I want to generate a character with catcode 11 in plain TeX. I though this was the correct solution but when I apply this to # and inspect the catcode it says 6 instead of 11.

\begingroup
\catcode`\^=7
\catcode`\^^@=11
\gdef\makeletterchar#1{%
    \begingroup
    \lccode`\^^@=`#1
    \lowercase{\endgroup\gdef\letterchar{^^@}}%
}
\endgroup

\makeletterchar{\#}
{\tt\meaning\letterchar} % macro:-># (okay)
\letterchar % # (okay)
\the\catcode\expandafter`\letterchar % 6 (what?)

\bye

@HenriMenke I think you need to use \ifcat for checking the catcode.

To expand on that, the backqoute construct expands to the character code of the following token, ignoring its catcode.

@HenriMenke you are just looking at the current catcode table not the catcode of the token

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Ah yes, that works, thanks!

For reference:

\ifcat\letterchar A eleven\else not eleven\fi

quack!

@DavidCarlisle Would you mind reviewing this quickly? github.com/pgf-tikz/pgfplots/pull/353

@PauloCereda I have a strong persistent feeling that I'm pursued by a duck.

@yo' ooh a feeling :)

@PauloCereda 7818

@yo' ooh it's increasing

@yo' nothing that can't be resolved with a suitable range of cooking implements

@HaraldHanche-Olsen oh no

@HaraldHanche-Olsen oh

@PauloCereda To your question regarding organ sounds. The answer is "yes". But it's slightly complicated. Organs have ranks. A rank is a set of pipes for each pitch/note (typically something like 30 pipes for pedal ranks and over 60 for manual ranks). A stop -- which is the knob you see on organs -- controls usually one rank, but it can control several ranks at once. You control the sound of the organ by stops.

Also, each stops operates on a particular manual or pedal (my organ has 2 manuals and 1 pedal). So you can change the sound by either turning stops on/off, or by switching manuals, as you can have a different sound on the other manual.

Digital organs (like mine is) and electrically controlled pipe organs (most currently build organs are of this kind) can also have presets -- you press a button/knob/something and the set of activated stops changes completely.

Finally, organs also commonly have swell pedals. On pipe organs these control a set of wooden palettes which cover a side of the organ box. If these are closed, the sound is quite muted, if they are open, the sound is much louder.

@yo' wow, I never thought it was a complex mechanism! It sounds both amazing and complicated at the same time! :)

@PauloCereda it is!

Just to have an idea, my digital organ has 28 stops (the "knobs"). Most of these have a single rank, but three have multiple, 3, 4 and 4. So the number of ranks is 25*1+1*3+2*4 = 36.

This means that if it was a pipe organ, one keypress can open 36 pipes at once!

@DavidCarlisle @MarcelKrüger when you have some time, could you check what you get back for this (assuming that all the files exist in the current folder):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{luacode}
\begin{luacode}
function myfilesize(name)
  local file =  kpse.find_file(name, "tex", true)
  print("FILE: ",file)
  if file then
    local size = lfs.attributes(file, "size")
    print("SIZE: ",size)
  end
end

\end{luacode}
\directlua{myfilesize("\luaescapestring{test test.tex}")}
\directlua{myfilesize("\luaescapestring{grüße.tex}")}
\directlua{myfilesize("\luaescapestring{grüße hallo.tex}")}

\begin{document}
\end{document}

Btw, you gotta love German:

@UlrikeFischer I get the expected result:

FILE: 	./test test.tex
SIZE: 	1308
FILE: 	./grüße.tex
SIZE: 	180
FILE: 	./grüße hallo.tex
SIZE: 	9641

For comparison:

-rw-r--r-- 1 marcel marcel 9641 Apr 25 12:58 'grüße hallo.tex'
-rw-r--r-- 1 marcel marcel  180 Apr 25 12:57  grüße.tex
-rw-r--r-- 1 marcel marcel 1308 Apr 25 12:57 'test test.tex'

@MarcelKrüger on windows I get the expected (your result) on miktex but in tl2020 I get:

./test test.tex
SIZE:   9
FILE:   ./grüße.tex
SIZE:   nil
FILE:   ./grüße hallo.tex
SIZE:   nil

So the size is nil and expl3 claims that the two files with non-ascii doesn't exist.

Inputtting the files work fine.

@yo' I guess you know that that's not German.

@Loong well, this website lists is as an alternate name for the Trompet organ stop :) organstops.org/t/Trumpet.html

@UlrikeFischer @MarcelKrüger cygwin tl2020

FILE:      ./test test.tex
SIZE:   1
FILE:   ./grüße.tex
SIZE:   1
FILE:   ./grüße hallo.tex
SIZE:   1

@DavidCarlisle I'm feeling lonely ;-(

@UlrikeFischer its called social distancing

@UlrikeFischer doesn't the windows binary need a special option to understand utf8 filenames or is that the default these days

@DavidCarlisle it is the default, but the texmf.cnf says it it only relevant for pdftex and xetex.

@HenriMenke I don't mind but not sure if I can I don't use context much and I'm not sure I've used the lmtx version at all....

@UlrikeFischer looks like windows lua file access issue though so probably need to take it up n texlive list or with Akira? You could ask @egreg to test his windows installation

@DavidCarlisle No need to test. I just need someone to quickly gloss over the macrocode to spot obvious mistakes.

@HenriMenke I'll look:-)

@DavidCarlisle pgfplots doesn't have a CI system yet.

@DavidCarlisle probably, but it would be nice to know first, that it isn't only me ;-)

@HenriMenke think you want a % after \lccode0=#1 its ok if #1 is a literal number but in your loop it's a count register so won't gobble the space. (in the literal digit case the space isn't needed as the following \lowercase will terminate the number

From todays announcements: "Corrections, thanks to the eagle eye of Enrico Gregorio."

@DavidCarlisle Cheers, mate!

@HenriMenke good job @egreg didn't see that

@UlrikeFischer Well, that didn't really require eagle eye! ;-)

@UlrikeFischer You have Phil for company

@DavidCarlisle uff, no longer alone ;-)

@UlrikeFischer fortunately I'm far too polite to suggest that you may have preferred the earlier state.

@DavidCarlisle ;-). How do I query my locale settings?

@UlrikeFischer wo bin ich

@DavidCarlisle actually the luatex manually claims that it sets the locale to some neutral values.

@UlrikeFischer I'd do this but I'm not sure if LANG is the only env variable involved

$ echo $LANG
en_US.UTF-8

@UlrikeFischer yes I remember that.

@DavidCarlisle Akira answered. chgstrcp.utf8tosyscp(file). Who creates such function names??

@PauloCereda -- I've posted this before, but I see you need a refresher: youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To

@yo' -- That's one I didn't know, I love it! Is that the "state trumpet"?

@barbarabeeton well, from what I understood it's just the regular trumpet reed pipe.

@MarcelKrüger did you see the discussion on the texlive list?

@yo' -- State trumpets aren't all that common, but they're the only rank I can recognize immediately just by looking at an organ pipe facade.

@barbarabeeton and you don't mean the Spanish Trumpet, which is sticking horisontally from the pospect?

@yo' -- You must be right; perhaps I was misinformed.

needless to say, if I could regularly play an organ with Spanish Trumpet, the stop would be on like 99% of the time :D

@yo' -- A quick web search, concentrating on pictures, turns up more horizontal pipes for "state trumpet" than "spanish trumpet". Also seem to be referred to by the name "chamade". In any event, brilliantly noisy! (I hope, when this quarantine is over, that the university organist at Brown will give another guided tour through the pipe chamber. That's such fun!)

@barbarabeeton oh yeah that is fun for large instruments :)

@yo' -- Even for small instruments. I once was privileged to look into the pipe chamber of a box organ in a Danish castle. (Darn, I wish I could remember which castle!) The tiny square wooden pipes were adorable! The organist took one out to show, and it fit nicely in the palm of his hand. That instrument was very good for playing Bach, but couldn't handle Franck.

@barbarabeeton oh a friend of mine has a true portative with I believe 2 or 3 ranks. There's no chamber really, the pipes simply stick up from the top of the box, and the box is just high enough to have a stand for the sheets. Also, the whole rows of pipes can simply fold down into the horizontal position for transportation.

@barbarabeeton ^^ this is the small portative organ :)

@yo' -- There was an old instrument, possibly Renaissance but maybe even older, very like this, but it had a distinct name, which I have forgotten.

anyway, I have some arrangements to write down into sheet music, and I shall practice the organ. so bye for now!

@DavidCarlisle did you see the discussion about the utf8 file name?

@yo' WOW

@yo' ooh

@barbarabeeton fantastic!

ooh a giraffe

@yo' have a great day, my friend!

@UlrikeFischer skimmed over bits just now (I was out))

@DavidCarlisle ooh cricket

@DavidCarlisle so now you need to go in, and people who were in had to go out, right?

@UlrikeFischer blurg is that defined on all platforms or is it a windows specific function

@DavidCarlisle I don't know, it sounds as if it exits only one windows but you could try. But it also looks as if we will have to add this somewhere, as lfs is broken without it. I wonder about the right place. ltluatex?

@MarcelKrüger does this function chgstrcp.utf8tosyscp(file) exist on mac?

@UlrikeFischer Probably not, but at least it doesn't exists on Linux.

(Not really a surprise because the entire issue is pretty Windows specific)

@UlrikeFischer Yes, we probably have to add it somewhere, even if it still is a bad "fix". Especially we will still end up with some files not being accessible.

@MarcelKrüger no I didn't expect it. I must say I don't quite understand why it is not built-in (depending on the command-line option).

@MarcelKrüger which files will not be accessible?

@UlrikeFischer @MarcelKrüger I suppose in ltlualatex could add some function with a plausible name that does nothing except on windows so you don't have to test for windows everywhere...

@UlrikeFischer If I'm not mistaken it reencodes from UTF8 to some system specific encoding, so all charactes which are not in this system specific encoding can not appear in a filename then. (Or they have some special system for that, but I doubt it.)

@DavidCarlisle it should then propably overload lfs?

@UlrikeFischer I think so too. The question is if other libraries are affected too.

@MarcelKrüger well if a symbol is not usable in a file name we can hope that people don't use it ;-). But I could try to create a chinese filename or something like this and check what happens.

@UlrikeFischer Well I mean it can not appear in a filename encoded under the system encoding, but it might still appear in a Unicode encoded filename. And in my experience, especially under Windows, people use all kinds of weird filenames.

@MarcelKrüger you are right. With chinese it doesn't work. The file is found but lfs breaks again:

FILE:   ./gre.tex
SIZE:   5
isfile  true
 (./大豊饒諸衆善法.tex)
FILE:   ./???????.tex
SIZE:   nil
isfile  false

miktex works fine here too:

FILE:   ./grüße.tex
SIZE:   5
isfile  true
 (./ÕñºÞ▒èÚÑÆÞ½©ÞíåÕûäµ│ò.tex)
FILE:   ./ÕñºÞ▒èÚÑÆÞ½©ÞíåÕûäµ│ò.tex
SIZE:   5
isfile  true

@UlrikeFischer That's an interesting definition of fine, but it looks at least better.

Do you know where chgstrcp.utf8tosyscp(file) is coming from? I couldn't find it in the TeXLive source tree.

@MarcelKrüger i don't care much about the output on the terminal (if I change to chcp 65001 it looks better). But the size and isfile should be correct.

@UlrikeFischer Does chcp 65001 fix the lfs issue?

@MarcelKrüger google brought this (somewhere in the w32-tex sources):

/*
    2  * chgstrcp.c
    3  * Public domain
    4  * 2019   A. Kakuto
    5  *
    6  * lua module "chgstrcp"
    7  * chgstrcp.syscptoutf8(str)
    8  * return utf8 string, where str should be in system code page
    9  * chgstrcp.utf8tosyscp(str)
   10  * return string in system code page, where str should be utf8
   11  */
   12
   13 /*

@MarcelKrüger no, it only affects the look on the terminal.

@MarcelKrüger but if we can't repair this, we probably need something else to get the size and modification date of a file. Is there some alternative?

@UlrikeFischer For the size there is (we can open the file and then ask where the end of the file is) but modification dates are probably not available in another way. But it might be enough to "fix" this with chgstrcp now in most cases, and for more special cases we try to find a solution later. Especially we could try to get TeXLive2021 to use Unicode APIs in lfs.

BTW, does opening the files work? So does \input work? io.open? Can Unicode filenames be included as images?

@MarcelKrüger input works fine. You can see it above, the file was read. I will check io.open. What do you mean by "included as images"?

@UlrikeFischer I meant using a e.g. PNG file with \includegraphics or img.new{filename='äöü.png'}.

@MarcelKrüger oh, this triggers my memory. Patrick asked about this some month ago and probably it was then when this functions were inserted.

@MarcelKrüger io.open directly fails. io.open(chgstrcp.utf8tosyscp("grüße.tex"), "r") works, with the chinese it fails again.

@barbarabeeton I love this installation of the trumpets :)

@yo' -- That is really subtle -- until they're played.

@barbarabeeton yeah.

(btw, they seem to be known by the name Spanish Trompets only in my country... not sure why it's so)

@UlrikeFischer Then we probably can't avoid the issue even for querying the file size.

@yo' -- I wonder how many shed skins they've had to sweep up after a performance.

@barbarabeeton haha

well, I also wonder how loud it is for the choir standing directly below them...

(if that's the choir space; could also be an auditorium balcony)

ah btw, this explains the name: The earliest documented example of external horizontal reeds is in the 1588 organ by Gaspar Martin in the Cathedral of Huesca, Spain. By the 18th century, such placement of reeds was commonplace in Spain and Portugal. (organstops.org/c/Chamade.html)

@yo' -- If that's the choir, maybe they've had the foresight to issue earplugs. It's possible that the sound is at least partly directional, so pointed forward. It does look like the wall they're mounted on is positioned at the forward edge of the balcony, so that could help buffering the direct sound.

@yo' -- Good find! One thing still puzzles me ... why are these considered reeds and still called trumpets? Trumpets in a marching band are brass, not reed.

@barbarabeeton they are definitely mounted in front of the balcony, by the photo.

@barbarabeeton reed refers to the pipe construction. Remember that vox humana is also a reed :-)

pipes are flues and reeds. Flues divide into principals, flutes and strings. For reeds, you most commonly don't use any secondary division, but if you insisted, you could say woodwind, brass and other.

@yo' -- True about the vox humana, although I was familiar with such a voice in a pump organ. That was constructed as a "fan" apparatus, actually a sheet of something reasonably stiff with a spine along the middle of the long axis, and the mechanism was simply rotating this apparatus longitudally, disrupting the air and thereby causing a slight but noticeable quaver in the sound.

@yo' -- Seems I have to brush up on the terminology. Thanks for the lesson.

@barbarabeeton It's difficult terminology-wise, becuase you need a third word flue between pipe and flute, and you need a third word woodwind under reed. And these things get messy, especially once you start translating.

@MarcelKrüger a = img.write({ filename = "大豊饒諸衆善法.pdf"}) works, and I found the old thread: tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2018-October/042487.html, but imho this part is now included by default.

Czech language, for instance, has no equivalent of flue.

And we say jazyk (tongue) for reed.

@yo' -- The usual meaning of "flue" in English is the pipe from a furnace or fireplace to the chimney. (It's the pipe that needs to be cleaned be a chimney sweep.)

@barbarabeeton ah yeah. But that wouldn't work in Czech. Also, there's the Roerfluit (Chimney Flute), which is a particularly popular 8' or 4' flute

@yo' -- If I remember correctly, that also means "language" in Russian. For which another (English) synonym is "tongue".

@barbarabeeton yeah, it has the same double meaning in Czech, and in many other Slavic langauges. We don't really have a separate word for language. But I found it funny some years ago when I realized that mother tongue is a thing in English.

(I would vote for removing all Frenchisms from English if there's a more Germanic equivalent.)

@yo' -- And P.D.Q. Bach wrote a piece for a left-handed sewer flute.

@barbarabeeton what in the world is a "left-handed sewer flute"?!

@yo' -- That would take away a lot of fun. It's so much more interesting to wilfully misinterpret loan words.

@barbarabeeton and so much fun to listen to the French try to pronounce these at least a bit as in English :-)

@yo' -- An invention of P.D.Q. Bach, who in turn is an invention of Professor Peter Schickele.

@barbarabeeton this is all so good!

@yo' Good luck with that. :)

@barbarabeeton Hmm, a Bach invention. :)

@AlanMunn -- I was kind ow wondering when you might jump in.

@barbarabeeton People failed to reverse 'irregardless', so I doubt they'll have much success with stuff that's almost 1000 years old. :) English also has lots of minimal contrasts between a French or Latin based word and a corresponding Germanic word with subtle differences in meaning.

@AlanMunn one of the most stunning examples for me is host [en], host [cz], hostile, hospital, hospitality.

@AlanMunn -- With French I can usually (often?) come up with a not totally erroneous cognate, but not with Spanish. That's totally unsafe ground for me, even though I've studied both Latin and French. (But I still remember fondly a simultaneously translated talk on typography, where a reference (in French) to two columns was translated as "two doves" (deux colombes).)

@AlanMunn -- My high school English teacher presented as a totally nonsensical utterance "Irregardless of no matter what".

@yo' -- "Host" in English has quite a few entirely differing meanings. But if one digs into the etymology, and goes back multiple centuries, there's actually a logical explanation. Just no longer obvious.

@barbarabeeton yeah, but host in Czech is guest in English :)

@yo' -- Oh! What in Czech is English "host" as in the person who is entertaining the guests?

@barbarabeeton hostitel (yeah, it's that easy :-) )

@barbarabeeton English host comes from Latin hospes that was used in both meanings: the person who is hosting and the guest. The same for Italian ospite. For instance ospizio is where people can be recovered in (travellers, sick people, poor people); ospitare is to host; gli ospiti are usually the guests.

@barbarabeeton Great composer! He died before being born, according to his biography.

@egreg -- I would have thought that P.D.Q. Bach might be a little out of your preferred canon.

@barbarabeeton No one can resist Iphegenia in Brooklyn. Anyone who is running, knows.

@barbarabeeton Don't you mean a host of meanings?

@AlanMunn -- Yes! And what about the concerto for horn & hardart?

@AlanMunn -- That too.

@AlanMunn running knows! running knows! running knows! running running running knows!

@AlanMunn and my favourite line: and all round her, fish were dying. dying! and yet their stench lived on.

Hello ! I am not often on the chat, but I guess this is the place to ask this question. I am always amazed by how much some people know about tex, latex and friends to reuse the name of this chat. And I was wondering as a user how was financed the projet, and if some people are employed to work on it and by what organization(s). It is probably a dumb question, but it is saturday evening and I am locked in my appartment so why not.

@BambOo -- When asking about financing, are you thinking of TeX & friends themselves, or of this Q&A website?

@barbarabeeton really Tex & friends.

@BambOo -- TeX itself is essentially in the public domain, and Don Knuth himself maintains it, on a schedule posted on his website at Stanford. Questions are collected by a volunteer (I used to do it; Karl Berry is now the collector) and sent to Knuth when he requests them, which will next be near the end of this year. LaTeX is maintained by a team, also volunteer. Similarly for luaTeX. Computer resources are supported by the various user groups around the world, (cont'd)

(cont'd) and the user groups (all officially recognized by their national governments as non-profit educational or charitable organizations) are supported by dues and donations. Some work is supported by grants from the user groups, but it's a relatively small proportion of the overall maintenance and development. Most of the participants have regular jobs, often unrelated to TeX.

So it is even more impressive to have so much experienced people since most of them have a reagular job ! Thanks for the explaination

@BambOo in the case of latex the team are here we all have real jobs (and some are more active than others at any given point in time, that page lists everyone over the last 30 years) latex-project.org/about/team

@DavidCarlisle it is good to see people of different domains, cultures and ages !

@BambOo yes more so in recent years as you see down the second column.

@DavidCarlisle, while reading some profiles of the project members, I found a citation of yours : Moral of the story: never read the documentation, bad things happen.

@DavidCarlisle Considering the complexity of latex and friends, that may be right at some times.

@DavidCarlisle Personally the only documentations I keep close are tikz pgfplots and siunitx, these are very often useful

@BambOo don't believe everything you read on the internet:-)

@BambOo also it's usually quoted out of context that line is from this chat after a thread when someone was misled by incorrect documentation

I shouldn't try out examples with "grüße" - bad things happen ;-).

@UlrikeFischer 總是用中文寫

@DavidCarlisle then even more bad things happen ;-(.

@DavidCarlisle did you see the last message, that kpse.find_file sometimes work (luatex), sometimes not (texlua)?

@UlrikeFischer yes, seems there should be an option to just handle unicode consistently and let scripts break so we can update them

@DavidCarlisle I wonder what scripts this should be. Which handle non-ascii file names that would be affected here?

@UlrikeFischer no idea. But breaking the future forever to avoid breaking a few or even few hundred scripts now seems a bad trade

@DavidCarlisle yes. Also I don't think that we can really handle this. If it affects io.open, lfs, texlua and perhaps more unknown places, it will pop up all the time.