TeX, LaTeX and Friends

9:25 AM

A "How much eTeX should a package use / rely on?" question floats around in my head for a little while. I'm not sure about the format yet. I think it should be CW.

Hendrik Vogt

9:53 AM

@MartinScharrer: Now I found that the notification change is documented in #8 of meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/43019/….

3 hours later…

12:45 PM

@MartinScharrer LaTeX News of December 2003 states that e-TeX/pdfTeX is recommended. TeX Live has been using pdf(e)tex as LaTeX engine since the 2004 release. In my packages that need the extended features I put an initial check that aborts the run if e-TeX is not available. I wouldn't worry for a specialized package.

1:24 PM

Does anyone now if PSTricks can draw 100% accurate with its native bp values? Or are these values first converted into pt and then back. I like to make a very accurate grid in bp as test file to see if e.g. the correct amount got trimmed.

Does anyone know of a good up-to-date learning resource for bibtex? (Answering a question on bibtex, I wanted to point the OP to a good resource.) Oren Patashnik's "BiBTeXing" dates from 1988, and really doesn't help people who e.g. don't even know the difference between their bibliography manager and bibtex itself.

@AlanMunn: When I looked last time (2 years ago or so) I couldn't find ANYTHING else. Just some private websites mentioning some details about it.

I was looking for the official definition of the .bib format then and was quite disappointed.

BTW: what are the applications of the following units: pc (pica), dd (didot point) and cc (cicero). I never saw them used with any TeX code. I assume they might only be used for fonts specific stuff, right? (maybe @egreg knows it)

1:45 PM

@MartinScharrer I don't think they have particular applications. Perhaps if one had a specification for a document expressed in those units, it would be useful to implement it in them. I seem to recall seeing pc being used somewhere; I've never seen the others at all.

@AlanMunn: Thanks for answering (I actually wasn't addressing you directly, the two posts just got grouped together). I have to check The TeXBook again. I bought an own copy recently.

@MartinScharrer Aren't cicero and friends old printing units? (i.e. not actually designed for use in computer typesetting)

@Seamus No idea, I just ask because TeX supports them. But it makes sense: The TeX point is also an old printing unit, if you like.

@MartinScharrer Yeah so I think cc and dd were old European vertical and horizontal typesetting measurements.

A cicero is the French equivalent of a Pica.

Cicero (typography)

A cicero () is a unit of measure used in typography in Italy, France and other continental European countries, first used by Pannartz and Sweynheim in 1468 for the edition of Cicero's Epistles, Ad Familiares. The font thus acquired the name cicero. It is of the historical French inch, and is divided into 12 points, known in English as French points or Didot points. It is thus similar to an English pica, but as the French inch was slightly larger than the English inch is; there are about 1.063picas to a cicero.

12 dd = 1 cc, 6 cc=1 French inch

1 pica is 12 pt in the English system.

So they aren't vertical and horizontal as I thought. Maybe that was something else...

Paulo Cereda

2:08 PM

Hooray for potrzebie.

2:21 PM

@Seamus: Thanks!

2:32 PM

The maximum dimension of TeX is 16383.99999pt = 1073741823pt => 30bit. With the sign bit it's 31bit. What happened with the 32nd bit?

Also TeX seems to use 1s complement (IIR the term correctly), because \number\maxdimen is 1073741823 and \number-\maxdimenis -1073741823. But this makes perfectly sense. It would be a small error otherwise.

@MartinScharrer dd and cc are the continental counterparts of pt and pc. Typographers used quite frequently picas for horizontal length (typically the line length); in continental Europe the unit was more or less the cc (and the Didot point). Knuth just added them to be complete; one can use the dd instead of pt to get formats based on old specifications without doing conversions.

ARRG! Another question which could easily be answered with the new version of adjustbox! And I don't have the time to finish, test and release it ATM!!

@egreg: Thanks, got it. I thought it was something like that.

3:00 PM

@MartinScharrer Can mods delete answers so that they are not visible to anyone? I somehow duplicated my answer here tex.stackexchange.com/questions/23023/… and I find it annoying that I still see it. Can you zap it completely?

@MartinScharrer One can't assign directly dimensions larger than \maxdimen, but \dimen0=\maxdimen \advance\dimen0\maxdimen is legal.

3 hours later…

5:39 PM

I'm writing a package that defines new types of enumeration. What would be the best way to test that my macros are suitably stable and robust?

6:05 PM

@Seamus Release it in the wild, and the bugs will follow. :-) This is what Microsoft does with all its software.

I don't get the usual notification for new badges any longer. Is this me or is this the general case?

6:20 PM

@AlanMunn No, it can only be deleted, which makes it invisible to anyway except moderator, 10k+ users and the OP.

@egreg Why is that?

Joseph Wright

@Seamus Write some test cases, and each time you get a bug report add the test case to your test file

@Seamus I'm planning to write a package for package test :-) (But not in the next two month)

@JosephWright , @Seamus: I do the same, at least for the bigger packages.

6:43 PM

@MartinScharrer Ok. Thanks. The deletion policy is a bit extreme IMO.

7:22 PM

@MartinScharrer I suppose to avoid some overflows during intermediate calculations.

7:52 PM

Damn, I remember seeing a really neat way of defining short (one or two character) macros for verbatim text with other delimiters on the site. But I can't find it...

I modded up my answer to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/22826/… up a little bit to support also horizontal splitting. Here a picture 10\textwidth x 10\textheight:

I probably add this adjustbox as \splitbox or similar.

@MartinScharrer I love how productive you are at TeX stuff. Don't you have a thesis to write? :P

Indeed I have. Just making a break :-)

@Seamus \usepackage{shortvrb}?

\MakeShortVerb

8:02 PM

@egreg Ah that might be it. Although since I'm using listings maybe that would lead to confusions...

I think

Q: A version of shortvrb for listings?

8:13 PM

So, shortvrb is a neat little package that allows you to do \MakeShortVerb{\|} which then has |foo| behave like \verb|foo|. Now, I like listings. Is there a \MakeShortListings that makes |bar| act like \lstinline|bar|?

Paulo Cereda

@Seamus: we should tell @MartinScharrer to try manufactoria or bridge building games. =P

@PauloCereda Heh. Anyway, I can't criticise, I spent quite some time this afternoon changing my moreenum package to use fmtcount instead of engord and binhex for formatting numbers...

9:08 PM

Huh. fmtcount breaks when you hit 131027 (=2^17)...

err. +1

I mean 131072...

That is, \binarynum seems to break...

user19161

10:17 PM

Hello, trying out chat here.