TeX, LaTeX and Friends

cfr

00:38

@EmanueleNardi you really should ask this without pinging any specific person. however, I took a quick look. if you want my honest opinion, I have seen worse, but you are creating a lot of problems for users which could be easily avoided. some things may be justifiable if your institution imposes very specific format requirements, but some things are just things no class should do, imho.

enkorvaks

02:17

@EmanueleNardi There is no need for \ExplSyntaxOn/\ExplSyntaxOff or \makeatletter/\makeatother in a class or style file - it's implied by being a style or class file. I don't have any other comments at the moment, but may look further later.

cfr

06:11

@enkorvaks that's true for \makeat... but it is only true for \ExplSyntax... in an expl3 class or package. and it is only true after you've declared that that is what it is. so the \ExplSyntaxOn is needed, I think, even though the class declares itself to be expl3.

cfr

06:24

@EmanueleNardi don't use \usepackage. use \RequirePackage. do not do language configuration in the class. I don't see why you don't use .bool_set:N for the keys. e.g. have female set the bool true and male set the inverse bool true. don't load the vast majority of packages you currently load. unless this is for purely personal use, almost none of the packages you load should be in your class. geometry is OK. do not encourage users to use a non-flat directory layout.

cfr

06:35

@EmanueleNardi I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you did ask me to look and I'm assuming you hope other people will use this. so I can't help but say that your class would be a lot more useful if it did a lot less and that your template would be a lot more useful if it used a simpler (flat) directory structure.

enkorvaks

@cfr Fair comment. I did see ProvidesExplClass, so assumed, and didn't actually pay attention to the fact that there was expl3 stuff before that (which wouldn't work without the ExplSyntaxOn).

Skillmon

07:16

@DavidCarlisle even the comma, you're a master of your craft!

cfr

07:53

@EmanueleNardi @enkorvaks won't work as-is, but more like overleaf.com/read/njwckgjzqjhh#070f36. I would probably remove a bit more than I did here, though, but I ran out of steam.

David Carlisle

09:29

@EmanueleNardi don't use str functions for things that should be typeset such as \g__unitn_candidate_str should be a tl like \g__unitn_advisor_tl (so for consuistency I'd use tl for all of those) \RequirePackage[T1]{fontenc} You should only do that if using an 8-bit tex. \maketitle sets whole document single space

David Carlisle

11:03

Oh wow, I'd totally forgotten about that, and thought "why is my name in this answer" until I checked the link. — David Carlisle 14 secs ago

4

David Carlisle

11:32

@EmanueleNardi don't force a directory structure on users, none of this is needed. If latex finds this class it will find the logo, and users should be free to specify their bibliography source. `% relative path to the bibliography file
\addbibresource{assets/resources/references.bib}

% % i segnalibri vengono aperti fino al 1° livello
% \RequirePackage[open, openlevel = 1]{bookmark}

% percorsi relativi al file main
\graphicspath{
{assets/images/logo/}% university logo
{assets/images/}%
}`

Lupino

Quick question: Could it break something if I declare ` \ProvidesExplPackage ` and immediately after say \ExplSyntaxOff?

Joseph Wright

@Lupino No

@Lupino \ExplSyntax... nest properly, so this will just work

Lupino

@JosephWright do i have to say \ExplSyntaxOn at the very end of my package/class?

Joseph Wright

@Lupino No, that turns off automatically if you have \ProvidesExplPackage on

David Carlisle

@JosephWright I deleted my comment re the context chemistry stuff, i vaguely remembered setting it up now, the pictex wrapper was more or less pointless as you can just call pictex directly so that's what's on ctan, but the chem ones did use more context files so i left them out

Joseph Wright

11:38

@DavidCarlisle :)

Lupino

@JosephWright okay, thanks.

is there a way to allow values in key.choice:n to have a dot? I want a class option to pass the PDF version, e.g. 1.3 or 2.0

nevermind, my error was elsewhere

Joseph Wright

12:06

@Lupino :)

daleif

12:40

While we're discussing keys, is it suportted behavior that keys can contain \? When I was playing with a modern implementation of \DeclarePairedDelimiter (as an excerise) I had a backwards compatability mode where \Big and friends were supported options. I'm guessing it works because the keys are converted into str's

Joseph Wright

@daleif l3keys makes everything strings, yes, as they end up in \csname

Skillmon

13:11

@daleif keys yes, values depend on your handling :)

For key names everything that forms a valid n-type argument is legal.

Though by convention one shouldn't use / in key names, and also no spaces (use - instead)

Emanuele Nardi

13:55

The primary aim of this Overleaf project is to provide students at my university with a ready-to-use template that adheres to the department's 15 specific guidelines concerning the front page, margins, and line spacing. Additionally, since LaTeX is often viewed as obscure here—students frequently receive outdated templates from professors and struggle to use them—the goal is to make LaTeX more accessible by offering clear guidelines on which packages to use, replacing older and potentially obsolete ones.

Emanuele Nardi

16:15

If you're inclined to help, here's the revised class, now updated based on yesterday's feedback. Your invaluable input is deeply appreciated, and both I and the students at my university will be eternally grateful.

Anyone with this link can edit this project: overleaf.com/2947772982dxnvpjwxkxjk#3cb317

David Carlisle

17:08

@EmanueleNardi still using str, and forcing T1 encoding?

Emanuele Nardi

17:20

@DavidCarlisle I modified all of them, but l__unitn_department_str and l__unitn_department_str should remain strings since I perform certain operations on them as strings.

\RequirePackage[T1]{fontenc} is in a separate package now called addiotional-packages.sty, I will write a tutorial on how and when packages are needed

David Carlisle

@EmanueleNardi oh sorry I think I was still looking at an old tab, ignore me:-0

Emanuele Nardi

@DavidCarlisle No worries, feel free to make any edits if you spot something that seems off. Any help is appreciated, as I used everything I knew to create this class.

Emanuele Nardi

17:56

% NOTE cfr: if you used a key-value interface you could simply scope their usage when setting up
% don't allow these commands in the document
\@onlypreamble\department
\@onlypreamble\departmentGeometry
\@onlypreamble\degree
\@onlypreamble\course
\@onlypreamble\title
\@onlypreamble\subtitle
\@onlypreamble\keywords
\@onlypreamble\candidate
\@onlypreamble\studentId
\@onlypreamble\advisor
\@onlypreamble\coadvisor
\@onlypreamble\academicYear

"you could simply scope their usage when setting up" How can I accomplish this?

mickep

@EmanueleNardi These questions could be interesting for the main site. In that way others who wants to write classes and are in your situation could easier benefit.

Emanuele Nardi

@mickep Will do :)

Skillmon

18:51

I hate that the list of most recent questions doesn't show the people who asked them but the ones making the last edit :(

Such a stupid change. What's next? Turning the entire site ugly?

Emanuele Nardi

The other day I came across the lua-visual-debug package; is there an equivalent package for pdflatex?

mickep

19:08

@Skillmon Indeed very stupid

Skillmon

@EmanueleNardi afaik that package makes use of the Lua callbacks during shipout to do its jobs, I'm afraid nothing comparable is possible in pdfTeX.

samcarter

19:20

@Skillmon Next is AI-ify the site: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404735/…

Skillmon

@samcarter why did I even ask :(

samcarter

19:38

@Skillmon Given that they are also selling access to their "human-curated knowledge repositories" to the LM providers, things should get really funny in a couple of LM generations :D

Skillmon

@samcarter tbf, they're only selling things those would otherwise scavenge...

though this raises the question, their "human-curated knowledge repositories" are under cc-by-sa, what license will the result of those LLMs be under?

samcarter

@Skillmon That's a question which occupies main meta for a while now...

Skillmon

19:54

@samcarter not only on SO/SX, but in many parts of the internet (at least in those parts where people understand (or at least have a vague idea) how LLMs are trained)

David Carlisle

23:34

@EmanueleNardi \showoutput but the logging isn't as pretty

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends