
 
@DavidCarlisle So most TeX users don't ask questions on the net?
@DavidCarlisle Agreed. But I didn't say it did.
 
@FaheemMitha That is true I am sure. they may ask on facebook and get answers from their friends. Only sad tex geeks with no friends need a tex-specific forum....
2
 
@DavidCarlisle Facebook? Ugh.
And assuming their friends are expert enough, perhaps.
@DavidCarlisle I think TeX users are happy. Not sad. At least happy they are using TeX.
I mean, as opposed to the many horrible alternatives out there.
 
@DavidCarlisle oi
 
@FaheemMitha I don't use it myself but facebook or whatever the latest social media craze amongst 20 year olds is where your typical social media using student is going to ask first. then google, which means most questions an answer will be found without needing an account (there are not so many new questions) then it is just the small tail that finds no answer by those means posts a question here.
@FaheemMitha they do not need to be expert, they just need to have managed to produced a thesis and let the following students copy the same setup.
 
5:23 PM
@DavidCarlisle also, some errors do produce a resulting PDF, so they simply do not care about them.
 
@DavidCarlisle It sounds like you've thought about it. :-)
 
@PauloCereda $yes, also some sections may have no space for some reason, but as long as yo can read it, who cares?
@FaheemMitha I have seen a lot of tex users, and answered a lot of tex questions:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle I see.
 
@DavidCarlisle $italic$ right? :)
 
5:42 PM
@JosephWright Luigi wrote me, that the pdf 2.0/objcompresslevel has been fixed. If you know (or suspect) about more 2.0 relatex problems, if would probably the right moment to mention them to him.
 
5:53 PM
Hello @DavidCarlisle and hello @ll
 
6:07 PM
Please if you have time or if you have TB close to you :-) I have a problem in understanding page 85 of TeXbook. First it say that in horizontal mode TeX is building horizontal list for a paragraph, then in last paragaph (Continuing with... those lines were put in boxes and appended to the page...)!!! isn't this the main vertical list?
So it seems that in horizontal mode TeX is building horizontal list for a paragraph, and the main vertical list.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:29 PM
@DavidCarlisle is what said here right ?
 
7:41 PM
@touhami I think at that level "page" == "main vertical list" as Knuth himself notes in the book the terminology isn't always exact and details are filled in later.
@UlrikeFischer @JosephWright looks like they caught most of them using two integers if (img_pdfmajorversion(idict) < 2 && img_pdfminorversion(idict) < 4)
 
@DavidCarlisle "they" = luatex?
 
7:56 PM
@UlrikeFischer Hans and Luigi, yes
 
@DavidCarlisle thanks I will try to read again. What about second question?
 
@DavidCarlisle Do you think they missed places or is it okay?
 
@UlrikeFischer hard to know, I updated and then searched for minorversion, and just looked at the surrounding code, but it's a bit hard to debug that way landing in the middle of code without any context, but I didn't spot any that obviously are missing a test
@UlrikeFischer if i get a bit of time I may try a more systematic check, it would be useful for pdftex anyway as that C code is in parts derived from pdftex so porting back the new 2.0 tests to pdftex in a compatible way would be good
@touhami which question?
 
@DavidCarlisle is what I said here right ?
 
8:19 PM
Any clue why pgfplots \addplot3 crashes with an out of memory error after just samples=100?
I am so confused, why would it not be able to handle anything below a few thousand samples o.o
and its not some super complex thing, its just a basic curve in 3D
 
@touhami oh I didn't notice "here" was a link:-) let me look....
@touhami yes, unless you want to give the real answer which is "you shouldn't put formatting in the arguments of section commands, and if you do, you deserve what you get" :-)
 
@DavidCarlisle There is no formatting in the section argument, the color is later in the paragraph.
 
@UlrikeFischer @touhami as @UlrikeFischer said:-) In that case yes you are more right than I am:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle in this case thank's to @UlrikeFischer ;-)
Thank you all
 
vlg
9:22 PM
I'm using moderncv to, surprise-surprise, make a cv. I thought it uses redefining trickery to include a letter before the cv, but contrasting the regular letter doc class, its paragraphs don't form neat rectangles- the right-hand side is jagged; I don't know what exactly it's called. Is the inter-word spacing absent? What should I be searching for in the .sty's to correct or add myself in the final document?
It's \raggedleft not jaggedleft*
 
9:42 PM
@vlg In europa you can use instead scrlttr2 to get an letter fitting the usual envelops and using the european standards for letters. No need to reevent the wheels ...
 
@vlg CVs are usually set \raggedright so that makes sense. What style variant are you using?
 
vlg
10:00 PM
Is there are reason for this, or just convention? Using 'classic', of which I've tweeked maybe a few commas, nothing else
@AlanMunn The CV itself I'd understand, but the letter it gets appended to just looks bad afterwards.
The main .cls has a single ´\raggedbottom´, and moderncvbodyi.sty, the classic, has a few´\raggedleft´s but again, all these should be invoke after the letter, right? Given that the letter is printed out first
 
@vlg I'm not disagreeing with you. :) It's a design choice that the class makes for the letter as well. A simple fix might be to load the ragged2e package and then wrap the letter in {\justifying }
@vlg I don't use moderncv and it has absolutely no documentation.
@vlg But here's a solution:
49
Q: Justify text in moderncv cover letter

PascalI am writing a cover letter and CV using moderncv. Everything works fine so far, but the text in the cover letter is not justified. I think it is good that it is not hyphenated, but it would look much nicer if the text was justified. Here is a minimal example: \documentclass{moderncv} \moderncv...

 
vlg
@AlanMunn Too much time invested already, spending a day to hash out a cv from other packages, or a week to make one myself would be counterproductive to find a job.
The `\justifying` from ragged2e is nowhere near the perfectly straight lines-, welp, I guess I should've searched more
 
@vlg My cv is just article + longtable + biblatex.
 
vlg
@AlanMunn I'll see to make one anew wo/ moderncv after/if I get hired. Longtable is one hellva solution so often.
 
vlg
10:41 PM
So, the problems were 1) the \raggedright before \@opening, and 2) no hyphenation rules for German having been set.
 
@vlg brilliant package, I wonder who wrote it....
 
@AlanMunn And \usepackage{tikzlings}, I assume.
 
@marmot I may be Marmot of the Month but I don't put it on my cv.
 
@AlanMunn You should. This will make sure it gets read. ;-)
 
vlg
Actually, not even that, polyglossia wants to see ngerman, instead of german, even though that what the official, up-to-date documentation says.
@DavidCarlisle You're being too modest, Your Majesty.
 
10:52 PM
@vlg :-)
 
vlg
@DavidCarlisle I actually finished my project, I think. I want to say it's 1.0, since there are no current issues. You and the texchat lended many hands along the way, so thank you
 
11:06 PM
From the NY Times: Many of them, [big tech companies] such as Amazon and Microsoft, are among the most beloved brands in the world. #whatworldareyoulivingin
 
11:43 PM
@AlanMunn Link?
 
@AlanMunn Thank you.
I'm not sure why people keep talking about Trump. Like the US govt was a choir of heavenly harmony before he showed up.
 

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