TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:01 AM

@Canageek the dice one?

Something very strange:
...
\catcode`\`=\active\def`#1`{$#1$}
\begin{document}
...

doesn't work, but
...
\begin{document}
\catcode`\`=\active\def`#1`{$#1$}
...

does work...

I can't understand how this can be possible.

Canageek

12:18 AM

@DavidCarlisle Yeah. Lots on how to put them into the header, or how to draw them, but none on how to ensure a proper distribution.

@DavidCarlisle I could even put together a simple algorithm to do it, but I'd how no idea how to put it into LaTeX

egreg

@Kasper Minimal example? This works for me:

\documentclass{article}
\catcode`\`=\active
\def`#1`{\(#1\)}
\begin{document}
`a+b`
\end{document}

Canageek

N := Number of pages
S := Number of sides on die
A := N/S (rounded down)
For(i=0 to S)
{
Randomly place A copies of i throughout document
}

David Carlisle

@Canageek i half coded something yesterday but it was too late and I went to bed, i might finish it off if noone else does, but not tonight:-)

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle I wrote a better psudocode, I think.

Pages := Number of pages
Sides := Number of sides on die
Count := N/S (rounded down)
Set all pages to false
for(i = 1 to Sides)
{
while(j := 0, j < Count, j++)
{
Random := Random number between 1 and Pages
if(Page{Random} = false)
{
Place i on Page{Random}
Set Page{Random} = true
}
else
{
j--
}
}

Kasper

12:45 AM

This also works for me, but this doesn't work (using xelatex):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{latinmodern-math.otf}
\catcode`\`=\active
\def`#1`{$#1$}
\begin{document}
`a+b`
\end{document}

While this works:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{latinmodern-math.otf}
\begin{document}
\catcode`\`=\active
\def`#1`{\(#1\)}
`a+b`
\end{document}

In the first example, a+b is rendered in mathmode, but with backticks on both sides. I've no idea what is happening :P

Here is my project: sharelatex.com/project/528417a45f9e1b1439002182

David Carlisle

@Kasper add \show` after begin{document} and it's easy to see why

unicode math makes backtick active itself and then does all its setup at begin document so the definiion of `\` ` is not yours but `=\long macro:
->\int_zero:N \l_um_primecount_int \um_scanbackprime_collect:N \um_backprime_si
ngle_mchar .`

Kasper

aah okay

So if I put my definition after begin document I override unicode math

David Carlisle

@Kasper yes but overriding random bits of big packages isn't always a good idea:-)

Kasper

hmmm

Realz Slaw

1:23 AM

I have a rectangular area, I would like the bottom 1 cm and the left 1cm to fade out

any ideas?

Aditya

2:01 AM

4

Relevant ad :)

Realz Slaw

haha

@Aditya and, I've seen that page before :D

Aditya

Perhaps the ad system is smart

Realz Slaw

nah, just brute force

that ad comes up on tex.SE prolly more often

or only on tex.SE

and there aren't that many ads (I've seen this particular one several times I think)

Paulo Cereda

9:46 AM

Yesterday, I was jogging and saw a goose in a house. :)

Paulo Cereda

10:03 AM

Hi @StephanLehmke! We miss you!

Stephan Lehmke

@PauloCereda Hi! I'll try to come here a bit more often again. I was assigned some non-TeX related stuff lately, but I'll be doing a bit more "real" work again fom now on :-)

Nice to see all seems to be working as usual round here - glad to be back!

btw, does anyone have a working environment for TeX.SE contributions on IPhone?

I tried it out yesterday, but from Safari the site is cumbersome to use, and I didn't manage to log in to chat. Also, I'll need a TeX installation for trying examples :-)

Torbjørn T.

10:20 AM

@StephanLehmke As for the chat login, there was a recent meta question: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3927/…

@StephanLehmke I know @AndrewStacey has experimented with TeX on an iPad (tex.blogoverflow.com/2012/09/i-tex-therefore-ipad-reloaded), don't know about iPhone.

Forkrul Assail

Hi everyone

Torbjørn T.

@ForkrulAssail Hello.

Forkrul Assail

Nice photos @TorbjørnT.

Torbjørn T.

@ForkrulAssail Oh, you mean Flickr? Thanks!

cgnieder

@PauloCereda Is there a \jobname equivalent for arara's clean rule?

Paulo Cereda

10:29 AM

@cgnieder hm tell me more. :) What are you thinking of? :)

cgnieder

@PauloCereda Ideally I'd like just to list the extensions (aux, log, ...) that I want removed. Something like

% arara: clean: { files: [ \jobname.aux, \jobname.log ] }

Paulo Cereda

@cgnieder Ah I see! Gimme a minute, I have an idea. :)

@cgnieder: here you go, Clemens:

% arara: pdflatex
% arara: remove: { items: [ aux, pdf ] }
\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
Quack.
\end{document}

The rule:

!config
identifier: remove
name: Remove
command: <arara> @{remove}
arguments:
- identifier: remove
  default: <arara> @{isNotEmpty(item, isWindows("cmd /c del", "rm -f").concat(' "').concat(getBasename(file))concat('.').concat(item).concat('"'))}

cgnieder

@PauloCereda Nice! Thanks :)

Paulo Cereda

@cgnieder My pleasure. :)

Paulo Cereda

11:36 AM

Dear mathematicians:

\begin{equation*}
\left| \bigcap_{e_i \in E_{s_j}} \{ \pi_3(e_i) \} \right| > 0
\end{equation*}

This looks ugly to me. :(

egreg

11:49 AM

@PauloCereda Yes, it is; use \biggl and \biggr

Paulo Cereda

12:00 PM

@egreg Looks way better, thanks! :)

egreg

@PauloCereda It's very common: \left–\right with big operators having limits wants to cover the limits and the result is not very appealing. I didn't even try the input, the answer is standard and already given by Knuth himself in the TeXbook (page 149).

Paulo Cereda

12:13 PM

@egreg Ah. :) I didn't reach that page. :)

tohecz

12:47 PM

@PauloCereda @egreg Is it strange that I would use \bigl\{...\bigr\} as well in this case?

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda I like my delimiters to increase step-by-step when reasonable ;)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Sounds like a plan. :)

CS people just go, *ooh math thingy here! Must be important! :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda LOL

egreg

1:05 PM

@tohecz Yes. ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle: get M an Xbox One or a PS4 for Christmas. :)

Paulo Cereda

1:55 PM

More math help, please. :)

Any hints on how to improve this code:

\begin{equation*}
\bigcap_{o_i \in O_{s_j}} \bigcap_{c \in I_{s_j}} \{ \pi_1(o_{i,c}) \} = \emptyset
\end{equation*}

egreg

@PauloCereda Not using double indices?

Paulo Cereda

@egreg I... am a math newbie. :) I don't know how to do that in LaTeX. :)

egreg

@PauloCereda It's a notation, not LaTeX, problem. If you use $O(s)$ instead of $O_s$ , then the double index disappears.

But it depends on several other factors deciding if the notation change is good.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Ah I see.

egreg

@PauloCereda Have I already said that I don't like Čajkovskij?

Well, I confirm it. :)

Paulo Cereda

2:07 PM

@egreg I'd remember that name for sure! :) Then, no. :)

@egreg :P

Who's that guy?

egreg

@PauloCereda Maybe you know him as Чайковский

Paulo Cereda

@egreg There's a mirrored N. :P

WAIT A MINUTE

Tchaikovsky?!

egreg

@PauloCereda pt.wikipedia.org uses that spelling.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg We are dumb. :)

I hate his piano concerto #1.

egreg

@PauloCereda The translitteration Čajkovskij is based on the Czech alphabet. The one used in Portuguese is based on French

Paulo Cereda

2:12 PM

@egreg Thank God. I wouldn't be able to remember all those letters. :)

egreg

@PauloCereda The “Sledgehammer Piano Concerto”?

Paulo Cereda

@egreg LOL

@egreg:

►

egreg

@PauloCereda Copyright by @AlanMunn

Paulo Cereda

@egreg PAM PAM PAM PAM!

Alan Munn

2:48 PM

@PauloCereda @egreg Something musical we all agree on!

egreg

@AlanMunn Yay!

Alan Munn

3:27 PM

@egreg Do you know how FontBook automatically resolves duplicate fonts? (I.e. how it chooses which one to keep?)

egreg

@AlanMunn I noticed that it does something about duplicates, but I didn't really understand which one it chooses.

Alan Munn

@egreg Me neither. It finds lots of duplicates for me, but I have no idea whether it's safe to let it resolve them automatically. And the manual resolution doesn't seem to let you choose which one to make active, unless I'm misunderstanding the interface.

Paulo Cereda

So the last South Park episode is about Black Friday. I really don't get US things.

egreg

@AlanMunn I had some and resolved them manually.

Alan Munn

3:58 PM

@egreg Did you figure out a way to change an inactive version to the active version?

egreg

@AlanMunn No. But if you remove the active version, the inactive one should be resurrected.

egreg

4:09 PM

@AlanMunn I checked and there was a duplicate. I had Neo Euler both in my Library and in the global Library, so Font Book decided the personal copy had precedence. I removed manually the one in my Library, then left clicked on the only (inactive) font remained in Font Book to activate it.

@AlanMunn I guess it looks also to the version number, but in this case they were the same.

Alan Munn

4:25 PM

@egreg Maybe I don't understand what they mean by "Resolve Manually". I thought that it just means I click on each font one by one, but I suspect it means that FontBook actually does nothing at all. The Apple support page is maximally unhelpful. I think I'll ask on the Mac SX site.

egreg

@AlanMunn It offers you to remove the already inactive copy.

Alan Munn

@egreg But if the inactive one is a higher version than the active one, I would want it to switch the two, but that's not what happens, as far as I can tell.

egreg

@AlanMunn No, it doesn't. You have to trash the active copy and reactivate the other one.

Alan Munn

@egreg I see. So it's a very dumb system.

egreg

@AlanMunn Or we're dumb. ;-)

Alan Munn

4:33 PM

@egreg That is a distinct possibility. Nah. I'll go with it's the computer.

Paulo Cereda

Fonts fonts fonts fonts

Alan Munn

This is a really nice question: perfectly stated and illustrated. What every question should be like.

1

Q: Tikz, rotate, how to specify a point as rotating center?

When I use rotate on a node, it seems to be rotated against its west(As in figure (up) and (middle)), however, what I meant is to rotate it against its center, like (bottom) of figure shows. I didn't find such a parameter in manual.... \begin{tikzpicture} [sampleA/.style={text width=1cm, tex...

egreg

@PauloCereda This is the one I prefer

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Oh my!

Alan Munn

@egreg Planning to move to Ethiopia any time soon?

egreg

4:39 PM

@AlanMunn Armenia?

Alan Munn

@egreg Oh, my mistake. It looks like the script for Amharic a bit. (I didn't check).

egreg

@AlanMunn For some months I shared my desk (young fellow of the department, you know) with another guy from Bulgaria. He kept notes in a writing I couldn't recognize: it was, in fact, Armenian.

@AlanMunn Of course, the guy's family name ends in “-yan”.

Alan Munn

As you can see, they are somewhat similar in style.

Stephan Lehmke

Also similar: Georgian.

egreg

@AlanMunn Yes, there are some style similarities.

@StephanLehmke I guess Georgian alphabet was derived from Armenian; or the other way around, depending on what side of the border you live.

Paulo Cereda

5:10 PM

35

Q: Using LaTeX to keep a diary

As the title implies, I would like to use LaTeX to keep a personal diary. I've been dumping my entries in a single file which has become unwieldy over time. Ideally I'd find a package (or collection of shell scripts) which assists me in maintaining a consistent directory structure and automatic...

packages

I won't upvote any answers that don't have Dear diary in it.

hhh

6:22 PM

How to do indented quote block?

egreg

@hhh \begin{quotation}...\end{quotation}

hhh

or verbatim?

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Paragraph_Formatting

egreg

@hhh That's a completely different thing.

@hhh That page is rubbish. The "dangerous” remark is foolish: with {\raggedright text} you don't get a ragged right paragraph. Just try with some lines instead of text.

hhh

roger, using now quotation thing.

egreg

6:40 PM

It happened again: a question on symbols closed as duplicate without the slightest mention in comments on where to find what the OP wanted.

2

Q: \nearrow and \swarrow together

I'm trying to get an arrow that has an arrow head pointing north east and south west, so like \updownarrow but rotated. I can't seem to find this in LaTeX at all. It has to go inside an equation environment. Any ideas?

math-mode arrows

Torbjørn T.

@egreg If I remember correctly, there was a comment mentioning \neswarrow from MnSymbol, but as it also mentioned the 'duplicate' it was automatically deleted when the question was closed.

egreg

@TorbjørnT. Do you consider "the symbol is available in MnSymbol" a valid solution? I don't.

Torbjørn T.

@egreg Not ideal, I agree, but there was something at least.

egreg

@JosephWright I expected at least a comment by a moderator to my question in Meta:

19

Q: Wrong closure as duplicate

Today I got an upvote for my answer to Rotated $\ltimes$ symbol which has since been closed as duplicate of How to look up a symbol or identify a math alphabet? Looking at the question it is apparent that looking up for a symbol is unsuccessful. One finds similar symbols only with MnSymbol o...

discussion exact-duplicates

Stefan Kottwitz

7:38 PM

@egreg The OP got help, he said "worked a treat". After the closure, incoming googlers or readers are now pointed to the canonical symbol question, which is good. I even undeleted the automatically deleted comment to the question. Any reason to add answers to the existing two? I don't think so, so I don't have a problem with closing, and the reason matches.

egreg

8:21 PM

@StefanKottwitz No, it's not right. There can be better way to get the symbol that nobody could add.

@StefanKottwitz That's why I opened a discussion in Meta. But none of the moderators felt like to express an opinion: which means they have none. And I don't like it.

Twenty votes on the question, no answer. Do you think it's good?

Paulo Cereda

8:39 PM