TeX, LaTeX and Friends

CarLaTeX

8:58 AM

6

Ulrike Fischer

@CarLaTeX next goal 55555 ?

CarLaTeX

@UlrikeFischer Of course!

David Carlisle

9:13 AM

@UlrikeFischer 555,555 would be better

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle I think @egreg's 1,111,111 will arrive first

2

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle five fives are better than six fives

4

Jasper Habicht

9:56 AM

I wonder, is there a way to nest clists using expl3? I have the feeling that this is not the intended use ... or maybe you need to be very carful with expansion?

David Carlisle

10:20 AM

@JasperHabicht we have some open issues about nested structures, but you can do either {{a,b},{c,d}} or {\l_a,\l_b} where \l_a is {a,b} and \l_b is {c,d}

Jasper Habicht

@DavidCarlisle I see, so it is possible. Then I probably need to be more careful about how to expand things. Until now, I did not really get it done properly, so I was wondering whether it is working at all. I'll try harder then =D

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle (what have (Lisp ever) done for us)

David Carlisle

10:39 AM

@PauloCereda (given (us) (great editor))

@PauloCereda (breakfast)

samcarter

@CarLaTeX yeah!

mickep

10:54 AM

@PauloCereda And the TeX community gave a \romannumeral things back...

Paulo Cereda

11:09 AM

@DavidCarlisle (oh no)

DialFrost

11:21 AM

Hi!

I just checked a question here, how come it's so complicated to make these nice looking arrows :P - the code seems seriously long

egreg

12:41 PM

@CarLaTeX possibly 😜

David Carlisle

@DialFrost suggest a shorter syntax, you have to at least specify the coordinates for a non standard arrow box shape, and specify text linebreaking in that shape. That seems to be what the answer does?

2

Jasper Habicht

@DavidCarlisle Oh, I just got it: it should be something like \clist_gput_right:Nx \g_mytest_outer_clist { { \l_mytest_inner_clist } } to append a clist to another ... expansion (and the right amount of braces) is important, because otherwise you somehow get a clist consisting of identical items ...

David Carlisle

@JasperHabicht that is making the first form I suggested, with {} around expanded lists, if you used Nn instead of Nx and did not use {} you could use the second form where the outer list is a list of csname acting as pointers to the inner lists

Jasper Habicht

@DavidCarlisle Oh, I see! That's really nice! First, I thought of expl3 to be pretty awkward, but the more I dive into it, the more I like it

DialFrost

1:00 PM

@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I am completely new to this site and to LaTeX, so I don't understand anything :P

Ulrike Fischer

@DialFrost if you are new to LaTeX then tikz isn't the best to start with. It has lots of options and that can be quite confusing.

DialFrost

@UlrikeFischer tikz?

Nah, I was just curious on how fast people here can come up with the right code

Ulrike Fischer

@DialFrost the package used to make the pictures.

DialFrost

to me (a weak programmer) the code looks like it would take a few days to make :P

mickep

@DialFrost That is why it could be good to start with something simpler.

David Carlisle

1:10 PM

@DialFrost there are only so many TeX questions to be asked so if you have been answering for 30 years (or 3000 years in @egreg's case) chances are you have done similar code before

90

A: Draw an aircraft with Tikz

It was suggested in chat http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9482087#9482087 That picture mode would be the ideal tool for the job here: \documentclass{article} \begin{document} \begin{picture}(200,100) \put(30,40){\line(1,0){150}} \put(30,40){\line(0,1){60}} \put(30,100){\line(...

DialFrost

@DavidCarlisle Tex seems interesting, but I don't have the capacity to actually learn it :(, although it seems helpful

mickep

@DavidCarlisle Yes, @DavidCarlisle, that is a good start. :)

DialFrost

I looked at a few simple questions, got confused, gave up ;P

mickep

@DialFrost What type of documents do you want to type? You can start out with something simple.

DialFrost

@mickep pdf/word - e.g. those kinda nice flowcharts equations etc.

I don't have a problem with them right now, but before I had trouble making them look nice

@DavidCarlisle heh I've seen @egreg quite a bit around here everytime I see a latex qns show up on the HQN

David Carlisle

1:13 PM

@DialFrost good to start with a tutorial rather than a Q&A site that by its nature tends towards detailed points not of interest to a beginner. See learnlatex.org

DialFrost

Thanks for the link! :3

@DavidCarlisle Just interested in how it looks like, taht's all :)

before I start learning

@DavidCarlisle 30 years!!! Wow

David Carlisle

@DialFrost I started in '87, I think egreg a bit earlier

DialFrost

@DavidCarlisle I'm too young :P

@DavidCarlisle heh 1000BC for egreg

Just a really quick qns, how helpful is Latex (is it more applicable for papers e.g. research)

David Carlisle

@DialFrost well you shouldn't ask that here Unless you want really objective balanced answers like "it's brilliant, especially the parts I wrote"

DialFrost

hmm ok mb

Thanks though, nice to receive feedback from a 600k+ :P

samcarter

3:02 PM

@DialFrost The learning curve is maybe a bit step, but in the end, learning latex is definitely worth the effort. It is a powerful tool which can be applied for many things beyond writing papers. Spending time on learning latex is a much better investment than flooding main meta with bug reports about design issues which will most likely never be fixed :)

Faheem Mitha

3:58 PM

@DialFrost TeX is time consuming to learn, time consuming to work with if you want to do newish things (i.e. programming), but very powerful and generally useful in its domain; domain creation, broadly defined. Since one can also use it to create vector graphics, and apparently now animated graphics too. TeX has many uses cases for which there is not obvious substitute that I am aware of. And certainly no free ones.

I think the major downside is that it is extremely easy to just spend excessive time working with it. There's also the danger that you will come to enjoy it and spend more time than necessary. I hear that's a not uncommon disease.

barbara beeton

4:13 PM

@FaheemMitha -- Are you describing a disease you've caught?

Faheem Mitha

4:41 PM

@barbarabeeton Perhaps. I take the Fifth.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- I hope it's a fifth of something interesting. Me, I'd go for ginger beer.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton That would be the Fifth Amendment. Once, I was partial to chocolate milk. In hindsight, those were the days.

Perhaps one day one will be able to conjure sounds and smells with TeX.

\lilac

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- Oh, I know you meant the Fifth Amendment; just teasing. Chocolate's pretty good stuff. But I think that conjuring smells from TeX is going a bit far. Sounds? Maybe; that seems more realistic.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Yes, I thought you had probably heard of the Fifth Amendment.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- Sadly, too often these days.

Faheem Mitha

4:53 PM

@barbarabeeton Alas.

Generating smells with computers is a thing, so why not TeX?

tush

8:23 PM

I am curious
What about the new edition of the Latex Companion? When is it going to be available on the books retailers (amazon bookdepository etc.)?
On amazon, on the book's web page, the date August 1 2022 appears as the publication date, but it also says "out of stock at the moment".

CarLaTeX

@DialFrost I have not timed but I think about 1/2 hour for my answer to that question. TikZ is not so difficult, look at Section 3 here: tug.org/tugboat/tb39-1/tb121duck-tikz.pdf

Alan Munn

31

Q: "The LaTeX Companion", 3rd Edition

I have just realized that "The LaTeX Companion" is published in it's 3rd edition: https://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Companion-Techniques-Computing-Typesetting/dp/0134658949 However, it is not available from Amazon, it seems. How can I purchase the 3rd edition?

books

tush

@AlanMunn Last update is July 15th..

Alan Munn

@tush Right, and the main author says they're in the middle of copyediting and proofreading and volume II isn't layed out yet and won't likely be done before January. How much more detailed information do you need? If Frank had a firmer publication date he would likely have given one.

tush

8:52 PM

I have a problem with my package manager (TeX live). At the moment I can't install or update any new packages, for some reason, never mind at the moment.
But I need to install a new package (tabularray). I downloaded the sty file from ctan and copied it to `/usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tabularray/tabularray-2021.sty` (after creating a new directory called `tabularray`). Now I try to compile a document and I get the message "File `tabularray.sty' not found."
Is there any thing else that I need to do to install this package?

Alan Munn

@tush Well installing with tlmgr is probably the right way to go, so better to solve that problem no?

David Carlisle

@tush installing by hand tha way will lead to pain specially don't copy to the stadard directories. But you will need mktexlsr at least

tush

@AlanMunn TeX live gui is making troubles.. I installed texlive 2022 but this distribution is not recognized for some reason, and texlive 2021 can't be updated anymore. I never tried working with tlmgr.

@DavidCarlisle Do you mean that I need to some kind of a reconfiguration for the distro so that the engine knows how to find it?

David Carlisle

@tush tl 2022 will be recoginised if you install it correctly. Did you set the PATH ?

tush

@DavidCarlisle No.. How do I do that?

David Carlisle

9:01 PM

@tush well obviously if a command is not in the system PATH then the system will not run it. nothing special about tex, that is just basic linux/unix/posix rules

tush

@DavidCarlisle Right. But how do I set the PATH? I don't know much about it.

David Carlisle

@tush tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html section Post-install: setting PATH

tush

@DavidCarlisle But either way, I got the sty file in the above mentioned location, so my engine should find this package now. Why it does not?

Ulrike Fischer

@tush you probably didn't call mktexlsr. But you shouldn't add files to texmf-dist. Use texmf-local or your texmfhome.

David Carlisle

@tush becuse you have not run mktexlsr but if you run that texlive 2021 will find it but it may not work

Peter Grill

9:06 PM

What is the trick to get this \pgfmathtruncate macro to work:

\newcommand{\ACount}{903}%
\newcommand{\TCount}{16383}%
\pgfmathtruncatemacro{\BCount}{\TCount-\ACount}%

David Carlisle

@tush do not copy files in to /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/tex/latex but you now have 2022 tabularray but a 2021 expl3 this will be an untested and possibly unworking combination

Peter Grill

MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\ACount}{903}%
\newcommand{\TCount}{16383}%

\begin{document}
\pgfmathtruncatemacro{\BCount}{\TCount-\ACount}%

BCount=\BCount
\end{document}

tush

@DavidCarlisle I copied the sty file to /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/latex/local/tabularray/ (after ctrating the dir tabularray). Is that good? Still, the engine can't find it, unfortunately.

David Carlisle

@tush better but as I say it may not work with tl 2021 at all, better would have been to install a matching 2021 version

tush

@DavidCarlisle Hmm.. So the "better practice" is to set the PATH?

Alan Munn

9:12 PM

@PeterGrill I get 15480, isn't that the right answer? You're simply subtracting, so what's to truncate?

David Carlisle

@tush it will not find it if you have not run mktexlsr (but we have said that already)

Peter Grill

@AlanMunn Yeah thats what I want, but get "Dimension too large". Using truncate to ensure results are integer valued

tush

I am not an expert, I know. ( One day :-) )
This is my output after running mktexlsr:
```
user_name ~ > mktexlsr
mktexlsr: /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-config: directory not writable. Skipping...
mktexlsr: /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist: directory not writable. Skipping...
mktexlsr: /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-var: directory not writable. Skipping...
mktexlsr: /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local: directory not writable. Skipping...
```

Alan Munn

@PeterGrill Hmm works for me with no error.

David Carlisle

@tush you presumably installed 2021 using sudo so you have to update it the same way

Alan Munn

9:16 PM

@tush You need to run it using sudo mktexlsr since you're working on system owed directories

Peter Grill

@AlanMunn: Opps, increase TCount to 16384 instead of 16383.

Alan Munn

@PeterGrill Ah, ok, now I get the error. :)

David Carlisle

@PeterGrill why use pgf? \the\numexpr\TCount-\ACount\relax

Alan Munn

@PeterGrill From the TikZ docs: It should be noted that all calculations must not exceed ±16383.99999 at any point, because the un- derlying computations rely on TEX dimensions. This means that many of the underlying computations are necessarily approximate and, in addition, not very fast. TEX is, after all, a typesetting language and not ideally suited to relatively advanced mathematical operations. However, it is possible to change the computations as described in Section 96.

Peter Grill

@AlanMunn Yeah, took me a whil to get to this point. @DavidCarlisle's solution work great.

@DavidCarlisle Thanks

tush

9:28 PM

@DavidCarlisle sudo mktexlsr works. Brilliant!

David Carlisle

@tush but as I say, you are using an untested and not recommended configuration with a new tabularray but running on an old expl3. updating to texlive 2022 would be much better

tush

@DavidCarlisle I know. It is on my to do list. Thanks very much for your care and your notice. Once again.

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends