TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2021-09-13

« first day (3970 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (968 days later) »

Phelype Oleinik

1:31 AM

@UlrikeFischer @DavidCarlisle Hm... xparse does some heuristics to determine a non-expandable command can be safely used expandably (not in \typeout, but in \csname...\endcsname), and uses the \__cmd_start_expandable:nNNNNn... I wonder if that is of any practical usage (@JosephWright). I can change the \ShowCommand code to look for \protected.

(sorry the delay, I was away for the weekend)

@Noldorin \ShowCommand, as Ulrike said, but that will be available only mid November (or in a few weeks, if you use LaTeX-dev) because I was too lazy to implement support for that earlier :)

1 hour later…

2:59 AM

@PhelypeOleinik Ah, good to know, thanks.

(I presume you mean you've enhanced \ShowCommand? It's available now, but doesn't seem to show the body in this case.)

3:15 AM

Does latex have something like \begin{item} \end{item}?

because the \item command doesn't fit with the rest of the code .-.

Phelype Oleinik

3:36 AM

@Noldorin Yes. \ShowCommand looks at the definition of the command and tries to guess how that command was defined (\newcommand, \DeclareRobustCommand, or \NewDocumentCommand), then it uses that knowledge to show the command appropriately.

@Noldorin But the knowledge of the internals of a command defined with \NewDocumentCommand was only added recently (about two weeks ago :) so it's not generally available. It's currently in the development repository only (here), but it will be available in the development release in a a few days, and in a full release in november

4:14 AM

Is there a latex compiler available now to generate DjVu directly?

13

Q: Is it possible produce .djvu files from LaTeX directly?

I see some .djvu files with worked links, side bar table of content and I can select/search text inside document (with WinDjvu viewer). How produce .djvu file from LaTeX files? PS. @Paulo Cereda. Thanks for suggestion. pdf2djvu have build for Windows and present in Debian repo. And do job right!

2 hours later…

6:09 AM

@Avi It does not. ConTeXt has \startitem … \stopitem for consistency ;)

6:19 AM

@PhelypeOleinik That must be some of Bruno's code: he fiddled around with the start-of-command stuff

6:31 AM

ah, well

thanks for letting me know

6:44 AM

@PhelypeOleinik yes "expandable" is not that well defined a term really and as you say not all expansion contexts are the same, I think "expands in a \write is probably the most expected definition.

@Avi well you can use that (any declaration can be used as an environment) but it's not the expected form and you have to be careful with the paragraph end

ok

better stick to convention then

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I'm struggling with configuring my Reftex list of variables as I'd like to personnalize the label of the environment I've defined. In other words, I'd like the label to take 1) the label of the corresponding section and 2) the number of its position by section.

@raf no

Anyone able to help? many thanks in advance!

7:05 AM

@Guillaume there's hardly anyone here (you can tell by the greyed out avatars) and chances are that no one here has used reftex (I'm an emacs user but haven't used reftex for a decade or so) note also:

22

A: Chat's etiquette regarding questions

It's OK to ask on chat but you should not expect an answer (although you may get one anyway). The Q&A site is designed for asynchronous help, you ask a question and it stays visible and can be answered by anyone at any time that they feel convenient. If you ask in chat then although the archive...

@DavidCarlisle @DavidCarlisle thank you very much for your reply

7:23 AM

@raf no, I doubt anyone would want to do that, does the pdf2jvu in the answer there not work? I don't know anything about the djvu format but if you wanted a custom tex I would expect the easiest rout would b eto write the djvu generation in Lua and use luatex's programable back end support which in theory can support more than just dvi and pdf.

2 hours later…

9:39 AM

@UlrikeFischer, @DavidCarlisle, @egreg tex.stackexchange.com/questions/615010/… fair?

9:50 AM

@JosephWright yes

@DavidCarlisle I guess I should write an answer - a job for lunchtime

@JosephWright yes.

Phelype Oleinik

10:08 AM

@JosephWright Ah, okay. I'll check. Thanks!

Phelype Oleinik

10:32 AM

@DavidCarlisle Indeed. I know there is some code in xparse to explicitly allow (ab)using some commands inside \csname (I think mostly to allow people to do \NewDocumentCommand\arnold{}{Schwarzenegger} and use that in labels and whatnot).

@DavidCarlisle I will change the \ShowCommand code to work around that, even though the command is technically “expandable” as far as ltcmd is concerned (for copying, for example, it has to use the same machinery as a properly expandable command).

@JosephWright Well, I wouldn't do automatic \maketitle to begin with…

@egreg Well I'm guilty of that too in achemso, though I probably wouldn't set it up that way today

@JosephWright Since also Overleaf is on TL2020, I'm not sure why class writers should support older releases. OK, for people hooked to Debian…

@egreg 'in the wild' there are a lot of older systems ... I'd say at least back to TL'15

Phelype Oleinik

@egreg mid-TL2020: before lthooks, which is unfortunate

10:39 AM

@JosephWright true but how many of them will be using a package not released yet

@PhelypeOleinik blame @PauloCereda for not rolling out tl2021 at overleaf yet

3

@DavidCarlisle > 0

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Sounds reasonable

@DavidCarlisle oh no

user image

@UlrikeFischer Will -15 min be enough for your talk? :)

@samcarter :)

10:53 AM

@samcarter I'm a fast speaker ;-)

@samcarter Sounds interesting

@UlrikeFischer You talking about ... things I might be interested in?

@UlrikeFischer :) super fast!

@JosephWright I normally try to suggest at least a talk for dante, and I didn't want to speak about tagging again and form fields would have been too much work. So I thought I give a bit overview about the color syntax to prepare everyone what we will break when switching to l3color ;-)

@UlrikeFischer Good plan

@UlrikeFischer Let me know if there are slides to check :)

@JosephWright But basically I want to show what color and xcolor are missing and why we think that we need l3color.

10:57 AM

@UlrikeFischer Ah, cool - so the colour space stuff?

@UlrikeFischer fehlt dem Farbpaket etwas?

@JosephWright mail sent.

@UlrikeFischer I'll read over lunch

@DavidCarlisle nur Kleinigkeiten natürlich

2 hours later…

1:29 PM

@UlrikeFischer Look good to me

@UlrikeFischer I see Uwe Kern gets his academic title, but @DavidCarlisle and I don't ;)

@JosephWright I copied from the docu ;-).

@JosephWright I never used my title for tex related stuff (or much else really:-)

1:44 PM

@DavidCarlisle Same here

1:54 PM

@JosephWright You're listed as the maintainer of siunits. Is that package still "active"?

I hadn't heard of that package before, but it's mentioned in your TUG interview.

2:07 PM

@FaheemMitha In the sense that if there were a blocking bug I would fix it, yes; nothing beyond that

@FaheemMitha It's (formally) the precursor of siunitx

@DavidCarlisle ok, thank you!

2:58 PM

Concerning newunicodechar, is there a package that collects a large list of existing shortcuts, especially for mathematics and the occasional foreign symbol? — Greg Graviton Apr 22 '12 at 12:53

Is there a good solution now?

Unicode-math somewhat works, but it also switch the font to Latin modern as I figured out recently. Everyone recommends it.

@user202729 you could read in the unicode-math data file (unicode-math-table) set up to use \DefineUnicodeCharacter for all the characters in pdftex then define this commands (eg using stix2) or stick to the ones already defined in amssymb but are you sure you want to?

Yes I know you encourage using escape sequence like \alpha

And editors nowadays can conceal the sequences nicely

Looks like there's no nice solution I guess

Someone tried to make unixode package but it's kind of abandoned halfway

For the Unicode math table solution, I don't think it will work for x²³

Indeed, the superscript symbols are only defined in unicode-math-xetex and unicode-math-luatex files

@user202729 there is always a solution, this makes all the unicode math names known ti pdftex:

8

A: Unicode maths in pdflatex

I would not do this. The source is far clearer if you use the command forms (even if using unicode-math with LuaTeX). However, you can input unicode-math's unicode-math-table.tex, inverting its normal definition so that it defines the character to expand to the command rather than the other way a...

That one doesn't handle ²³ as I mentioned above

@user202729 but see this post from almost a decade ago wher eI predicted this was n argument I couldn't win:

29

A: Unicode in the equations: pros and cons

The pros and cons are pretty much the same as they ever were. Old timers like myself have a built in familiarity with ascii based markup, but I suspect that this will seem increasingly anachronistic as we move further in to the 21st century. Web based tools (and as Count Zero noted) Word process...

3:10 PM

@user202729 unicode-math requires a Opentype math font, but it doesn't have to be Latin Modern. If that's your only issue with it, you could just look for another supported font.

@user202729 well sure that adds a few thousand if there are a few more you want to add then that can easily be done but do you want that to be x{}^{2}{}^{3} or x{}^{23} or (hardest to do) x^{23}

@u

(I think you need ping at least 3 characters)

For now I'm pretty okay with full Unicode-math

although xetex - Is there a way to use unicode-math in a limited fashion? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange looks like what I look for (linked from that question)

I think the "hardest" way can be done by ifnextchar (10 cases?) or regex replacement+redefine math environment, but last time I could not find any question about it

Reading the source code, Unicode-math does it by scanning the tokens forward. Not a bad idea

@user202729 if you only need this for xelatex and lualatex you can probably lift the superscript character block code straight out of unicode-math

Yes.
At least it's in expl3, a little easier to read than plain TeX code

@user202729 not everyone agrees with that:-)

2

4:00 PM

A quick question while I'm between classes. Should I be able to see a record of answers I've deleted? I thought I had done this in the past but I can't seem to find it now.

Are these questions the same? https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/172421/how-to-easily-use-utf-8-with-latex https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/201622/why-does-xetex-not-display-basic-unicode-characters https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/377613/solve-unicode-char-is-not-set-up-for-use-with-latex-without-special-handling-o?noredirect=1&lq=1 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/45796/unicode-characters-not-displaying-in-xetex https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/394094/how-can-i-use-unicode-symbols-in-tex-source/394109#394109 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/235421…

I think the explanation on fallback font is good, but it's quite hard to find with that many similar answers.

@LaTeXereXeTaL your own answers or from other users?

At least it's easier to find documentation. For normal LaTeX I have to find in (TeXBook + TeXByTopic + LaTeX unofficial documentation + LaTeX2e + source2e + eTeX + did I miss something?)

@LaTeXereXeTaL If you deleted it recently see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13193/… , otherwise search in your browser history or you need 10k

4:22 PM

@user202729 -- The Unicode superscript digits should not be used in math. The Unicode Technical Committee has (reasonably) decreed that markup should be used for superscripts and subscripts. It is simply impractical and unjustifiable to create Unicode assignments for all possible sub- and superscripts; therefore all such entities should be indicated by markup.

18

Q: Is there any way to see my deleted questions or answers?

Previously I deleted some of my questions, I wonder if there is a way to see (only) my deleted questions?

support deletion search deleted-questions deleted-answers

@user202729 related and all have outdated answers as (since 2015) the defaulr xelatex font has been the latin modern opentype font (Unicode encoded) not teh 7bit computer modern roman

4:58 PM

@JosephWright Is siunitx now a proper superset of siunits in terms of features? Or putting it differently, is there a reason to use siunits over siunitx?

@FaheemMitha The entire point of siunitx was to cover all of the concepts you might want from siunits, SIstyle, units, unitsdef, ...: I think there's been no reason to use anything except siunitx for over a decade

@JosephWright OK. Thank you.

@FaheemMitha if you find a reason you should make a future request for siunitx.

@UlrikeFischer Yup

@JosephWright but only after the party

5:01 PM

@FaheemMitha I only mention siunits because it's part of the history of siunitx, not because there's a reason to use it

Stefan Kottwitz

@FaheemMitha the x is below the s on the keyboard, so a typo lures you into using the new package, and now we are here after 10 years

@FaheemMitha In v1 I provided a way to emulate the exact input syntax of various packages, including siunits, but I dropped that for v2 as it wasn't a good idea

@StefanKottwitz Any thoughts on the email I sent last week? About moderation ...

@JosephWright Yes, I understand.

Stefan Kottwitz

@JosephWright Yes, a yes

@StefanKottwitz One for email, but I just thought I'd prod as you and I are both about :)

5:15 PM

@StefanKottwitz See email

6:13 PM

@samcarter In this case, one of my own, but it seems the question was deleted and I can't find it. It's okay.

@DavidCarlisle Thank you.

@user202729 Thank you. I wasn't aware of the time limit or reputation requirement.

1 hour later…

7:19 PM

@barbarabeeton @samcarter @UlrikeFischer weeeeeeee twitter.com/shouldhaveaduck/status/1437464745179680771

@PauloCereda -- It's much easier to get moving if you have longer legs, This little one needs someone to push.

7:52 PM

I have come across finl.xyz a couple of times, and just reread it again just now. I don't have enough knowledge about typesetting to be able to have an opinion about his comments. And it's all theoretical, because no such better system as described currently exists. At least, in usable form. But I do wonder if typesetting, by its nature, can ever be anything but complicated and difficult, no matter what system is used for it.

8:23 PM

@FaheemMitha Obviously, @DonHosek is going to try - I suspect the issue faced by all LaTeX alternatives will remain - critical mass

@FaheemMitha -- To decide whether typesetting is or is not inherently difficult, consider the various requirements of (1) a "traditional" article in a math journal; (2) a weekly circular for a supermarket; (3) a newspaper where articles need to be broken and continued on one or more different pages; (4) a slide presentation where the relative horizontal/vertical ratio isn't known in advance. More variations can be imagined. Now, try to define a typesetting engine that will handle all.

@FaheemMitha -- Oh, add to that the probability that the user will never have used it before, but will expect "perfect" output.

9:05 PM

@FaheemMitha There are a lot of edge cases that are difficult or impossible to deal with given TeX's origin of expecting 7-bit ASCII. Even LuaTeX and XeTeX do not have localized casing rules as far as I know so there's no way to get, in a Turkish context “sabahleyin” uppercased to “SABAHLEYİN.” The lack of name spacing or adequate dependency management is a continual pain point.

$ lualatex '\typeout{\csname text_uppercase:nn\endcsname{tr}{sabahleyin}}'
This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.13.2 (TeX Live 2021)
 restricted system commands enabled.
LaTeX2e <2021-06-01> patch level 1
L3 programming layer <2021-08-27>
SABAHLEYİN

@DonHosek ^^ (admitedly this is expandable expl3 code not \uppercase )

@DonHosek I really don't get name spacing, but perhaps that's because I'm a TeX programmer: the idea of having (using Lua syntax) local foo = baz.foo simply means that in the code I've no idea where foo comes from all the time, whereas in TeX it would be \baz@foo and I would

@DonHosek As @DavidCarlisle says, doable in macros: \lowercase and \uppercase don't really correspond at all to Unicode's idea of case changing (one could make an argument for case folding), but then they are not alone in not having language concepts attached

9:22 PM

@DavidCarlisle Overleaf's TeX Live 2021 will have this fixed btw, we just decided for that today.

@yo' sounds good

@DavidCarlisle I'm happy for that -- not seeing your and Ulrike's discussion, we likely wouldn't even know about the issue, so thanks a lot!

@DonHosek I'm interested in your plans in this area: something like \uppercase but with language attached? ISO-based codes?

@DonHosek Some separate case-folding primitive?

10:05 PM

@DonHosek on your Word comment, it is in fact possible to paste \sum_{i=0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{2^{i}} into Word and have it produce typeset output

@PhelypeOleinik Okay, cool. Thanks for the clear explanation. I'l just wait another month or two for it to land then...

user image

10:27 PM

how on earth does this Community guy decide if a question needs clarification?

4

11:09 PM

oh the maketitle one

@UlrikeFischer Like a parrot, it will just repeat whatever nonsense users choose in the review queue

« first day (3970 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (968 days later) »

Transcript for

Sep '2113

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends

\begin{chat}

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

$TeX - LaTeX$

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile