TeX, LaTeX and Friends

David Carlisle

00:29

yesterday it was foiltex today it is:

you are using \begin{table}[h!] (which would be better as \begin{table}[ht!] but the package you are using redefines the float handling (to go back 20 years to code based on latex2.09) and disables the ! feature (and other things) actually more than 20 years the boxmaxdepth line was commented out of the original in december 1987. Why would you use these macros now??????? — David Carlisle 39 secs ago

@egreg Leslie:-)

percusse

@DavidCarlisle You'll like this one better tex.stackexchange.com/questions/215070/tables-in-landscape-mode

David Carlisle

@percusse excel2tikz anyone?

percusse

@DavidCarlisle I think the only automation tool that mildly succesful is Inkscape2TikZ. There was another frenzy with latex table editor tablas in the last decade if you have ever heard about it.

Paulo Cereda

09:02

@egreg He is now playing outside with some rubber mice. :)

Thanks. I decide what I want. \LaTeX should not dictate terms to me. — Adhvaitha 12 hours ago

So don't use it, for Knuth's sake.

Joseph Wright

3

A: Defining $$$ $$$ to align

If we are using plain TeX then our life is simpler. We are typing: $$\eqalign{ a &= b + c \cr c &= d + e }$$ when we need to typeset aligned equations. And your idea about $$$ ... $$$ can be implemented simply by \everydisplay: \everydisplay={\futurelet\next\eqalignQ} \def\eqalignQ{\ifx...

Paulo Cereda

09:18

@JosephWright ooh wipet pwned that bloke!

:)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Wipet has a very definite view on things

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda There is of course a real tension between having a fixed, well-defined language and giving the user the flexibility to make up their own stuff

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Indeed. I'm currently working with extensibility in programming languages and it's quite tricky to allow users do their own stuff.

Johannes_B

09:47

\begin{center}
$f(x)=\sqrt{x}$\\[3mm]
$f:\mathbb{R}_{\geq0}\to \mathbb{R}$
\end{center}

golatex.de/abstaende-t14282.html

egreg

@Johannes_B This will make @tohecz squeal in ecstasy! Not I: I've seen things you human…

Joseph Wright

@Johannes_B :-)

Johannes_B

@egreg I am tempted to post your paper Horrors in LaTeX

Joseph Wright

10:04

@Johannes_B I'm sure wipet would blame using LaTeX rather than plain ;-)

tohecz

@Johannes_B that's a true beauty :D

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda I want to write fortran that looks like xii, but the parser is just so primitive

tohecz

@PauloCereda that's a true problem of Patoline, for instance: it is too permissive w.r.t. the filesystem access and code that you're allowed to run, and this can't be easily changed in the system.

Joseph Wright

@tohecz Yes?

tohecz

@JosephWright well, quite. The authors can put there code that is interpreted very late in the process, in one model even on the user end side. Basically, you can incorporate any OCaml code there IIRC

A bit like if CTAN was full of Python code nobody verifies... (or verifies purely, we know how things work in reality)

David Carlisle

10:18

@tohecz clearly being able to incorporate lua is much better than being able to incorporate ocaml?

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle well, it depends on what permissions you imply

battery dying, see you in 50 minutes.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I guess there is a difference in emphasis (Patoline has to be programmed in OCaml, LuaTeX can be controlled with wither TeX or Lua)

Paulo Cereda

Patolino is the name of Daffy Duck in Portuguese. :)

@DavidCarlisle On a more serious note, do you write Fortran code? :)

hinafu

10:34

Hi!

I've been searching for the name of this symbol, but simply can't find it

does any of you know it?

it looks like this: i.imgur.com/lw5jKo6.png

Paulo Cereda

Detexify gives us this:

\usepackage{ wasysym }
\pisces

or

\usepackage{ mathrsfs }
\mathscr{X}

or

\usepackage{ amssymb }
\mathfrak{X}

egreg

@hinafu I'd say it's \mathcal{H}

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Too easy. :) Let's complicate things. <3

hinafu

I had found \pisces, but I didn't think it'd be used in a Math context

besides, the middle line stays within the parenthesis

Joseph Wright

@egreg In tex.stackexchange.com/questions/215118/…, do you get some weird error if you try \regex_extract_once:nnN and \seq_show:N the result? I have a feeling there is a bug in the code to make a sequence from the extracted parts.

egreg

10:42

@hinafu Is it this one?

@JosephWright I tried once the extract, but got nowhere and found a different way. Surely the documentation for that part is not clear.

Joseph Wright

@egreg Quite possibly

hinafu

No, it isn't.

it actually looks like the Pisces symbol, but it's a little bigger

and the lines are not so bold

Paulo Cereda

@hinafu Could you tell us more about the context? Where did you find it?

hinafu

Yes, I'm taking pictures of the paper I'm transcribing

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda I write tools that write fortran code

Paulo Cereda

10:52

@DavidCarlisle ooh that's even cooler. :)

I like Fortran.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda because naturally what you really want to do is write mathml and generate code from it in xslt...

hinafu

I'm sorry, this is taking forever to upload

David Carlisle

@hinafu do you only have the paper on paper (or scan) not in electronic form?

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle :)

hinafu

not electronic

here it is: drive.google.com/file/d/0B5461yGD2Q2hRTB0WHRQOFp2M28/…

Paulo Cereda

11:00

Guys, is there a quick way of adding a line break to the text part \underbrace{a}_{foo bar}?

tohecz

11:24

@PauloCereda _{\substack{foo\\bar}}

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Thank you Tom! :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda yw :)

Martin Schröder

11:41

A question for the font experts (and @WillRobertson): I'm trying to swith _off_ Oldstylenums with LucidaBright. I've read http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/10993/5763 and its comments and I think I understand why that doesn't work.
LucidaBrightOT.otf has only onum, not lnum (but the default are lining numbers). Should it then also define lnum?

David Carlisle

@hinafu oh it's in pen:-) just use \mathcal{H} within font and handwriting differences that's the intention I'm sure.

hinafu

Yeah, I'll go with it

Thanks for the help

Joseph Wright

11:59

@MartinSchröder Mail Will?

tohecz

12:13

@hinafu that's either \mathcal{H} or \mathcal{X}.

Paulo Cereda

May 8 at 20:45, by Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Will, Will, Will, Will Robertson (Queen's We will rock you, probably sounded better inside my head). :)

I will shut up now. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda lol

Christian Hupfer

13:15

Good maen

Paulo Cereda

13:27

@ChristianHupfer Hallo!

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda: Hello, You multi-animal-duck-personality ;-)

Gonzalo Medina

This one can be closed; OP was using pdftex instead of pdflatex for a LaTeX document and the problem was solved according to comments (other problem arised, but that is irrelevant for the question):

1

Q: Undefined control sequence in \documentclass?

Hello I'm running TexWorks from the MiKTeX & consistently getting this error: ! Undefined control sequence. l.6 \documentclass [prd,12pt,reprint,showkeys,showpacs,nofootinbib]{revtex4-1} ? Here is my whole preamble: \documentclass[prd,12pt,reprint,showkeys,showpacs,nofootin...

errors

David Carlisle

14:02

@GonzaloMedina current votes are for off topic, but actually it's a common error, it ought to be a duplicate (or have a canonical answer) don't you think?

tohecz

14:24

Ultimately palindomic:

3

David Carlisle

@tohecz :-)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle :)

David Carlisle

@tohecz actually I thought the comment nicely applied to the image you posted originally with just 2

Johannes_B

14:45

0

Q: how can I display equations in (elsarticle)

Equations are not displayed correctly when using \documentclass[final,5p,times,twocolumn]{elsarticle} while they are correctly displayed with \documentclass[preprint,12pt,authoryear]{elsarticle}

equations

What do you think about that?

David Carlisle

15:03

@Johannes_B "Look at the package file, it is not very complicated" didn't you mean "look at the package file, it's brilliantly elegant code you should be honoured to use?

Johannes_B

@DavidCarlisle Oh, this is what i meant. Of course it is :-)

David Carlisle

@Johannes_B I thought so.

Johannes_B

15:34

@ChristianHupfer Where is your dfrac comment?

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: Deleted it... since it's a question regarding math.se, not pure tex

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer So this would be better at meta.math.se?

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: I think, it's off-topic, somehow, yes

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer \dfrac would work anyway

@Johannes_B think it's OK here as long as question and answer are phrased as about tex

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: Thanks for the information... I have no account on Math.SE, so... no experience with that site

Johannes_B

15:37

@ChristianHupfer @DavidCarlisle Seen the latest comment?

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer nor me but mathjax supports most amsmath constructs

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: Embarassingly I don't use mathjax neither ;-)

@DavidCarlisle: I am a website crash test dummy regarding html etc.

@Johannes_B: It's in my review queue right now :D

Johannes_B

16:56

I just read the complete question along with the answers to $$$ align $$$. The whole discussion is useless.

Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not confuse the code.

tohecz

English question, I hope someone can answer me. How is this called in English?

Christian Hupfer

@tohecz: cable tie?

Johannes_B

@tohecz

Cable tie

A cable tie or tie-wrap, also known as a hose tie, zap-strap, or zip tie, is a type of fastener, for holding items together, primarily electric cables or wires. Because of their low cost and ease of use, tie-wraps are ubiquitous, finding use in a wide range of other applications. Stainless steel versions, either naked or coated with a rugged plastic, cater for exterior applications and hazardous environments. The common tie-wrap, normally made of nylon, has a tape section with teeth that engage with a pawl in the head to form a ratchet so that as the free end of the tape section is pulled the tie...

tohecz

ok thanks guys

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: In LaTeX nothing is useless... it's a philosophy... it lead us to higher levels of existence

@Johannes_B: I should go outside and breathe some fresh air :D

Joseph Wright

17:22

0

Q: \align does not work

\begin{align} At most \euro 2 million should be invested in renaissance \\ At least \euro 1.5 million should be invested in modern art \\ The investment in contemporary art should be at least half of the combined total investment in renaissance, neoclassicism and romanticism \\ The combine...

align

Eek

Gonzalo Medina

@DavidCarlisle Seems reasonable. Do you have a possible link as duplicate?

Ah, in the meantime, the question has been closed.

David Carlisle

@GonzaloMedina no I searched but failed then got pulled off to do some work:-)

@GonzaloMedina it'll get asked again:-)

Gonzalo Medina

@DavidCarlisle That's for sure :)

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer In my point of view discussing Grabenkampf-topics is useless.

Why can't i do it? It is possible with xyz This might be true, but ... you know?

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: You know that my remark was pure irony?

Johannes_B

17:38

@ChristianHupfer nonetheless, people that lazy. Impossible.

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: I'll should take a look on that post, I assume ?;-)

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer Don't! you'll get angry.

Thanks. I decide what I want. \LaTeX should not dictate terms to me. — Adhvaitha 20 hours ago

David Carlisle

It's gratifying to see that groups I added to latex are still being noticed 21 years later. mini.tex(16): Error: Too many }'s.

3

Q: Incompatible color package and defining a xfloat environment -> " Too many }'s"

I am pepping up a thesis. Among others I am using a package based on Modified UDO thesis by; Jose A. Flores, November 2011. Unfortunately, I cannot find the original. One part of the package seems to redefine the float definition and I boiled the error down to the following code. I created a smal...

floats color incompatibility

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18876449#18876449

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: Ah, I see... I should ban egreg's solution if kittens could die...:-( .. and the inevitable wipe - it solution ;-)

Johannes_B

17:43

@ChristianHupfer Did you know that some janitors refuse to change light bulbs? Kann ich nich, mach ich nich.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Weird: I'd assumed it was the same user!

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: I could understand if the light bulb is on the top of the Eiffel tower ;-)

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer Last week i had a colleage over to help me (and provide a ladder). It were about 3.5 meters and a shaky ladder.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright so did I I was about to reply along the lines of "I warned you yesterday.." but then noticed it's someone else:-) If we'd made the color-safe groups always groups rather than be \relax until color is loded it would have broken 20 years ago and been fixed by now.

Christian Hupfer

18:21

@DavidCarlisle: Is there a command in longtable to make page break in such a table at certain row, i.e. on my request?

Johannes_B

What says which parameter is incorrect when trying what? — Johannes_B 9 secs ago

Christian Hupfer

@Johannes_B: Talking to yourself? ;-)

David Carlisle

18:38

@ChristianHupfer \newpage

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: \newpage? That easy? :D

Johannes_B

19:01

It is supposed to be somewhere on my desktop. I did this whole magyar-csquotes stuff

Paulo Cereda

20:04

@egreg: any hints for me to avoid using \multirow?

tohecz

@PauloCereda \def\multirow#1#2{#2}

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Hm?

\begin{tabular}{cccc}
Name & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Parameters} & Body \\
 & Index & Name & \\
1 & 1 & 1 & 1
\end{tabular}

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, it should simply disable the command ;) Do you have a specific table that you wanna format?

Paulo Cereda

I don't want to use \multirow. :(

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, the example shows only \multicolumn, and that's fine

Paulo Cereda

20:07

@tohecz That one. :)

@tohecz I know, but I wanted to make Name and Body vertically aligned between two columns. :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda use \expandafter\let\expandafter\egreg\csname multirow\endcsname then you can honestly tell him you never use \multirow but do use \egreg and he'll be happy

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle This is so mean. :P

tohecz

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{booktabs}
\newcommand\Midrule{\midrule[\heavyrulewidth]}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{cccc}\toprule
\bfseries Name & \multicolumn{2}{c}{\bfseries Parameters} & \bfseries Body \\\cmidrule(lr){2-3}
 & Index & Name & \\\Midrule
1 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

@PauloCereda ^^

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Do you think it looks OK? I'm fine with your solution, but... :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, it's the solution I use for all tables I graphic edit in the journal, if they need it.

Paulo Cereda

20:13

I'm terrible with tables. :)

@tohecz oooh sexy. <3

I'm sold.

tohecz

@PauloCereda who? me? :p

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz everybody! :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda lol

@PauloCereda Have you got any experience witth cable markers?

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz Hm which kind of cables, Tom?

tohecz

@PauloCereda this would be for sound cables. I've got too many identically-looking ones too close to each other :p

for example this thing looks appealing to me: amazon.fr/…

Paulo Cereda

20:25

@tohecz Oh they look very nice indeed.

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, these cost EUR 9, I'll try to find something cheaper

(I originally thought of standard cable ties just in colours, but I was advised that they tend to move on the cable)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz On the other hand, personally I don't like the idea of a tie putting pressure on the cable. :(

Unless of course you have very thick cables.

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, I've got some heavy duty cables :D no thin stuff liike cat6

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz ooh. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda well, getting a piano worth 1800 EUR and then trying to save 10 EUR on a good cable would be a bit stupid

Paulo Cereda

20:37

@tohecz You are absolutely right. :)

tohecz

so, ordered. I'll see whether it works or not :)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz ooh! :)

tohecz

the estimated delivery is: Dec12 to Jan02 :)

egreg

21:03

@PauloCereda Just don't use it.

tohecz

@egreg well, the question was basically about header vertical alignment, see

@tohecz this post @egreg

Christian Hupfer

21:37

@Johannes_B: Now, did you find your Hungarian - Phrasebook (@PauloCereda) for yonder question? ;-)

Joseph Wright

@ChristianHupfer I will not buy this record, it is scratched

Christian Hupfer

@JosephWright: I knew that line would appear :D Got you out of your cave :-P

David Carlisle

22:09

@ChristianHupfer sorry, but it had to be said:-)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: I don't use Windows, so I can't test it... why will it break? Because of the encodings?

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer it will break already on linux.

@ChristianHupfer the encoding of the file is a property of several things but mostly the settings in your editor, it has essentially no correlation to the operating system in use.

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: Yes, I see... I already made a statement, that's not recommended

A nice number :D

David Carlisle

22:26

@ChristianHupfer I seem to show 17:-)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: There must be at least one thing in which am 'better' than you :-)

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer I'm not sure but I suspect your German might be better than mine (although my German is almost as good as my Portuguese)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: Yes, I assume that my German is better than yours as vice versa your English is better than mine... I try to figure out the causes for those facts ;-)

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer I could ask Google,:-)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: I am pretty sure you'll do anyway :-P

Have a nice time, it's late, time to go to bed

David Carlisle

22:43

@ChristianHupfer no time to squeeze in review 1000?:-)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: I already have 1001 now :D

David Carlisle

@ChristianHupfer palindrome again go to bed happy:-)

Christian Hupfer

@DavidCarlisle: Thanks, bye

Werner

23:01

@JosephWright I'm going to listen to this presentation later, knowing that @DavidCarlisle was twiddling his thumbs in preparation of this... of course, he couldn't just pick up the Portuguese book and stop answering questions here...

Hot off the press: Stack Overflow has started a "triage department"

15

Q: Help us test question triage!

tl;dr: there's a new review queue. It'll be getting somewhere around 1-2 questions per minute. The only thing they have in common is that the system is unsure of what to do with them. Some are great, some are awful, some are in-between. We need you to help the system decide which category these ...

discussion featured review se-quality-project triage

tohecz

23:15

@Werner tell me this will never make it to the SE other than SO

egreg

23:27

@JosephWright Can you clear the comments under tex.stackexchange.com/a/171683/4427 (keeping the one by morbusg, of course). There's a new question with them.

tohecz

@egreg David's just getting points for explaining your answer. Ridiculous.

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz: F21 next week! :)

David Carlisle

@tohecz someone has to explain his extensive meandering discourses

Werner

@tohecz I doubt it.

tohecz

@Werner then I'll ask Papiro how does his instant review bot work.

David Carlisle

23:32

@tohecz my first thought was to say it was a duplicate question but that seemed a bit harsh

Werner

@tohecz :-o

tohecz

@Werner because it's clearly wrong to block a post from appearing in the main list before it passes a review process.

Werner

@tohecz: From my short time being able to properly review content on Stack Overflow, I've found that there is a lot of crap there.

tohecz

@Werner there yes. but here?

Werner

@tohecz There, yes. Not here.

tohecz

23:34

(the last two posts would make a poem)

Werner

@tohecz (Use them just like you know 'em)

tohecz

@Paulo would be happy :)

Werner

Many of the background happenings still revolve around Stack Overflow, and in terms of review, I like the fact that they're attempting to introduce some artificial intelligence for sorting their lists. Regardless, seeking community input to improve quality is always a good idea.

tohecz

@Werner yep. As long as they realize that it's only SO who need it, it's fine.

Transcript for

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends