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5:00 AM
Look! We have a network-wide "hot question":
user image
2
 
 
3 hours later…
7:39 AM
Anyone know how I can get just one reputation point? (In case my rep has changed by the time you read this, it currently stands at 66,665)
@tohecz Re your starred comment:
Andrew Stacey on May 18, 2012

For quite some time I’ve had the idea of writing a blog post about what makes a Great Question. The first problem with that is that it is highly subjective. I’ve no real problem with that (and this is the blog part of the site, after all) but it needs to be done carefully. The second is that it would be very easy to make it about what is wrong with questions rather than what is right. Particularly when comparing questions to see why one is great and another isn’t. So the post keeps getting started and then stopped as it trails off into a lengthy discussion about the quality of sand. …

 
@AndrewStacey Do nine downvotes and wait for an upvote.
@AndrewStacey Not to my answers! Use David's.
 
@egreg Does that still take points away? Or is it just downvotes on questions that don't? (Shame it's not the other way around, then there'd be no danger of me downvoting your contributions.)
 
@AndrewStacey You lose one point for each downvote you give to answers.
@tohecz Practicing Czech? ;-)
 
 
1 hour later…
9:14 AM
@AndrewStacey I believe that getting question upvote + 2 times giving an answer downvote
@egreg I couldn't miss the opportunity ;)
 
@tohecz It's too late now, rep 66675
 
@egreg well, stil, @Andrew should perform +1 somehow, wait for 66716 and then give 50 bounty :)
 
9:47 AM
In this particular case, Gimp/photoshop just sounds simpler than the workaround :P
 
 
3 hours later…
12:24 PM
Have we reached the 50k yet :-)?
 
@Ingo 50k of what?
 
questions
 
Aah, that's where you can find it. Thanks!
Still a few to go then..
 
12:44 PM
@MarioS.E. Hi Mario, although I still don't understand your bibentry question problem, I think that adding specific bibliography tools to your thesis class (as opposed to letting users do things however they like) is not a good idea.
 
@AlanMunn Hi Alan! long time no see :)
@AlanMunn I also think the same as you, unfortunaltey since I'm starting the fist LaTeX template EVER in my University, I need to provide an "as is" style... My supervisor asked to be to just add the chapters in different files and done! (of course, also add personal inforamtion)
 
@MarioS.E. Hmm. Does your supervisor use LaTeX usually? Why does he want the template?
 
1:00 PM
@AlanMunn He wants to start using it in our department
Hi @egreg Quick guru question: should I always define the parskip length limits in my document? If so, which ones should they be?
 
@MarioS.E. The default value is 0pt plus 0.1fil. There's no reason to change it.
 
@egreg I'm getting a lot of "underfull vbox"... I though that maybe this could avoid them (I'm using 11pt as normalsize)
 
@MarioS.E. You probably monkeyed with \textheight not making it an integer number of lines.
 
@egreg Yes, you are correct: I was using Tschichold's rules for the text area
@egreg how can I fix it?
@egreg I defined my geometry like this: \RequirePackage[textwidth=0.66666667\paperwidth,inner=0.111111111\paperwidth,te‌​xtheight=0.666666667\paperheight,bottom=0.22222222\paperheight,headheight=15pt]{g‌​eometry}
 
 
2 hours later…
2:47 PM
help... please hehehehehehehehe
 
3:12 PM
Any MikTeX users around who might have encountered this problem: (I'm not convinced LaTeX source will answer the question.)
0
Q: BibTeX suddenly failed mysteriously

KristinThis is my first question here. I have a problem that bibtex just suddenly failed me. I get the following error message in the console but it doesn't help me much. What does "This operation is supported only when you are connected to the server" mean? This is BibTeX, Version 0.99d (MiKTeX 2.9...

 
3:24 PM
@AlanMunn Not me, and I use MikTeX and BibTeX
 
@MarioS.E. It looks like someone has figured it out.
 
3:45 PM
Do we have a canonical question/answer that explains the "figure" ≠ "image" problem? (Notice this is not about keeping floats close to where they are placed.)
0
Q: Inserting Images anywhere on the page

Ahaan RungtaSo, every time, I try to insert an image, it puts the image at the top of that page or at the top of the next page. However, what if I wanted to insert it where I want it to insert? For example, try the following: \documentclass[12 pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepack...

 
3:57 PM
Duplicate found and acknowledged; we just need some close votes now.
 
@AlanMunn Done :)
@AlanMunn Alan, I might need your wisdom
 
@MarioS.E. Yes, what about? (Assuming I have any of the sort you require.)
 
@AlanMunn The thing is when you write your abstract for the thesis
@AlanMunn I want to create a command, say, \keywords
@AlanMunn where I can save the keywords to later be used along the document, so for example I may use a table where I type \keywords and I get the ones I typed in the abstract... something like \author works (you can later use \@author)
 
4:12 PM
@MarioS.E. Do you need the keywords to be stored individually? Or is the string that you enter with \keywords sufficient?
 
@AlanMunn can be a long string
 
@MarioS.E. So the simplest is \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\gdef\my@keywords{#1}}
 
@MarioS.E. Add heightrounded to the options to geometry.
 
@egreg Is there something similar for horizontal?
 
@MarioS.E. you don't need anything like that for horizontal, do you?
 
4:27 PM
@tohecz I supposed babel should take care of it with right hyphenation, I was just wondering
 
@MarioS.E. What for? You're using proportional fonts, aren't you? You can at most measure an average amount of characters in a line.
 
@AlanMunn Almost there... no Imagine these keywords were going to be input by the user at the start of the main.tex file. I want to be able to pass this information to the .sty file so it can setup the pdfkeywords metadata. Is it possible?
@egreg Is space consdiered a character?
 
4:43 PM
@MarioS.E. Assuming you're using hyperref you can do: \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\gdef\my@keywords{#1}\hypersetup{pdfinfo={Keywords={‌​#1}}}} (if you don't need the keywords for any other purpose in the document, then \my@keywords doesn't need to be defined, but I'm assuming you may print them out too.)
@MarioS.E. This doesn't preclude further use of setting pdfinfo keys in the document (or you can do the same with other keys like Title and Author.)
 
@AlanMunn Excellent!! it's working :)
@AlanMunn I'm just getting a warning. It says: Package Hyperref warning:Glyph not defined in PD1 encoding, removing \textcompwordmark.
@AlanMunn I think it is because of \hypersetup{pdfinfo={Keywords={‌​#1}}}} and the # sign
 
@MarioS.E. But this is part of a command, so the # will not be seen.
 
@AlanMunn I'm getting that warning and in the pdf properties they start with ;
 
@MarioS.E. My opinion about those calculations is they are BS. Taking the alphabet and measuring it is simply absurd, because relative frequency of the letters is not taken into account. Better than nothing; those recommendations about the average number of characters in a line are just a rule of thumb. But yes, you consider also spaces in the number.
 
@MarioS.E. What are you passing as the argument to \keywords in your source document? Does it contain math?
 
4:55 PM
@AlanMunn nope, just simple letters: Fall Prediction, Wearable Technologies, etc.
 
@MarioS.E. Then you'll need to play with a MWE I think. I'm using the following:
\ProvidesPackage{testpack}[2013/10/29 Test package]
\RequirePackage{hyperref}
\newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\gdef\my@keywords{#1}\hypersetup{pdfinfo={Keywords={#1}}}}
\endinput
With the following document:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{testpack}
\keywords{key1 two words, key2, key3}
\hypersetup{pdfinfo={Title={My Title}, Author={Alan}}}
\begin{document}
This is some text.
\end{document}
And everything works.
 
@AlanMunn Ok, so in my .sty file I'm defining a new command, keywords. How am I getting the information after I use that command with my actual keywords?
@AlanMunn Is there anyway I can do this step by step?
 
@MarioS.E. Sorry I don't understand the question. The command I gave does two things: it sets the PDF metadata, and creates a command \my@keywords which can be used for other purposes (like printing out the keywords in the actual document at the right place.)
 
@AlanMunn But you also say that if I didn't need to print them out later I don't need the \my@keywords, right?
 
@MarioS.E. So if you want to print out the keywords in the doc, you would do (e.g.) {\bfseries Keywords:~}\my@keywords.
@MarioS.E. Sure, so then you just need the \hypersetup part of the command I gave.
 
5:04 PM
@AlanMunn Ok, I'll try to see what happens
 
@MarioS.E. \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\hypersetup{pdfinfo={Keywords={#1}}}} will just set the metadata. But you won't have any further access to the keywords in the document.
 
@AlanMunn I tried with both \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\hypersetup{pdfkeywords={{‌​#1}}}} and \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\hypersetup{pdfinfo={Keywords={‌​#1}}}} and I still get that warning about the glyph
@AlanMunn what if the command creates a new variable before I insert it on hypersetup?
 
@MarioS.E. Well the first version is just wrong. (Not what I gave you.) The second should work.
@MarioS.E. I think the warning you are getting is from somewhere else in your document that has nothing to do with setting the keywords.
 
5:28 PM
@AlanMunn I wish it was... I'm afraid it's too difficult to find what could be wrong. Maybe I'm declaring the newcommand before having the information
 
@MarioS.E. If you play around with the sample package and the document I gave you, you might understand a bit better how the thing works in isolation. Did you try that?
 
@AlanMunn I think the problem is keywords are being defined inside \begin{document}
 
@MarioS.E. Look, now you're just guessing. If you move the \keywords command in my sample document to after the \begin{document} no warning arises, so that can't be the problem.
 
@AlanMunn I'm gonna play with your package :)
 
5:43 PM
@AlanMunn I just realized that no matter what I type for keywords, I always get the first ;, and yours are inside "
 
5:58 PM
@MarioS.E. You mean even with my sample?
 
@AlanMunn I've managed to not get the warning I was getting
@AlanMunn I'm using \newcommand*{\keywords}[1]{\gdef\my@keywords{#1}\hypersetup{pdfkeywords={#1}}}
@AlanMunn I'm now getting the ", but I'm still having that first ;
 
@MarioS.E. How are you calling the \keywords macro itself in the doc?
 
\keywords{Fall Prediction; Neural Networks; Numerical Optimization; MEMs; Wearable Devices}
@AlanMunn I have tried both with and without semicolons
 
@MarioS.E. You need commas not semi-colons.
 
@AlanMunn Really? I was actually using periods hehehehe
 
6:05 PM
@MarioS.E. It's a comma separated list. Time to read the hyperref docs a little more careully...
 
@AlanMunn OK, but in the document properties they appear separated by a semicolon. Is this the expected behavior?
 
@MarioS.E. In my PDF viewer they show up on separate lines.
 
@AlanMunn I'm using Adobe Reader XI
 
@MarioS.E. The display in Properties is viewer determined. In Adobe Reader 11 they appear as "key1, key2, key3" for me. (including the "")
 
@AlanMunn For some reason I only get the " when I'm using ; to sepparate the words
 
6:16 PM
@MarioS.E. I don't think that you have any control over the display of them. But you need to separate them with commas not semicolons in order for them to be passed as separate keywords correctly. (For example, in Skim on a Mac, if they are comma separated they display as separate lines, but if semicolon separated they appear as a single string (including the semicolons).
 
@AlanMunn I was trying to find this information in the hyperref manual. Is it there>
?
@AlanMunn I actually just made an experiment and it seems I only get the " if I use ;, but your code shows the " regardless of the separator
 
@MarioS.E. Not specifically about their display.
 
@AlanMunn but do they say how to input the keywords? I didn't find that reference
 
6:33 PM
@MarioS.E. No I guess it doesn't. Sorry for complaining about that. :) It seems that different viewers treat the keywords string differently. Skim seems smart, in that it turns comma+space separated keywords into separate keyword lines in its info display. Adobe Reader seems to just take the whole thing as a string.
 
Dan
@egreg I had 590 items in a list
@egreg that seems silly that I can't have more than 26 items in a list
 
@AlanMunn Hmmmm, I see... so should I keep commas, semicolon or neither?
 
@Dan Package alphalph; but probably labeling the list with arabic numbers is better.
 
@Dan there's a question (by me btw) about this on the site
15
Q: Error: Counter too large! with \alph{cntr} and cntr>26

toheczI would like to have \alph{counter} for values larger than 26. The following MnWE gives me the error ! LaTeX Error: Counter too large. \documentclass{article} \begin{document} \begin{enumerate} \def\theenumi{\alph{enumi}} \setcounter{enumi}{24} \item twenty-five \item twenty-six \item twenty-se...

 
@MarioS.E. I would use comma+space. That way smart readers like Skim and Mac Preview will split the keywords up correctly. Adobe Reader and Acrobat don't seem to do that.
 
7:23 PM
Does anyone know of a way to number the bibliography items but still use author-year citations using natbib? I can do this with biblatex but natbib code is a PITA.
 
7:39 PM
@AlanMunn hmm yummy
Pita or pitta ( or ) (from Greek: πίτα) is a slightly leavened wheat bread, flat, either round or oval, and variable in size. Flatbread in general, whether leavened or not, is among the most ancient of bread. It is used in many Mediterranean, Balkan and Middle Eastern cuisines. It is prevalent in Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, North Africa, the Levant, Iran, Armenia, Turkey, and parts of the Indian Subcontinent. Origin Pita is a loanword from Greek, pita (πίτα), probably derived from the Ancient Greek pēktos (πηκτός), meaning "solid" or "clotted". In the Arabic world, pita is a foreign...
 
@percusse Groan. ;)
 
@AlanMunn pita, pizza, pide, lahmacun goes forever :)
I guess I'm hungry
 
Is there anyway to size an image in an answer?
 
8:07 PM
@LordStryker Not when you post it, I don't think. I usually crop the image to a reasonable size before I upload.
 
8:27 PM
@JosephWright A nice example of the perils of \def.
 
@AlanMunn Yup
 
@AlanMunn What's the purpose?
 
@egreg It produces a count of the number of references I guess. Not terribly useful, but not completely useless either. Useful in CVs for example.
@egreg I was asking in response to this question (which I've now posted an answer based on code by Ulrike).
1
Q: What should I change in a bst file in order to have numbered entries in the bibliography?

Different111222I am using BibTeX with a specific bibliography style (a bst file) which I can't give up. This is a link to the .bst file. [jon] I need to edit the .bst file in order to get entry numbering. This .bst file is an author-year citation style bibliography, which requires to work with the harvard.sty...

 
8:58 PM
@AlanMunn It's way easier ;-)
 
@egreg Do tell.
 
@AlanMunn Go to the question and look. ;-)
 
@egreg Oh well. I'm glad the question got answered. I'll delete mine, I think.
@egreg Your answer mentions changing the .bst file, which isn't what you're doing.
 
@AlanMunn That's much more involved, I think.
 
@egreg I know, I'm just wondering why you mentioned it (the OP did, but he doesn't know what he's doing, one supposes.)
@egreg Now that I've deleted my answer, your choice of bibliography examples is pretty funny (to low rep users). We could call it historical linguistics. :)
 
9:10 PM
@AlanMunn I don't know whether the bst computes the number of items; in plain.bst there's longest.label but natbib styles probably use nothing of this kind.
 
9:29 PM
@AlanMunn Have you got eight significant bib items? I think to have the solution for aligning the numbers.
 
@AlanMunn The .bst doesn't like @incollection. :(
 
@egreg What a great .bst. Hang on.
 
There were two of them.
@AlanMunn No problem, I changed them to @book
 
@egreg Well in case you want real ones: pastebin.com/BjR6ys7J
 
9:41 PM
good evening, friends!
 
@AlanMunn Perfect, thanks!
@AlanMunn Lo and behold!
 
@egreg Maybe I shouldn't have deleted mine after all; it aligned the label correctly. :)
 
@AlanMunn In the margin. Please, undelete it.
 
@egreg I spoke too soon. Mine is also in the margin.
 
@AlanMunn That's what I wanted to say. Mine are not in the margin. ;-)
 
9:55 PM
@egreg Oh, I see. So why exactly should I undelete? ;-)
 
@AlanMunn Because it may be a desired alternative.
Just don't define a new counter and use NAT@ctr
 
@egreg You mean to have the labels in the margin? That seems unlikely.
 
@AlanMunn Well, with that .bst all is possible. ;-)
 
Did people spot latex-project.org/site-news.html#2013-10-27? We all wait with baited breath for the talks :-)
(Me in particular as I might need to nick one to use at UK-TUG in 10 days time)
Ah, slides are uploaded at latex-project.org/papers
2
 
hi @Joseph :)
 
9:59 PM
@tohecz Hello
 
@JosephWright Is 'baited breath' breath with tasty morsels to trap unsuspecting speakers? :)
 
@AlanMunn Could be
I see that @egreg gets a namecheck ;-)
@AlanMunn Handily, I've seen both sets of slides already (I sort-of wrote one set)
 
@JosephWright I was mainly poking fun at your spelling. ;-)
 
@AlanMunn What did I get wrong?
 
@JosephWright It's 'bated' breath (same root as in 'abate') not 'baited'.
 
10:03 PM
@AlanMunn Really? I assumed from 'bait' as in fishing
 
@JosephWright This is one of quite a few similar folk etymology based reanalyses of common expressions. Others are 'take something for granite' (common in the US because of how 'granted' is pronounce) and 'a pigment of your imagination'. The neat thing about all of these is that they kind of match the meaning of the expression.
 
@AlanMunn Hmm, don't really see how either of your examples would make sense given the use of the phrases, but then what do I know
 
@JosephWright Never argue with a linguist.
 
@egreg :-)
 
There's one thing I'll probably never understand: 0.25 beers
 
10:09 PM
@JosephWright To 'take something for granted' means that it is solidly assumed (like 'granite'). And since nobody knows what a 'figment' is, 'pigment' is a slightly more accessible word, that still captures the idea that it's something (in this case a colour) in your imagination.
 
@AlanMunn First case means to assume something will always be the case, nothing to do with solidity
@AlanMunn Like I say, what do I know :-)
 
@JosephWright doesn't "for granted" refers to "grant" as "donation"?
 
@tohecz @AlanMunn will doubtless enlighten us
 
@JosephWright Don't take 'solid' so literally. Surely if you assume something will always be the case, then it is solidly assumed, no?
 
@AlanMunn I guess I think more 'axiomatically'
 
10:13 PM
@tohecz No, I think it comes from the 'agree' meaning of 'grant', as in "Joseph will grudgingly grant my point." :)
 
@AlanMunn Sounds right to me
 
@AlanMunn like in "acces granted"?
 
@tohecz Yes.
 
@AlanMunn and isn't it the same as "money granted"? :)
 
@tohecz I see what you're doing here. Laying a trap. :) But I'm not sure they are actually the same.
 
10:16 PM
@tohecz It's from the Latin root “garantia”
 
@egreg well, I think that all usages of the word we discussed come from that root :)
 
@tohecz Never argue Latin with an Italian. :)
 
@AlanMunn lol :)
 
obligatory episode
 
@tohecz You have to let go of the idea that plural means 'more than one' and embrace the possibility that it means 'one or more', and the ">1" meaning arises pragmatically. One piece of evidence for this is the fact that in English, you can answer a question like "Do you have children", with "Yes, I have one", which would be odd if the question really meant "Do you have more than one child?".
 
10:29 PM
@AlanMunn No, I don't speak about English LOL! I speak about having so small beer!
 
@JosephWright I think hse wants to view ctan.org on a tablet with a better layout that the web one.
 
@tohecz LOL Since we were talking about language, I just assumed. Where can one find .25 beers?
 
@AlanMunn in France, for instance :-/ In Czech Rep. the only ones you get are pints, never half-pints
 
@percusse Eddie Izzard is fantastic. The subtitling is really funny here: everywhere he speaks bits of German or French, it's subtitled as [gibberish].
 
10:38 PM
@AlanMunn thanks to him i learned what izzard is heheh
 
@percusse Thanks to Izzard? I'm not sure I know izzard is.
 
@AlanMunn z in french so it's actually eddie Z
 
Can we please re-open this?
1
Q: Figure caption alignment screwed when using line break

Emit TasteI am having trouble with figure captions when I need a manual line break. \documentclass[A4]{book} \usepackage{subfig} \usepackage[top=35mm, bottom=38mm, inner=40mm, outer=24mm]{geometry} \usepackage[hang,small,it]{caption} \usepackage{showframe} \begin{document} \begin{figure} \centering \capt...

 
but you know it better anyway :)
zee, zet, izzard ....
or in english?
Z
Z (named zed or zee ) is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Name and pronunciation In most dialects of English, the letter's name is 'zed' , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta, but in American English, its name is 'zee' , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal form. Another English dialectal form is izzard . It dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from Occitan izèda or the French ézed, whose reconstructed Latin form would be *idzēta, perhaps a popular form with a prosthetic vowel. Other languages spell the lette...
 
@percusse I guess so, in French it's 'zed' as far as I know.
 
10:47 PM
@AlanMunn better 'zet' probably :)
 
@AlanMunn Yes, it says "Another English dialectal form is izzard" but wiki source is not a source
As they say, Anything comes free, comes without a referee
 
@tohecz Nope. It's 'zède' in French.
 
@AlanMunn oh ok, I was misled then ;)
 
good night everyone!
I need to save the world again tomorrow.
 
@percusse night!
 
10:54 PM
@percusse Well the OED concurs, with examples from (among others) Swift and Johnson.
@percusse You can sleep well knowing that. :)
 
11:36 PM
well, 200 pts, I can go to bed :)
 
The proper way to put text inside of math mode is \textrm right?
 
@Canageek no, never. Use \text{...} from \usepackage{amsmath}
well, as long as it's text. If it's something like A_{mean}, then A_{\mathup{mean}}
@egreg, do I miss something?
\documentclass{book}

\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\newcounter{GN}
\setcounter{GN}{0}
\newcommand{\GetNumber}[0]{\stepcounter{GN}\label{GN:\theGN}\ref{GN:\theGN}}

\usepackage{amsthm}
\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}

\begin{document}

\chapter{Foo}
Current number is: \GetNumber
\section{Bar}
Current number is: \GetNumber
\subsection{Baz}
Current number is: \GetNumber
\subsection{Baz2}
Current number is: \GetNumber

\section{Bar2}

\chapter{Foo}
Current number is: \GetNumber
\section{Bar}
Current number is: \GetNumber
 
11:54 PM
@tohecz This is wrong in a different way than yours. ;-) As you remark in comments, \GetNumber will print something funny if used in an enumerate environment.
 
so why the comment to my answer?
 
@tohecz Your answer is wrong.
 
@egreg then I don't see how
oh my sorry wrong code
 
@tohecz If you add a final \section before the second chapter, it will work. But if a chapter ends at the subsection level it won't.
 
@egreg yeah, I see it now
 
11:58 PM
@tohecz If you add the lower levels to the reset lists above them, then it will work.
 
Bleh, using chemmacros makes things so slow to compile
 
@egreg well, there's a simpler way:
\newcommand{\getCurrentSectionNumber}{%
  \ifnum\c@section=0 %
  \thechapter
  \else
  \ifnum\c@subsection=0 %
  \thesection
  \else
  \ifnum\c@subsubsection=0 %
  \thesubsection
  \else
  \thesubsubsection
  \fi
  \fi
  \fi
}
 

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