@PauloCereda When the Queen met Olive the Duck

@AlanMunn \duck[queencrown=olive]

@PauloCereda @CarLaTeX ^^^^

@marmot Aren't there enough ducks here already?

Of course, for some people, there is no such thing.

@marmot I thought the same thing, lol

@FaheemMitha There are definitely more ducks than marmots.

@DavidCarlisle Good old days?

@FaheemMitha There are several things that get repeated here, including pineapple pizza, a monochromous Englishman, "ooh"'s and ducks. If you do not like some item on the list, which I can understand, you may be better off when you ignore it.

@marmot and ground living squirrels that draw pictures with bezier curves

@DavidCarlisle the picture mode does not work on my machine so what can I do?

@marmot practice more

@DavidCarlisle Item 2? ;-)

@marmot ooh

@DavidCarlisle item 3

@marmot quack

@DavidCarlisle item 4. Nice and ascending.

@marmot I have nothing against ducks. They are probably tasty.

@FaheemMitha ooh Nooh!

@FaheemMitha Quack in despair.

Unfortunately, they aren't that available here.

@marmot Channeling Paulo?

@FaheemMitha @DavidCarlisle started to quack.

@marmot What is a monochromous Englishman?

@marmot It's infectious. Apparently.

@FaheemMitha Ask @HaraldHanche-Olsen.

@marmot Why?

@FaheemMitha ^^^ that's why.

@MarcelKrüger I guess the vorg and vmtx table has to be passed to context? Or can we do anything here?

@FaheemMitha Think about who is English with a black and white avatar :)

@FaheemMitha Yes, they are very tasty (but don't tell Paulo)

@CarLaTeX I'll try to remember.

@CarLaTeX I can't imagine who you mean.

/me scratches head.

@JosephWright I played yesterday a bit with text transparency (to get a grip for the ExtGstate business) and found that you can easily get it with dvips, even over page breaks with color push and pop:

\special{color push rgb 0 0 1 0.5 .setopacityalpha}
\lipsum[1]
\special{color pop}

@UlrikeFischer Good :)

@UlrikeFischer I will probably look a bit more at the debug code over the weekend: Bruno made some comments. We need that for expl3 in the kernel ...

@JosephWright now I'm wondering about interfaces in color/xcolor. One needs something like \current@opacity <-- @DavidCarlisle

@JosephWright yes, it is important to sort this out.

@UlrikeFischer isn't \special{color push rgb 0 0 1 0.5 .setopacityalpha} something like \special{color push rgb 0 0 1}\special{ps: 0.5 .setopacityalpha} but just working as the color push special happens to construct valid postscript even if you pass more than three things to rgb ?

@DavidCarlisle no doesn't look like it. With the first syntax the opacity is also on the color stack and so on the next page. If one separate the code the second page has no opacity:

% ps2pdf -dCompressStreams=false -dCompressPages=false -dNOSAFER test-utf8.ps
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\special{color push rgb 1 0 0 0.5 .setopacityalpha}
\lipsum
\special{color pop}

xxxxx
\newpage
xxxx
\special{color push rgb 1 0 0 }
\special{ps: 0.5 .setopacityalpha}
\lipsum%[1]
\special{color pop}
\end{document}

@DavidCarlisle but the first xxxx has still opacity. Not quite sure why.

@UlrikeFischer ah OK, but it still seems more or less accidental that \special{color push zzz wibble} makes the PostScript wibble setzzzcolor which just happens to make legal PostScript if wibble uses additional commands like 0.5 .setopacityalpha which leave nothing on teh stack, but I suppose that is a feature...

@UlrikeFischer presumably because it happens first before you push the graphics state and change the color

@DavidCarlisle I'm not sure here. The dvips manual doesn't really say what a "color specification" is, but it says that the \special can also be used for complicated stuff "such as patterns or screens" (whatever screens is).

@UlrikeFischer Sort in l3color: I think we really should consider 'hijacking' both color and graphics as part of the wider plan, and at least having the backend simply use expl3 (so loaded from the get go)

@UlrikeFischer "manual" typical:-) Oh OK I suppose it means anything that is valid if you put it before set...color where ... is the first word after push

@JosephWright don't you mean the secret plan not "wider plan" ? :-)

@DavidCarlisle ;-) I have the strong suspicion that at the end of the year I will have read some postscript manuals too ...

@DavidCarlisle Yes, secret plan

@UlrikeFischer Oh lucky you!

@AlanMunn ooh

@JosephWright ooh secret

@PauloCereda actually everyone knows about it except you.

@DavidCarlisle oh

Hi there. Thank you, David, for the answer to my question.

@0xC0000022L more of a non-answer really but hopefully it helped...

It did clarify what I wanted to know, yes. After all it was my misconception that led to the question.

Something a little bit off-topic: there appear to be corrected versions of the TeXbook but all the copies I found for purchase show just the year the book was published (1984) and there is no indication of whether those versions include the corrections (latest from 2013 as per CTAN) ... I only have a used copy and would like to have the latest print with all those corrections. Where can I find that?

(btw, from what I can tell comparing my used copy and the .tex file I think this must be an original print)

@0xC0000022L the book shows the printing on the page with the library of congress details (opposite the dedication to Jill) eg one here says "Sixteenth printing, revised June 1989"

@0xC0000022L There are very few changes after the big changes for TeX3.

So any version printed after 1991 will be up-to-date, right?

@0xC0000022L there are minor things changed (as listed in a change log somewhere) but nothing that will really affect any use.

Hmm, I guess then I need to find that changelog to see whether it makes sense to switch out my used copy for a freshly printed one.

Thank you!

@0xC0000022L /usr/local/texlive/2019/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errata.pdf

Thanks @DavidCarlisle ... link to the latest is here: tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/… (don't have TeXlive 2019 installed, yet)

@DavidCarlisle I was wrong - there is a description for the color specification in the dvips manual, 7.6.1 Color specifications. The code above basically adds 1 0 0 0.5 .setopacityalpha setrgbcolor to the postscript, which seems to work, but I'm not sure if isn't by accident. A perhaps better way is \special{color push "1 0 0 setrgbcolor 0.5 .setopacityalpha}

@DavidCarlisle it does change the color back to the default "Black", which doesn't reset the opacity.

@UlrikeFischer yes (I did read the manual last century and recall bits:-) as I say it worked because 0.5 .setopacityalpha leaves nothing on the stack so the generated command name setrgbcolor still sees 1 0 0

@UlrikeFischer yes because 1 0 0 0.5 .setopacityalpha setrgbcolor ... pop is same as 0.5 .setopacityalpha 1 0 0 setrgbcolor ... pop so the opacity change is not guarded by push/pop

@DavidCarlisle it is garded if one has an extra layer:

\special{color push rgb 0 0 0 1.0 .setopacityalpha}
\special{color push rgb 1 0 0 0.5 .setopacityalpha}
\lipsum
\special{color pop}
xxxxx
\special{color pop}

dvips then reinserts everything before the xxxx:

0 0 0 1.0 .setopacityalpha TeXcolorrgb
37 w(xxxxx)p

@0xC0000022L Yes, I noticed that too. Whoever makes the decision about these things seemingly decided that there would only be one edition.

So there are multiple printings, but only one edition. Which seems calculated to cause uncertainty, confusion, and annoyance. IMO, at least.

It's one thing you you happen to live in Cambridge, and just wander into Heffers and check things out. But on the internet it's not so convenient.

(No idea if Heffers is still in Cambridge. In my day it was opposite Trinity Great Gate.)

@0xC0000022L my version says "incorporates all corrections known in 2011" and "Ninetheenth Printing, February 2012".

Apparently still there - just looked at it on Google Streetview.

@UlrikeFischer Except they don't mention such things online. But they would mention a new/revised edition.

@0xC0000022L But that only shows corrections up to 1985, as far as I can tell.

@FaheemMitha the errata.pdf? The one I linked goes up to 2014 as far as I can tell.

@0xC0000022L It does. But most of it does not seem to refer to the TeXBook.

Fair point.

It mentions "Computers and Typesetting". Which was a multivolume work.

Thanks @UlrikeFischer so purchasing a fresh copy should probably give me the latest corrections.

@0xC0000022L So, planning to learn TeX?

Indeed. Given I come across more and more LaTeX code that appears to reach down into the guts of the TeX engine and pull out some TeX primitives to do what I currently appear more like magic than like (hopefully well-defined) advanced technology.

@UlrikeFischer yes

@FaheemMitha @0xC0000022L the errata covers the whole series (texbook is book A) but the chages after 1989 are so minor in part A you really need to look close.

@FaheemMitha you might feel aggrieved if they called it a "new edition" and you bought a new copy only to find 5 characters had changed over nearly 500 pages of the book

That's a fair point ("new edition" with only minor corrections).

@0xC0000022L "minor corrections" means really really minor corrections, just squeezing in the odd note here and there without changing the page breaking. If something was on page 56 in 1989 it is still on page 56 now.

@DavidCarlisle I might. But as already mentioned, printings are not generally mentioned on the net, as least in the case of the TeXBook. I looked. So one is in the dark.

One might hope that sanity would prevail, and that versions of the TeXBook sold would be recent printings. But betting on sanity is not always a winning ploy in this best of all possible worlds.

Hello!

Does anyone know what @svdopt does in code?

@Levy I can find no occurrence of \@svdopt in /usr/local/texlive/2019/texmf-dist/tex/latex

@Levy you need to give us some clues, did you intend a \ at the front and what code?

Springer journal class file? (@Levy)

Actually I'm trying to adapt the code found in here: tex.stackexchange.com/a/214630/48279 but first I need to know hat is happening on it and when I came to this \biblechap@svdopt I couldn't understand what it is or does.

@Levy @egreg or do you mean \newcount\biblechap@svdopt tex.stackexchange.com/questions/497474/…

@DavidCarlisle @DavidCarlisle Yes, that one

@Levy that is just the second half of a variable name @ is a normal letter in package code

@Levy so you could have as well asked whet dopt means or p@svdopt

But why does it have the @svdopt if the counter is named just \biblechap?

@Levy so \newxount\zzzzz just defines \zzzzz to be a counter that holds a tex integer value.

@Levy that is the definition of the counter and the author chose to call it \biblechap@svdopt it could have been called \zzzz or \wibble as long as all uses use the same name.

Hmm I see

Thank you

@Levy why do you say the counter is called \biblechap ?

early in the code it is written \newcounter{biblechapter} so I assumed it

@Levy that is a different counter

@Levy and this line \ifnum\c@biblechapter=\biblechap@svdopt is testing if the two counters have the same value.

So if I got it straight, the \biblechap@svdopt and the \c@biblechapter are counters but also variables that store integer values?

@Levy "counters" and "variables that store integer values" are different names for the same thing so yes, \newcounter{biblechapter} is a latex construct that does \newcount\c@biblechapter to define the counter but also defines other things like \thebiblechapter for the print format, \newcount is lower level if you just want to use the counter for calculations.

Oh, I see

Is there a reason why one uses the @ so often in variables' name?

@Levy it's just a letter, you could ask why you use a in a name, or z

Thank you very much

@UlrikeFischer -- A "screen" is a method of making an image lighter. There's a good illustration on page 2 of the AMS graphics guidelines: ams.org/arc/graphics/graphics-guidelines.pdf

@0xC0000022L -- There have been no TeXbook (or TeX) updates since 2014. The next scheduled Knuth examination of reports is 2020. (The schedule is given on Knuth's TeX page on his website at Stanford.)

@FaheemMitha -- If there is still a backlog of unsold copies, there's a great desire to get rid of those first. The TUG "books" page has some advice on how to be sure you're getting the latest printing when you order it online.

How do I reset the biblechapter counter in here tex.stackexchange.com/a/214630/48279 at the end of every chapter? In the way it is written when I create another chapter it continues increasing its count.

@Levy change \newcounter{biblechapter} to \newcounter{biblechapter}[chapter]

It worked. Nice!

@Levy see the following line where the same construct is used \newcounter{bibleverse}[biblechapter] so that verses are reset on chapters

@barbarabeeton If you mean tug.org/books, I don't see such advice.

@FaheemMitha -- Hmmm. You're correct. (Knuth did give a suggestion, and I thought it had been posted there. The suggestion was that the book be ordered via the mechanism shown on that page, and if, when it was delivered, the printing was not the desirable one, communicate with the supplier and complain as a member of TUG. This may still work.

@barbarabeeton Do you happen to know how much the effective price of the TeXBook would be? All that discounting is a bit confusing.

@FaheemMitha -- The TeXbook is published by Addison-Wesley, a part of the Pearson group. So the discount is 30% as long as you specify TEXUG as the discount code when you follow the other instructions.

@barbarabeeton Ok, but 30% against what price?

@FaheemMitha -- It would be the list price, which depends on whether you ask for the hardcover or softcover edition. And you would have to order direct from Pearson, or InformIT, which is (or at least used to be) their distribution subsidiary. (Note on hardcover vs. softcover: softcover is comb-bound, and lies flat when open, but tends to get dog-eared and fall apart with a lot of use; hardbound is more sturdy, but doesn't lie flat.)

@barbarabeeton There is some online discount quoted as well. Which is why I was asking.

I mean, separate from the TUG discount.

Hi @egreg

@azetina Ciao!

Salut comment ca va

@azetina Still harvesting rep to @DavidCarlisle dismay.

@egreg Oh my! If your not too busy can you shed some insight into something am having trouble with: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/498695/…

@azetina You are asking for a very wide indentation of the minitoc entries.

@FaheemMitha -- I'm not familiar with this.

@barbarabeeton Ok.

@egreg easy % questions again

@DavidCarlisle There were several of them. ;-)

@egreg That is the kind of sorcery I cannot do yet :). The implementation is good. Can you show how it would be if the 1.1 remains instead of the 1 like you have it? I just want to have options to work with. Thanks.

@azetina You just comment out the lines

  \let\savedcontentsline\contentsline
  \def\contentsline##1##2##3{%
    \begingroup
    \let\numberline\numberlinegobble
    \protected@edef\x{\endgroup
      \noexpand\savedcontentsline{##1}{##2}{}}\x
  }%

That was a quick response. Your too good! :)

@egreg What does the \numberlinegobble do?

@azetina It gobbles the first dot and whatever comes before it, so what you get from \numberline{1.1} is \numberline{1} that will be processed by \savedcontentsline (that is, \contentsline as defined by titletoc).

@azetina I admit it's a bit tricky. :-)

Oh ok. Well for me it seemed impossible. I was looking in the documentation if it is possible to declare custom ToC declarations but could not find a way. Can you add those comments to your solution for completeness?

@egreg Thanks

@egreg One more question? How can I fix the paragraph settings of the section definition since the word Statistics does not align with Algebra nor does long with Some? :)

@azetina Consult the manual of titletoc

@egreg Sure and thanks for your kind assistance. :)