What if I’d like to discuss the creation of a collaborative book on TikZ? Shall I create a chat room? Is there another way to reach TikZ users to cater to their needs?

I feel like the manual is a great documentation but it doesn’t really teach you how to draw, even though it has a few introductory tutorials.

@UlrikeFischer nice catch

@Atcold You can, of course, make a dedicated room - but I'm not sure if you'll reach anyone 'extra

@Atcold Well TikZ isn't really drawing, hence the name - it's good for technical stuff that has a programmatic description, poor for more arty figures

@Atcold there are lots of tikz tutorials other than the manual (which isn't intended to teach) eg tikz.net you can contribute to one of those or start your own and invite people to help, just having a chat about possibly doing something in th efuture doesn't usually work so well

@JosephWright because (hence the name) you would use picture mode for arty pictures like unicorns

[1/6, ??:??/??:??] update: amsmath [2460k] (72739 -> 72779) ... done

@JosephWright ^

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle I'll upload the dev version at lunchtime

(In the lab most of the day)

@JosephWright not at warwick yet but I pulled from fau.de

@DavidCarlisle I only got important updates (easybook)...

Oh wait, I also got "latexbug". It is very convenient that you collect them into a package! :P

@Skillmon ooh rabbits are very good at swimming x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1854179765026009090

@samcarter ^^ :)

@PauloCereda ohh :)

@PauloCereda all those "just found out ... can swim" are really annoying. Rule of thumb: Every mammal can swim on reflex, except primates, those need to learn it (because their reflexive movements don't work out to keep them afloat). The swim-mode of the ears however is great.

@Skillmon propellers!

(I once saw a video of a swimming bat, that was cute as well -- guess what the comment was "I just found out bats can swim")

@UlrikeFischer @DavidCarlisle You might find this little document interesting: gist.github.com/gusbrs/a09928d6cf71050129a6fcbb3ea95c2c (Needs the latest release, but you should already have it).

@Skillmon I find it more interesting that they voluntarily swim

@samcarter ooh maybe it's Bunny Olympics

@PauloCereda The bunny from the video must have won the gold medal :)

@samcarter ooh

So I see my blog post is having an impact :)

@JosephWright something new or the stuff from yesterday?

Work are moving to Win11 - I will finally be able to try out WSL that actually works - will see if this impacts my plans for next laptop ...

@UlrikeFischer Yesterday - just didn't comment then

@PauloCereda But not as good as ducks /quack

@JosephWright what do I have to do in l3build if I want the doc target to first compile a demo file and then the main doc (which includes the demo pdf)?

@UlrikeFischer typesetdemofiles

@JosephWright I had that, not sure why it failed. But now the other demo fails, grumpf. Can I typeset one demo with a different workflow (latex+dvips)?

@UlrikeFischer You'd have to code that up by hand - the underlying assumption throughout l3build is that typesetting is a one-engine thing

@JosephWright Your blog post is very effective :) Two years ago, I tried in vain to convince quarto to change their default engine from xelatex to something else. Now I tried it again by linking to your blog and the latex news and their reply immediately was "Quarto should definitely follow best practices from the latex community." :P

@samcarter :)

@samcarter Pleased to help

@JosephWright talking about xelatex: the beamer user guide has "You can use beamer with pdflatex, latex+dvips, lualatex and xelatex." What would you think about adding a footnote with a link to either the ltx news or your blog?

@samcarter Yes, might be good - we might want to go a bit further and say that XeLaTeX works with limitations and that people should be moving to other engines

@JosephWright Sounds good. There are so many problems with xelatex, like the missing text on note pages, the incorrect uncovering. Do you want to edit or shall I make a draft?

@samcarter I'm busy for most of today - so perhaps best if you draft

@JosephWright will do

@mickep if you can not wait a day: tlmgr update --all --repository https://ftp.fau.de/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet/

@DavidCarlisle I don't dare to go to Germany. You never know what happens there these days.

@mickep nothing much, just a dissolution of our government.

@mickep You might find yourself being appointed as minister - there are some open positions :)

@Skillmon you should have a monachy appointed by divine right, then you can't have such issues.

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle remind me, how many PMs did you have this decade? :)

I think Germany is just trying to catch up with you :)

@samcarter not sure: I blinked and missed a couple

@DavidCarlisle :)

@JosephWright quack <3

@PauloCereda D.....

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@mickep Dodos können sehr gut Deutsch sprechen.

@samcarter ooh a Dodo-Parlament

@DavidCarlisle vvvvv

@PauloCereda yeah, dodos!

@PauloCereda you need a brexit edition

@DavidCarlisle and post-scotxit when that finally happens, too :)

@yo' I just found out that you too realized that acro is insanely slow github.com/cgnieder/acro/issues/272#issuecomment-2462461118

> [...] but at least bearable

@UlrikeFischer ^^^ was the bear involved in this conclusion? :P

@UlrikeFischer Did we mention it somewhere? (Sorry, I'm on a call now and for the most of this afternoon, so can't really check...)

@yo' yes acro is somewhere in the overleaf-time-out help page.

@UlrikeFischer ah right! (Yeah, I see it now)

overleaf.com/learn/how-to/…

@UlrikeFischer why does it use a seq in the first place instead of a prop for something that should hold unique entries?

@DavidCarlisle yes, there are tutorials, and I'm familiar with the work of Stefan Kottwitz (he sent me his book I carefully reviewed). Yet, over the past three years, I've been heavily illustrating my textbook with TikZ, and currently I'm dedicating one appendix chapter to it, reflecting the way I use the package. My objective was to gather several “advanced” users and draft an outline for a book on procedural graphics based on TikZ.

@JosephWright I've been drawing a lot in TikZ…

@Atcold That's a sketch or a cartoon :)

@Skillmon I don't know, imho it doesn't make sense. I was compiling a document of a customer with 300 acronyms and it stopped for 3 minutes ...

@UlrikeFischer Here's an older thread with some Clemens' comments: github.com/cgnieder/acro/issues/205

@Atcold well OK but I'd still say best way would be to just start and see if someone offers to help, the chatrooms here are hardly used except when created due to over-long comments on a question, and those rooms vanish (or at least become hard to find) after a while.

Oh, a new amsmath... and a new context.

@Atcold Try the fabulous l3draw package (but only if you have lots of time and don't need advanced arrow tips ...)

@mickep well at least one of them will get used a lot:-)

@DavidCarlisle On my computer almost exclusive.

NOOOO! I missed 66666 by 10 rep :(

now it's 20 already :(

@Skillmon This screams for a bounty!

Seen any nice answers you'd like to reward?

@UlrikeFischer that's hard. Well, cleaning duplicates has at least O(n^2) so no wonder it takes some time...

@samcarter I guess David's showing off the \romannumeral trick with math-active m.

@Skillmon Oh, the dark magic answer!

@samcarter ooh no, one can't gift 20 but has to do 50. Well, let's hope I don't miss it again :)

@Skillmon what have the Romans ever done for us?

@DavidCarlisle they gave us peace

@samcarter oh the system X( One has to wait for 24 hours, even if one selects "award an existing answer". That's just stupid

@Skillmon they invaded us, we are supposed to invade everyone else

@Skillmon Yes, this will be a tricky one. Just make it 100, then you have more time ... =D

@Skillmon just delete an answer that's got +2

@DavidCarlisle Or quickly get 600k more.

@mickep that would be better

@Skillmon Good luck for the second try!

I hate it when l3build crashes the terminal ....

@samcarter and there I was thinking the chat room had never heard of rugby ....

@cfr The chat room can do more than just cricket :)

@samcarter that's cricket!

@cfr @PauloCereda is our local expert, you should ask him

I play dangerously... Answered a new question. Let's hope it takes time for the tick.

NOOOOOO

@Skillmon you have a lot to learn in the ways of palindromes

@DavidCarlisle now I know how Vader feels when Sidious tells him he killed his wife.

So the 600k solution it is.

@Skillmon The palindrome gods are not on your side today :(

@JosephWright 更多 Latex 知识可供学习