Hey guys, I was wondering -- do you use \usepackage[bottom]{footmisc} in your documents? Typographically, I consider default output looking better. Technically, it probably should be sticked to the page bottom, I guess. What do you think?

@GonzaloMedina I once had the issue also mentioned in one of linked answers: A flagged post was edited shortly after my flag. IIRC I got a declined flag.

@Vochmelka I intentionally ignore you as long you use this avatar (I commented on this you surely remember).

@Vochmelka I don't use that package but footnotes are generally not good in my humble opinion.

what avatar?

Ahaha OK now I get it.

@percusse Another user complained here and feeled offended. I just consider it as very bad taste.

@Speravir I'm OK with that.

@Speravir I can't have an opinion on this. I'm too liberal to get the offense in anything.

just kidding. I explained you my point of view, sorry.

@Vochmelka Is there any emotional connection to the avatar? If no, would you even consider changing it?

@percusse not really, I can get another one.

@Speravir Who is the other user that got offended?

Or what is the reason for the offense?

the man or the bikini?

it can't be both :P

@percusse The other? I do not feel offended.

It can be still the good ol' lack of humor

@Speravir You mentioned that someone else felt offended ? Am I wrong? Let me read again

@Vochmelka And it can be a difference in culture!

@Vochmelka yea lack of humor is not common here. Must be cultural or something

@percusse I do not know. It can even be, that someone feels this is mocking/deriding (whatevre is right here) of human weaknesses.

@percusse It took time to find it. I could myself have misread this:

@percusse Then there is

@Speravir I see. @Vochmelka Would you be so kind to change it then if it won't be a problem? I don't know what the issue is but yeah... Otherwise, we can ask what the moderation says and get over with it via some CW or voting type of thing I guess.

@Speravir It is indeed always there :P

@percusse I'm all for voting!

@Vochmelka Well, it's my guess. Maybe a mod axe will blow :) So don't take my word on it

@Speravir I've no idea how to do this... not sure if I'm missing something obvious but FAQ had no insight

@PaulGessler Don't take it serious. But it could happen again. You are warned now. :-)

@Speravir noted :-)

@percusse If I would understand how to mark a full thread I could ask Joseph to read over it.

@Speravir You can click the left arrow of the thread and click on get permalink. Then he can figure out from the link.

@percusse Aah, simply giving a start … but want to search my comment and add a copy here first.

How come my default avatar looks pretty lame compared to percusse's one?

@Vochmelka Mine is randomly generated based on my email. I need to work really hard to get a proper bikini top :)

If that's what you mean :)

@percusse Haha. But it is quite stable for some time now.

@percusse Don't tell me you would keep this one gravatar.com/avatar/… - like it's not even my fault, they should have given me a better avatar!

@Vochmelka No offense but it looks pretty cool... as much as it can be cool as an avatar. Change your email address to something else and you'll get a new one.

@Vochmelka You can fiddle with it a bit, and then just use whatever different it offer. Like this:

gravatar.com/avatar/…

@tohecz You can speak Czech with @Vochmelka

@Speravir Maybe

@tohecz :-)

Needed to say, some of them are pretty cool: gravatar.com/avatar/…

@JosephWright What do you think about this or perhaps even the Powers that be? Start reading with chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/41?m=13616412 and end with my comment added below for completeness.

@Vochmelka This is a ordinary gravatar avatar. The only thing is, that some of them are similar each other. Here you have a point now …

@Speravir @Vochmelka Still, as I said before, you can generate whatever gravatar you want, just fiddling with the hex digits like I did above. Then you simply download it at then put it as your avatar, so you'll have a manually set-up gravatar, which is I think pretty fine.

@tohecz That would be cheating.

btw, I have never really noticed how similar is mine to @percusse's :)

@Vochmelka if you call it that way; I call it "getting an avvy that I like" (and that doesn't offend anyone)

@tohecz Aaah, now I get it.

@tohecz As long as you are colour blind …

@tohecz I'm colorblind so it's a big deal for me often :)

@percusse really?

@percusse Really? Are you colorblind?

@tohecz @GonzaloMedina Yep

Red-green type

@percusse well, I wouldn't feel offended if you asked me to change it. I mean, I like it, but I quite don't care

@tohecz Same here : )

And werner's is also close

@percusse Oh that's something I've never recognized. His looks retro if you see the colour :)

@percusse Simply change the e-mail address in your user profile, as I noticed just now …

@Speravir that's pretty unconvenient way to solve the problem

@percusse Deuteranopia or Deuteranomaly?

:)

@percusse Hehe!

@percusse well, that just made me smile :)

@GonzaloMedina anomaly

I've blown up a huge machine by confusing the color codes of the wires in front of the customer.

It was a strange and wonderful satisfaction followed by weeks of retaliation :)

@percusse oh my!

and electrical engineers should have changed this color code to something tangible. :P

One top snooker player --- Peter Ebdon --- is color-blind as well. Sometimes he asks the referee: "Please, which one is brown over there?" :)

It's always someone else's fault

@percusse Like getting electrical shocks?

@percusse well, I suppose that you can't get a driving license ... ?

@Speravir That too. Think of blowing up a connector panel :P

@tohecz I got it. You don't need a ban for us

We can still see you know heheh

@percusse yep, but it might be complicated in countries with horizontal traffic light triples

@tohecz That's why noone has them :P The order is always the same for the locals.

It might have been a problem if you are a truck driver crossing many borders at once.

@percusse and maybe in France, with the yellow at the bottom sometimes, and the green there in other cases :p

@tohecz Really? OMG.

@Speravir yep. You come to a traffic light. It's red, and suddenly it's blinking yellow ... but at the bottom!

in all honesty, traffic in Paris is one of the craziest things I've come across. Cycling here is a thrilling experience, but presumably quite dangerous

@tohecz When I think a bit, here are traffic lights lacking green. Could also be a problem.

@Speravir well, you have actually traffic lights in Paris comprising only blinking red

@tohecz All examples that someone had not thought to th end …

@Speravir I think that the blinking red can be quite confusing for @percusse

@tohecz Yepp.

@tohecz @Speravir Note that it's not the color that confuses the eye. It's the context.

Take a red item, place it on red it's a color, place it on green it's another.

@percusse crazy

That one you envision is called Deutoranopia (completely missing some of the sensory hues)

So they can indeed get confused but it's rare.

@percusse yeah, I've googled it couple minutes ago :)

Mine is plain color-blindness where one color leaks into another

@percusse ok. But still, obviously choice of red, yellow and green is not good :)

An urban legend says Britain selected some pilots from colorblinds because the camouflage doesn't work for us.

@percusse really? I would have never thought of it

@tohecz Actually the reasoning is very sound for those. The red color used is experimentally verified as the one that can be seen from the furthest.

And yellow is the general warning. I don't remember the reason for the green.

@percusse green because blue is bad

@tohecz probably but they really spend a lot of time on those issues.

blue catches your eye on long distance, but it's difficult to recognize/realize what's it.

So the SOS stands on highways have strong blue "SOS" sign because you can see it miles away

And while reflexive materials are important eye-catchers, moutain rescuers always wear something blue, with the reflexive stripes on it.

@tohecz Indeed but with light sources it's a bit subtler

@percusse yep, that's the highway case: blue power-LEDs. On the clothing, it's usually a well-thought combination of colours, always including blue and never including green

@tohecz would it make any difference what colour the traffic lights in Paris are?

@DavidCarlisle :-D

We need 30 more questions to reach a pretty number: imgur.com/IsTkmrC

@GonzaloMedina Solution: write script to pull 30 random jpgs from the web and produce "draw this for me" questions automagically! :-)

@egreg: I can't believe what the OP said to you in the rubber question. :(

Hi. I was earlier having a problem where a single document tikzpicture added a blank page before the picture. David Carlisle suggested adding \setlength{\textheight}{.8\maxdimen} (not sure what this does) which got rid of the first blank page, but now I'm trying to add more stuff after the picture, but nothing is appearing. Suggestions?

@PauloCereda What did he say?

@FaheemMitha I prefer not to mention. Still, you can find the thread here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/158737

paulo@satyagraha Testes$ cat test.tex
% arara: tex
\bye
paulo@satyagraha Testes$ arara test.tex
  __ _ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _
 / _` | '__/ _` | '__/ _` |
| (_| | | | (_| | | | (_| |
 \__,_|_|  \__,_|_|  \__,_|

Running TeX... SUCCESS

@egreg: ^^ :)

@PauloCereda Ok.

I tried using rubber once. I had problems with it.

I find a manual approach using scons works better. Though even scons is not perfect.

@Faheem: rubber is not bad per se, but it's not actively maintained AFAIK. And I think the code is quite complex to be extended. :( But it had some good ideas (some of them used by me in arara itself).

@PauloCereda Ok. I've never used arara, which I see is in TeX Live 2013 but not TeX Live 2012.

@FaheemMitha It's pretty much like Marmite: a love/hate relationship. :) There are some folks in here that use arara way more than I do. :P

@PauloCereda marmite? the marmalade?

@FaheemMitha I never had it, but the guys here in the chatroom tell about it. :)

@PauloCereda I see. I think it is some British thing. At least originally.

@FaheemMitha I guess so. :) And @Joseph comes at the right time to answer that. :)

By the way, 4:50 in the morning and I'm awake. Apparently I don't sleep. :P

No, apparently not marmalade. Some sort of food spread.

@PauloCereda I have problems sleeping too.

Ok, off to lunch. Take care, guys.

@FaheemMitha See ya, Faheem! :)

@Speravir :-)

@PauloCereda well, I just reread it again, and decided to flag it.

@Speravir That's great! I've heard back from Karl. He says:

TL on Windows comes with an "internal" Perl, precisely so that our scripts (install-tl, tlmgr, etc.) can run. Otherwise, it would be impossible, since most Windows users do not have Perl, and we don't want to maintain separate programs for Windows.

He also said they (TL) install a generic .exe "wrapper" for all Windows programs (the source is included with TL, of course).

So all Perl scripts should work on TL just by running the .exe.

@PauloCereda :-) Watch out for my datatool+datatooltk article in TUGboat ;-)

Hi. I was earlier having a problem where a single document tikzpicture added a blank page before the picture. David Carlisle suggested adding \setlength{\textheight}{.8\maxdimen} (not sure what this does) which got rid of the first blank page, but now I'm trying to add more stuff after the picture, but nothing is appearing. Suggestions?

Also, what is the default value of \textheight ?

@FaheemMitha \textheight=.5\maxdimen

@DavidCarlisle Is that the default?

If so, strange, because when I set that I still get one page. Let me try again.

Yes, I get one page.

@FaheemMitha It's the default in latex not the default in any documentclass designed to put anything on paper. \maxdimen is the largest length tex can handle

@FaheemMitha in article 10pt for example it depends on the specified paper size:

  \setlength\@tempdima{\paperheight}
  \addtolength\@tempdima{-2in}
  \addtolength\@tempdima{-1.5in}
  \divide\@tempdima\baselineskip
  \@tempcnta=\@tempdima
  \setlength\textheight{\@tempcnta\baselineskip}

@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I don't follow "the default in latex not the default in any documentclass designed to put anything on paper". I'm currently using article as my document type. if I don't set \textheight i currently get three pages. if I set it to .5\maxdimen (or seemingly anything else) I get one page.

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

@DavidCarlisle probably the best way of handling this to to figure out why there is an extra blank page at the beginning and not set \textheight at all.

My guess is the tikzpicture is too long, and is forcing a page break or something.

@FaheemMitha the value (.5\maxdimen or .8 etc) doesn't really matter much you are basically just making textheight infinitely big so tex never breaks over a page. You could say \textheight=\maxdimen but then when latex tried to add a page header you would get bigger than maxdimen when strange things happen so make it just a bit smaller than that

Not sure how to debug this though.

(.5\textheight or .8 etc)? you mean \maxdimen?

@FaheemMitha yes sorry

@DavidCarlisle This would all be fine, except when I add stuff after the tikzpicture I don't get anything.

With 0.5 or 0.8 and I tried 0.6 and 0.7 too.

@FaheemMitha you will get something but you probably have the pdf set to clip to A4 so it's printed off screen/paper

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, this is India so PDF size is A4.

I have not set the PDF to anything myself.

@FaheemMitha and the height of A4 is a lot less than .5\maxdimen

@DavidCarlisle I see. So, should I continue to reduce it then?

0.4, 0.3...?

Alternatively, i could try shrinking the pdfpicture a bit.

@FaheemMitha No if you care about that at all you shouldn't be using that method. Basically that is just telling tex not to worry about it and you don't care if it overprints the specified area a bit. If

@DavidCarlisle If I care about that? What is "that"?

@FaheemMitha if you care about stuff going off the page

@DavidCarlisle Ok. So, I should figure out how to change the tikzpicture to not produce a blank page first, I suppose.

oh shame, @egreg lost a tick:(

@DavidCarlisle WE NEED THE LINK :D

Oh I flagged a moderator's question, and the flag was helpful! :D

The shortest way to have trick TeX think that \vrule of default width has zero width?

Should this work? (following)

And then, when I need it, just \copy0.

@AndrewZabavnikov Well, \hbox{\vrule\hss} should do, but maybe you want to center your \vrule: \hbox{\hss\vrule\hss}

@tohecz Maybe \hbox to 0pt then? Or is it the same?

@AndrewZabavnikov yes, \hbox to 0pt is the right thing. But you can use \clap from {mathtools}, which is exactly that.

@tohecz Unfortunately, I can't afford amsmath :-(

BTW, why \joinrel is defined as it is?

@AndrewZabavnikov It will work but won't do what you want.

@DavidCarlisle What will it do?

@AndrewZabavnikov The rule will extend to the height of the box, which is 0pt

@DavidCarlisle Wow, cool!

@AndrewZabavnikov \vrule\kern-0.4pt is probably what you are looking for

@AndrewZabavnikov how else would you define it?

@DavidCarlisle Wait, why is it 0pt?

@AndrewZabavnikov for the same reason that \hbox{} has height 0pt, there is nothing in the box to make it bigger

@AndrewZabavnikov well actually it probably ought to use \thinmuskip rather than 3mu

@DavidCarlisle Exactly! Was just reading that page in TeXbook :-)

@DavidCarlisle What distance \joinrel is to remove - that is the question, actually. Where in TeXbook is defined that it is \thinmuskip, also is the part of that question.

@AndrewZabavnikov the use of joinrel is to put two relations together eg to manufacture an == from = and = so you need to lose the space that \mathrel normally puts on either side of the =

@DavidCarlisle But page 358 of TeXbook says "When two relations are adjacent in a math formula, TEX puts no space between them."

@AndrewZabavnikov hey that's cheating, you have the book open, and I read it in 1987 and am going on memory.

@DavidCarlisle Sorry :-))))

@AndrewZabavnikov got to go, if @egreg hasn't shown up and answered, I'll add a correction later

@AndrewZabavnikov \joinrel is defined as \mathrel{\mskip-3mu} because TeX adds no space between consecutive Rel atoms. So \mathrel{-}\joinrel\rightarrow produces a longer arrow as a math relation, with a thin backup between the - and \rightarrow.

@egreg Well, you mean that \mathrel{-} is not an atom? (I'm asking, because never looked up what an atom is).

@AndrewZabavnikov Yes, \mathrel{<tokens>} builds a Rel atom; \rightarrow is already a Rel atom by itself, because it's defined by \mathchardef\rightarrow="3221

@egreg The point is, why in =\joinrel=, \joinrel is needed at all?

@AndrewZabavnikov To make the two equals signs superimposing to each other.

Just try == and you'll see a gap.

@egreg Yeah, already tried and don't understand :-)

@egreg Aren't they rel atoms? If they are, why TeX added the gap between them - they are consecutive!

@AndrewZabavnikov $a==b$ results in "a, thick space = = thick space b", while $a=\joinrel=b$ results in "a thick space = mskip -3mu = thick space b".

The gap is because = has sidebearings

@egreg That's what I wanted to hear! :-) What is the way to get it without them, independently of font?

(I guess no way?)

@AndrewZabavnikov Right guess.

@egreg But why then -3mu is used? Is it some reliance on Knuth's fonts?

(I mean that fonts must be reasonable for -3mu to work)

Oh! Stop! It's the Knuth's macro!

So he relied on his fonts, and then nobody thought about this issue?

@egreg Do you know why at normal zoom levels (like 100% or 200%) I see some glitches in the place where lower bars (while not the upper ones) of equal sign join with this code: $$ =\joinrel= $$?

@AndrewZabavnikov It's surely good for the Computer Modern fonts. For other fonts one may have to modify \joinrel.

(In my dvi previewer)

@AndrewZabavnikov That depends on the viewer and pixel rounding.

@egreg Thanks!

@egreg Yes came to me as I walked out the door towards lunch:-)

@DavidCarlisle You met the sidebearing of =?

@egreg yes the -ve space is because of sidebearings not because of mathrel spacing

@egreg oops, I just realised, met wasn't a typo there was it:-)

@DavidCarlisle :) I don't mkae tpyos.

@egreg @David Are these side-bearings clearly specified somewhere? I mean, is Computer Modern source (if there is such a notion) clear enough?

@AndrewZabavnikov It should be. All characters are precisely specified and drawn in volume E of the "Computers and Typesetting" series.

@AndrewZabavnikov but in general, no they are not specified anywhere particularly accessible. computer modern, even if these days is mostly used in its type1 form derives from the metafont as egreg says so you can look at the sources, but otherwise you'd have to look at the font in some kind of font editor and figure out how much wider the specified character width is than the actual width covered with non-white pixels.

@AndrewZabavnikov This is the bounding box of =, obtained with \fboxsep=0pt\fboxrule=0.1pt\fbox{$=$}

Any Lua experts about?

Ah, solved it myself :-)

@DavidCarlisle I remember now why doing case changing in Lua is a bit tricky :-)

@JosephWright ?

@DavidCarlisle Two things: Lua is really 8-bit and you loose catcodes

\def\MakeUpperCase#1{%
  \directlua{
    local unicode  = require("unicode")
    local utf8     = unicode.utf8
    unicode.string = string
    tex.sprint(unicode["utf8"].upper("\luaescapestring{\unexpanded{#1}}"))
  }%
}
\def\MakeLowerCase#1{%
  \directlua{
    local unicode  = require("unicode")
    local utf8     = unicode.utf8
    unicode.string = string
    tex.sprint(unicode["utf8"].lower("\luaescapestring{\unexpanded{#1}}"))
  }%
}
\showtokens\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter{\MakeUpperCase{abcde\^fąéдῳλ}}

Took me a while to get the Lua right for slnunicode, plus in the LuaTeX manual it says at some point they'll switch to a 'native' solution

@JosephWright I didn't look at your code carefully, but just FYI: there was a bug in slnunicode in december, which was fixed right away.

I've got a problem with a simple table + itemize combination (it says Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item. \item F):

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline \rule[-2ex]{0pt}{5.5ex} Column &\\
\hline \rule[-2ex]{0pt}{5.5ex} %
	Row 1 %
	&\begin{itemize}
		\item First item
	\end{itemize} %
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Can anyone spot my mistake?

@JosephWright It uppercases also control sequences; try \MakeUppercase{\foo}

@JosephWright chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12593796#12593796

@ComFreek yes, c is like mbox and can only have horizontal mode things not displays like itemize, you need a p column (like parbox)

@DavidCarlisle Thank you very much! It works now. Do I always have to specify a fixed width when using 'p'? Is there a way to let 'p' columns expand as 'c' columns do?

@ComFreek yes. some bloke wrote tabularx and tabulary packages that give variable width parbox columns in tabulars (but you need to specify the total table width in that case) (and several other ristrictions)

@ComFreek Although tabularx sort or works it isn't letting p expand "like c" it instead resets the entire table multiple times trying different widths until the specified total width is achieved. It is deeply built in to the entire TeX system the distinction between horizontal mode things that have a natural width, but never break over a line and vertical mode things where line breaking happens, but requires a specified width in advance.

@DavidCarlisle "several other restrictions", does that mean that tabularx is not recommendable? I've just tried my table with tabularx, and it works except for the misaligned list (it has got a greater top margin).

@egreg Yes, I know

@egreg That can (probably) be fixed, but was not my primary concern

@Johannes_B Hmm, much more 'sub-optimal' than the issues I already knew about

@Johannes_B Any idea why this happens?

Ah: reading rest of text it seems 'because Unicode support is not right' is the answer

@DavidCarlisle As @topskip says: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12594981#12594981

(FYI, re the misaligned list: I found this question which exactly covers my question.)

@egreg That's essentially to be expected as Lua doesn't care/know about tokens in a TeX sense. I'm primarily interested in things at a 'typesetting' level, so 'characters' (probably not even LICR).

@Johannes_B Does this problem extend to case-changing? A quick test suggests not but I may be wrong

I'm making a family tree. All person correspond to a rectangle with a name in it. Male and female persons are currently only distinguished by colors, but these don't show up on black and white. Any suggestions how to mark these? I thought of male/female symbols.

@FaheemMitha I think genealogy has typically everyone boxed and the box shape gives the sex

@tohecz How so?

@ComFreek well it's not for me to recommend it or otherwise, but the restrictions are due to the fact that the environment body is evaluated several times, which means you have to be careful with side effects like writing to files, if you only want it to happen once, and verbatim doesn't work (as it never works in a macro argument)

@tohecz do you have anything specific in mind?

@FaheemMitha rounded corners and sharp corners?

@JosephWright They picked the wrong extension language for the 21st century:( going from 8bit tex to a unicode tex based on an 8-bit lua.....

@tohecz Hmm, I thought of that, but it seems a bit arbitrary. I thought of putting a mars/venus symbol in the background.

I'm assuming tikz can handle making symbols transparent.

@JosephWright Sorry, i was afk. As far as i remember the à charackter ends in ao just like the nbsp (U+00a0), so every char ending in a0 should behave this way. But i am by far not on this topic, i was just around that day. I am also reading the luatex mailiing list, and i can remember that taco fixed the issue. But i couldn't find it in that moment. I'll have a look again.

@JosephWright The thread was called »Off topic: a quiz« Well, finally: tracker.luatex.org/view.php?id=869

@FaheemMitha You can ask here if there are any standards how to display this bit of information:

@Johannes_B Ah right: so 'nothing to worry about'

@tohecz Thanks, that's a useful link. Didn't know this site existed. Must be new.

@JosephWright Not anymore, it is fixed (apparently by hans, not taco)

@Johannes_B Yes, that's what I meant

@Johannes_B Also seems to be specific to %s matching a space

@FaheemMitha there's >100 sites now, it's difficult to follow. I only remembered it from Area51 so I thought I would try if it betified

@JosephWright might be, didn't have a closer look :-)

@DavidCarlisle Certainly worth knowing

@tohecz betafied?

@FaheemMitha maybe. I meant, "made beta", I'm not an expert in creation of new English words :)

Did people see groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.text.tex/UY49160haSk?

@JosephWright That just came up on my RSS

@tohecz I think you did. But you wrote "betified". I suggested "betafied". :-)

@egreg OK, issue of not actually working with UTF-8 solved: now to the control sequence thing

@PaulGessler Same here

@tohecz There is a question about genealogy software here:

@FaheemMitha well, "clear" -> "clarity" -> "clarify", "beta" -> "betity" (the state of being beta-like) -> "betify". Well, we can ask @Alan, he's just arrived :)

There is something called gramps, which is actually on Debian, but looks like massive overkill for my needs.

@FaheemMitha well, your question is about notation standards not about software. Or am I wrong?

It looks like something for genealogy researchers.

@tohecz You are correct. But since I have been trying to draw a family tree, I am interested in software that presumably does it automatically.

@JosephWright ooh incompatible changes down the road, that's what we like to have in a base engine:-)

Is there a correct term to refer to a decimal number where the decimal point is a full stop and there are no group separators and no scientific notation? (As in the number format required by commands like \setlength.)

@DavidCarlisle ??! base engine of what?

@FaheemMitha latex

@DavidCarlisle LaTeX 3?

@FaheemMitha referencing earlier chat here (see stared comment about elephant over on the right)

@NicolaTalbot setlength will accept a comma:-)

@JosephWright Do many people use Y&Y nowadays? I worked with a publisher who used it, but it seems outdated to me. Maybe only because I'm used to the modern workflows.

@tohecz Hmm. -ify isn't really a very productive suffix in English, so to add it to make new words is tricky. But I think I'm with @FaheemMitha 's intuition here, that 'betafied' is more transparent than 'betified'.

@DavidCarlisle Well I never. You learn something new every day! :-)

@AlanMunn My vote would be for 'beta-ified' :) but otherwise there's just 'went {in}to beta'. ;)

@PaulGessler The company went out of business ages ago (2004), so usage must be declining

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I read up on that once I realized a distribution was being used which I'd never heard of.

@PaulGessler It was quite nice, and one of the first to use scalable fonts, but hard to justify a commercial tex engine for most people.

@AlanMunn ok :)

@PaulGessler Yes, I would agree that the periphrastic version is better.

@AlanMunn thanks; I just learned a new word!

@DavidCarlisle fp.sty doesn't like a comma so I still need to find a term for a decimal number in the format that fp accepts.

@tohecz It's hard to make the the argument though, because of two facts about English: first, we don't have that many words like 'beta' that end in vowels, I think (relative to words that end in consonants) and that's the real test for what happens to the 'i' in -ify. When a word ends in a consonant, it's clear that the suffix is '-ify' but when the word ends in a vowel, what should happen, (since two vowels don't like to be together).

But looking at a bunch of existing -ify words, most of their roots (which are largely Latin based) end in consonants.

@AlanMunn Or in "i/y", like "beauty/beautify"

@egreg Yes, exactly. I couldn't find any that ended in any other vowel, on a quick inspection.

@AlanMunn "Lasagnafy" or "lasagnify"? ;-)

@egreg Yes, I was thinking also of that kind (although my example was not as tasty: 'agendify', (not 'agendafy'). So this provides some support for @tohecz 's version of the spelling. But I have only one reservation about that, and it has to do with the number of syllables of both your and my examples. My intuition is that there has to be enough of the root "left over" to recover it, so for three syllable roots, it's ok, but for words like 'beta' not so good.

the genealogy beta doesn't seem to be doing well atm. a very small number of questions.

someone still managed to get 10k

@AlanMunn yeah, I get it I think :) Well, Czech is not so versatile in making new words as English is, but I still make a lot of new words. We have the very nice thing with the prefixes, you can make new words this way quite easily :)

i was using myopenid as my openid, but they say the service will be turned off Feb 1, though at the moment it is still accepting my password. Does anyone here have suggestions for the least awful such service that (a) won't invade my privacy or (b) disappear suddenly?

Still working at the moment, but probably only a matter of time before they get around to turning it off.

@PaulGessler Still see people using it

@FaheemMitha Oh great

@DavidCarlisle Quite

@JosephWright I wouldn't be surprised if there was somebody using emTeX.

@egreg Probably

@egreg No obvious solution to your point about Lua cases-changing and control words, at least at the Lua level

Probably needs some TeX code to select those cases out

@FaheemMitha It's disappointing that all they point to is a set of corporate alternatives

@JosephWright Who is "they"?

@DavidCarlisle Thanks for the response :)

@FaheemMitha People behind MyOpenID

@JosephWright Ok, I see. Whoever they are.

@JosephWright Well, your university can become an OpenID authority etc., the problem is that these things cost a lot (like CTAN would if not supported by people from academia and by enthusiasts like Stefan), and you need someone to pay it

@tohecz Being an OpenID provider costs a lot? Why? I thought you just run a bit of software.

@tohecz I can see that there are costs, certainly, but the basic premise of OpenID seems to be underminded if you end up having to trust Google/Yahoo/... to get one

@FaheemMitha You have probably millions of requests a day in the OpenID system. If each of them were 1kB of traffic, it's solely 1GB of traffic a day. Not a large number, but you need some good hardware and good connectibility to manage it

Anyway, I need to sort something out too!

@JosephWright ok, bye then :)

@tohecz Well, that exists in a university system already.

and millions seems a bit high for a university. thousands maybe

@FaheemMitha Yes, but then you have to convince the univesities to host it.

That I know of, there isn't even a paid-for solution you can choose

(Outside of people who really do something else)

@FaheemMitha well, I mean in the system as a whole, not in one CA

@tohecz True, but I that doesn't cost money.

@JosephWright doesn't seem to

@tohecz Not sure I follow. I thought we were talking about an entity setting up as an OpenID provider.

@FaheemMitha well, you cannot be offering bandwidth, disk space and computation time to everyone for free.

@tohecz True. But you could offer it to your own users (within the university), I was not suggesting a free public service.

@FaheemMitha We are talking about one node, which is much smaller. But that all needs to be considered. If OpenID should become a leading authorization method, you need to have strong options

I don't think any university would go for that.

@tohecz strong in what sense?