@UlrikeFischer I've put in another abstract to talk about keyval

@AlanMunn it's sort of Catch 22: You can't teach users the good habits if you't have them. But if you teach them good habits, they freak out and not use your product.

@UlrikeFischer, @DavidCarlisle A full set of dev files now with CTAN

@JosephWright did you like my "=" answer?

@DavidCarlisle wow :-)

@UlrikeFischer seemed a good excuse for an advert :-)

@DavidCarlisle Nice

@JosephWright looks like we missed a # 2022-06-01 PL1 Release heading in changes.txt

@DavidCarlisle Probably - I keep meaning to automate that

@JosephWright that was going to be my next comment that we should get l3build to do it:-)

@DavidCarlisle Yes, you are right of course: maybe add an issue and assign me/@MarcelKrüger to look at it?

@DavidCarlisle Did you see the l3graphics issue appear-and-vanish?

@DavidCarlisle I guess when FMi is back from the wilderness we should get him to make ltnews35 available on the website

@UlrikeFischer ^^^ re. l3graphics :)

@JosephWright yes saw it. You were fast ;-)

@JosephWright file size one

Do you guys think a \SplitKeyval processor for ltcmd/xparse would be handy? Something like \NewDocumentCommand \foo { >{\SplitKeyval{a, b, c}}m } { A:~ \use_i:nnn #1\par B:~ \use_ii:nnn #1\par C:~ \use_iii:nnn #1\par }?

@yo' -- Explain, please. Why do users freak out if one tries to teach them good habits? Is it because it's sometimes more complicated, or something else? There are some things that will need more than just good practices, like creating files that can seamlessly be converted to a form usable and understandable by visually disadvantaged math students; that requires recognition of and caring about the problem.

@barbarabeeton yeah, well, based on what we see, many users hate being told there are errors in their code, for various reasons. And it's to the extent that they'll easily go away from Overleaf because of that. (We can't say whether they go away from LaTeX obviously.) It's very difficult to find the good balance between teaching good pracices and annoying people too much. (We have burnt our fingers before, even very badly.)

@yo' -- Okay, understandable. For a long time, I've thought that documentation and teaching tools should be improved when they don't teach best practices right up front. But I've also been shot down in efforts to make improvements; fortunately, when I had to deal with authors at AMS, they were more malleable than random internet contacts. Thanks for the clarification.

@barbarabeeton yeah, note that e.g. the Submit modal in Overleaf won't let you submit something that has errors (neither to journals nor to the Overleaf Gallery), so there are some measures in place. Also, we'll suggest switching the Stop on first error mode when there's more than 100 errors etc. Still, we need to be careful about what we put in front of the user.

@yo' -- I admit to not being an Overleaf user, or having read the documentation. I will try to do so; it's probably decent, but if I can help make it more "encouraging", I'll aim for that. (Off for an appointment now.)

@barbarabeeton Take care, and thanks! (mail sent)

@barbarabeeton they freak out because they are unsure if they can handle the error. If I see an error or a loop (and I see many) I simply say ups and start to look what is wrong. But if someone is rather helpless it is frightening.

@yo' with "Overleaf Gallery", do you mean things like overleaf.com/articles/rishi-shahs-resume/vgxvkmxktyxn ?

@samcarter yep

@yo' .. so if this throws an error by default, this means it worked at the time of submission and stopped working in the mean time?

@samcarter That shan't happen; it should open in the latest TL version in which it worked. However, this one is quite old, so there might be other reasons as well. (I'm not 100% sure when we implemented the no-error policy)

@JosephWright tex.stackexchange.com/questions/647997/…

@yo' Ah, ok. So at least the number of such "templates" won't increase. That's good to know!

@samcarter and if it does, something's wrong at Overleaf :-D

@yo' oh no

@DavidCarlisle Ohh, "souce2e"

sauce is spelled with an a. :P

@mickep oh no

@mickep à l'orange ?

@samcarter Hehe

@samcarter oh no

@barbarabeeton In part, people don't think that making such large investments (from their perspective) into something as arcane (from their perspective) as typesetting is sensible. The bottom line, I think, is that it all seems too complicated to them, and out of proportion with the result.

Academics are slightly more likely to be cooperative, in my experience, but not much more.

A lot of people are just not amenable to spending significant efforts on skills which they don't perceive as "core", for whatever reason.

@barbarabeeton I think also that TeX errors are have two properties that makes them relatively user unfriendly: after the first error, errors tend to cascade leading to tens or hundreds of apparent errors, which can be quite demoralizing to a new user. Secondly, as we know, the line number reported is often not the place where the actual error is, which makes debugging non-trivial. I think we also underestimate how easy it is to interpret any error for a naive user.

@FaheemMitha Well that's a marketing problem. It shouldn't be about beautiful typesetting, which people don't generally care about, but about reliability in numbering things, consistency of formatting, and ease of citations.

@AlanMunn TeX normally stops at the first error, though. It only continues if you tell it to keep going.

Anything after the first error quickly grows useless. Though even the first error is likely to be incomprehensible and/or misleading.

@FaheemMitha Well yes, but that's the issue that spawned this whole discussion. In Overleaf the default has been to run in nonstop mode, leading to large numbers of apparent errors.

@AlanMunn Oh, I see. Sorry, I was missing/didn't properly follow the context.

nonstop mode is definitely not a good default unless you just want TeX to exit so you can look at the complete log file, to search it for stuff, or whatever.

@FaheemMitha This comment summarizes the problem: you're a reasonably experienced user and you think the errors are inscrutable. (I don't actually agree, but they're certainly a learned skill.)

@FaheemMitha Well for Overleaf it was a way to get users to have output of some sort, which they thought was better than having the halt-on-error mode. And there are pros and cons of both if you read back to @yo' s comments.

@AlanMunn Well, I said likely. But yes, they're often very hard to understand or misleading. It makes sense in terms of what the engine is doing. But only in terms of what's going on at a very low level, which only an expert would be able to follow, anyway.

@AlanMunn I think TeX has a variety of advantages, which might be prioritized differently by different people. But what I was trying to say, in summary, is that the whole thing is just too much work for most people. Even highly educated and technically skilled people, sometimes.

I think if it isn't somewhat directly connected with their discipline or job, people just want it to work without thinking much about it. Which as we all know, isn't exactly TeX.

@FaheemMitha Yes, I agree, but I do think that 'good typesetting' is lowest on most people's priority, but that's often how many TeX evangelists want to sell it. :) Since my field has many really useful packages written, it's quite an easy sell to my students, although not everyone adapts quickly. (I never require it.)

Now, if one is a linguist (for example) and the typesetting happens to fall somewhat into the region of "I need to get good at this so it can help my research", that's obviously a different kettle of fish.

@FaheemMitha Yes, totally.

@AlanMunn Yes, I agree. Most people don't care about good typesetting. I do care. It's one of the things that appeals to me about TeX. But I don't think it's really a selling point for most people.

I mean, they would be just as happy using MS Word or some random word processor.

@AlanMunn You don't require your students use TeX?

@FaheemMitha No. They should be free to use whatever tools they feel comfortable with at least for things like writing their dissertation or their own papers.

@AlanMunn But don't you need TeX tools for doing the sorts of things you do?

Just to throw a different perspective: there is an area in compiler building techniques that deals with error recovery, so there is a niche where this behavior (ignoring errors and moving on) is expected. :)

@FaheemMitha Not really, TeX just makes lots of things much easier.

@AlanMunn Sounds like a good reason to use it. But it's good that you don't force your students to use it. People should be free to make their own decisions.

@FaheemMitha I would say the vast majority of linguists use Word, with certain subfields (mainly semantics, which uses a lot of math notation) tending to prefer LaTeX.

@AlanMunn OK.

@FaheemMitha I do think that Overleaf has increased peoples entry into LaTeX, so I suspect among the younger generation of linguists there may be a bit more LaTeX use, but I don't know that for a fact.

@AlanMunn I tried Overleaf. I didn't find it appealing, personally. But perhaps it works for some people.

I like to have things running on my machine. So I can control it.

@FaheemMitha some people = millions of users. :)

@FaheemMitha Well if you're used to having a nice editor and are comfortable managing a distribution, there's no need for it. But this is not the case for many people. So Overleaf has really been a great tool. I point my undergraduate student to it for drawing trees, for example. That would be impossible if I wanted them to install a whole distribution.

@AlanMunn Would installing a distribution be so terrible? And by distribution I assume you mean a Linux distribution.

@FaheemMitha Overleaf also has great advantages for collaboration. Not everyone is happy using something like git, even if they're good TeX users.

@AlanMunn So it handles versioning for you?

@FaheemMitha No, I mean a TeX distribution. But for undergrad students taking a single course? Completely unrealistic.

@AlanMunn Oh, sorry.

@FaheemMitha Not the free version, but more than one person can work on the document at a time, just like working on a google doc. So this alone is great for collaborative work.

@AlanMunn Even on Windows, aren't there TeX distribution binaries you can just install that work out of the box?

@AlanMunn Like Etherpad.

@FaheemMitha Yes of course, but I don't think you've had to deal with the Instagram/Snapchat generation.

@AlanMunn Possibly not. I don't know what kind of students you get, so...

@AlanMunn excuse me, TikTok. :)

Or even what kind of courses you teach.

@PauloCereda Maybe I need to start lecturing in 15 second reels.

@AlanMunn ooh skills

@AlanMunn tiktok.com/@litelinguistics/video/7042072415098359087

@PauloCereda never trust the user?

@FaheemMitha I teach many really smart students, but that doesn't correlate well with computer skills in my experience.

@AlanMunn OK.

@Skillmon quack :)

@PauloCereda omg

@AlanMunn sorry

@PauloCereda So are you following the VNL?

@AlanMunn ooh I wasn't aware of it! Now I am! :)

@FaheemMitha -- There are even some of us old-timers who prefer to have a competent sysadmin in charge of installing software. (Confession -- I don't have TeX on my laptop; I do all TeX work on a remote machine, although I often write first drafts locally, before trying to process anything.)

@barbarabeeton Why don't you have TeX on your laptop?

@FaheemMitha -- Because as a sysadmin, I'm incompetent. I've been around long enough to realize that it's best to concentrate one's efforts on things that one is good at, and find dependable backups in other areas. Since mismatched versions have been responsible for so many problems I've debugged for others, I'm best off avoiding that problem by taking advantage of a competent resource.

@barbarabeeton Do you run Windows on your laptop, or OS X (is that still the correct terminology?), or do you run something else?

@barbarabeeton Sometimes it can be hard to find dependable backup. For me, personally, that's been the norm in many areas. So I try to do what I can myself.

@FaheemMitha -- My laptop runs on Ubuntu Linux. (And admittedly, it's not totally up to date.) I do have an old Macbook, but it was never updated beyond Snow Leopard, and I grew quite disaffected with Apple when purchase and registration of an ipad caused my existing gmail account to become inoperable, through no fault of my own, none of the "experts" at the Apple store were able to help, and I lost a lot of irreplaceable stuff. I've never been fond of Windows, but I'll spare you my complaints.

@barbarabeeton I see. The popular option, at least here, seems to be to install a "local" TeX distribution from TeX Live. I had my doubts about it, but I've had it installed for some time, and it seems to be behaving itself, though I still have the Debian packages installed.

You don't have someone who can assist with that, assuming you need assisting?

So far (touch wood) it's seemed quite maintenance free, though no doubt saying this will unleash all manner of gremlins.

I'm now using the "local" version, given the general pressure to stay current.

This busy modern world, always in a rush...

@barbarabeeton I remember you talking about the Apple thing. Apple's holy mission is to make as much money as possible from its users without actually breaking the law. I mostly prefer not to assist them in this. I did buy a Ipod once, which not long after stopped working. I think this has been my first, and probably my last, Apple purchase.

@FaheemMitha -- My husband used to be, before retirement, a system security officer, but on "big iron". (And that's hardly in existence any more.) He's not really comfortable with *nix, although he has adapted much better to guis than I have. So I'm pretty much on my own; my most reliable tech adviser is several time zones away, nobody really local.

@barbarabeeton You're not comfortable with having someone "talk you through it"?

The installation on Debian, at least, is basically a couple of commands, if I remember correctly. And unless you have an unreliable connection, that's likely to be it. You'll still need to decide where to install it, of course.

I went with /usr/local/texlive.

@FaheemMitha -- That would actually be fine, but if the laptop itself "goes south" and disconnects (which it has been known to do), that could leave me without any backup or usable connection to the outside world until it got replaced. The last time I had to have hardware checked, I was disconnected for about a week. Unlike some people here, we've got only one reasonably reliable connection between us; the closest alternative is a public terminal at the library.

@barbarabeeton You could set up a remote backup with automatic sync. And/or use DVCS to push remotely, also possibly automatically.

I really need to get a second machine. if this one dies, it's going to be really inconvenient.

@FaheemMitha -- Er, what is DVCS? (I said I was incompetent as a sysadmin.) And yes, a second machine would be good insurance, so we should think about it.

@barbarabeeton I was actually talking to myself there. I only have the one machine here. But no doubt the same comment applies to everyone else on the planet who only has a single machine.

DVCS == Distributed Version Control System. I.e. Git or Mercurial. A distributed system has built-in backup capabilities, in that one can push one's repository updates to a repository copy at a remote destination. Either manually or automatically. Though of course there are other tools for syncing. E.g. Syncthing.

VCS plays very well with TeX, because TeX is all text.

@Skillmon hmmm

@DavidCarlisle evil users finding bugs?

@Skillmon natural outcome of moving away from the one true keyval system and option list handler zapper

@DavidCarlisle should've made \ProcessKeyOptions parse the @raw@opts list in the first place and not just copy over the l3keys2e stuff :P

@Skillmon yes I think so, just looking at the code... @JosephWright