TeX, LaTeX and Friends

12:25 AM

@PauloCereda I like the ones from the OP: "Ya know, I've tried, and that's a very creative answer and all, but I can't seem to find any quality docs or tutorials on how to use the PHP DOM classes." and "Or what if you have all of your tags pre-defined? e.g. (div|p|a|etc) ". Hope springs eternal.

Andrew Stacey

7:30 AM

Here's a question that keeps coming up: tex.stackexchange.com/q/29527/86 Maybe we should have a canonical question on what can and can't be used in TikZ node names.

Paulo Cereda

11:44 AM

No more TikZ-Cthulhu for me. :-)

Andrew Stacey

1:29 PM

@GonzaloMedina: As you've deleted your answer, I can't comment there now. I didn't mean to be rude! (I'm not sure if I came across that way, but just in case I did: I apologise.) It just seemed to be a bit overkill to be using counters for a TikZ situation where the user was probably not all that experienced in LaTeX. Hence my reaction. (Over 10ks can see the rest of this at: tex.stackexchange.com/q/29543/86)

Alan Munn

3:56 PM

All: am I the only one who experienced a catastrophic failure of all things {lua|xe}latex related with the latest TL update? Thank goodness for tlmgr's restore facility. Restoring all the l3 and fontspec stuff fixed the problem.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn What happened, Alan?

Alan Munn

4:13 PM

@PauloCereda Basic documents that previously compiled failed, including one that was the example for a beamer question that I was in the midst of answering. They failed with all sorts of fontspec errors using either engine.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn I had a similar problem when I updated some packages that rely on l3. I had to reinstall TL.

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda If you use TeXLive Utility on the Mac, it has a handy way to revert individual packages to the previous version. (It's a wrapper for tlmgr, so in principle any TL system can do this, but I haven't looked into the the actual tlmgr command that does it. (tlmgr restore <pkg>, I think.)) So you may not have needed to reinstall everything from scratch.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn TBH, I screwed up my install, amongst other things. :-) I still get lost on some Mac directories, so I decided to reinstall everything - but it was funny. I'm gonna take a look on the tlmgr commands, the restore option seems to be a life saver.

Mac install isn't fun. I like cryptic messages and lots of options and tweaks.

Joseph Wright

4:41 PM

@AlanMunn Fine for me with the updates run about 10 minutes ago

egreg

4:52 PM

@PauloCereda MacTeX is a joy! A perfect example of how a complex system can be installed without hassle by any newbie. Of course the cognoscenti may be disappointed because there's no panel with hundreds of choice boxes or may prefer to add manually packages when needed and lose themselves in the dependencies. What I like best is the control panel by which you can choose an different TeX Live distribution still on your disk.

3

Alan Munn

@JosephWright Do you know if there have been updates since last night? It's a bit disconcerting when the example you're using to answer a question fails in between updates of answer. :-)

Gonzalo Medina

@AndrewStacey Don't worry; no need to apologise, you were not rude at all. I was in a hurry so I couldn't modify my answer and I decided that it was best to delete it since, as tou say,

it was an overkill to use TeX counters.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg I agree. :) It's straight to the point, which is very good for the newbie. I usually like tweaks and tweaks, but it's quite nice when you have a clean interface for an application. I once wrote an app without a menu bar, it only had a image with "Drop file here". Many purists might say it's not correct to write an app without a "normal action", but it was cleaner and even my dad was happy because it was very intuitive.

Gonzalo Medina

@AlanMunn: then I will postpone my weekly TL update!

Paulo Cereda

That reminds me of my Slackware times: "Up... date? What's an... update?" :-P

Andrew Stacey

5:01 PM

@GonzaloMedina Okay. Just wanted to be sure.

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina I don't want to be the boy that cries Wolf!, but that would be my advice. (Joseph's experience nothwithstanding.)

Gonzalo Medina

@AlanMunn: too late! You've already cried ;-)

Alan Munn

@GonzaloMedina True. I guess I have to do it repeatedly though to meet the actual criteria for wolf-crying-boy status.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn which brings us to...

Joseph Wright fact #1: Joseph never updates his TL install. It's always updated. Always.

@egreg: 30k! Congrats!

egreg

5:34 PM

@PauloCereda And 275 rep today. :) Thanks.

Gonzalo Medina

5:55 PM

I love the image of Picard and Riker obtained when trying to access a non-existing page such as chat.stackexchange.com/questions

5

and Wolf also... I hadn't noticed Wolf before!

Worf, I meant Worf

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina: Very cool! They are using Peruvian hats, I think.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda Bolivian or Peruvian, I am not sure which.

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina Neither do I. :-) A friend of mine owes me a sombrero.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda Any kind of sombrero or one of a particular type?

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina I have no idea.

I didn't know there were more types of sombreros.

Gonzalo Medina

6:07 PM

@PauloCereda But that's not possible (if you accept the law of the excluded middle, of course). Either the sombrero can be any kind of sombrero or it can't be of any kind, in which case, it is of a particular kind.

And yes, there are many types of sombreros. Here in Colombia there are at least three kinds that come to my mind, so possibly there are even more.

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina Oh. My brain hurts. :-P

Joseph Wright

6:20 PM

Looking at the stats, I reckon we'll hit 10k questions a week tomorrow :-)

4

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina Cool! Found one called Sombrero Vueltiao.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda Yes it is one of the most famous; it is mostly used in the Northern Coast.

The "sombrero aguadeño" is also very popular.

Paulo Cereda

Are they expensive?

Gonzalo Medina

It depends. If the seller discovers that you're a tourist, they can be really expensive. But the standard price is not too high.

Paulo Cereda

Ah. :-(

I can't remember if we have any hats in here.

Martin Scharrer

6:32 PM

Finally I'm a Meta-Fanatic. I traveled once shortly before my 100 first days were over and forgot to check the site at night.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda Google tells me that there's the Brazilian "tarp hat"...

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina wow. I didn't know that.

On a sidenote, Carmem Miranda's tutti-frutti hat doesn't count as an actual hat.

Gonzalo Medina

Well, time to go. See y'all!

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina See ya!

N.N.

7:42 PM

yay, managed to get what I wanted by reading the floatrow manual

egreg

7:55 PM

@MartinScharrer I've two questions for you. First: did you see my answer on c.t.t.? Second: the new user Flavio has posed here the same question Claudio Beccari and I answered to on the GuIT forum. Apparently he doesn't trust in Claudio! Go figure! I decided not to mention that discussion, but I gave the same answer as there. Please, check it to see if I've been too rude.

N.N.

The floatrow manual may be hard to read because of how code is formatted in it. I may be unorthodox but I think tex.stackexchange.com/questions/29536/… is easier to read

egreg

8:20 PM

@NN That manual is not hard to read. It's simply impossible.

N.N.

@egreg If you say so I should be proud of myself. I managed to get an answer out of it!

@egreg oh, and I appreciate your answer. gave the result I wanted

egreg

@NN I've tried to read it for my "Breve guida", since it looks very rich in features. I gave up. What's the "Breve guida"? It's a small repertoire of useful packages with a commented list of the main commands and features. Unfortunately it's in Italian. :)

N.N.

@egreg It's sad that the manual is so hard to understand. I feel that the commands of the package could've been more selfexplanatory too.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Of course, a nice compilation of packages should be expressed in a beautiful language. :-)

N.N.

8:36 PM

@egreg though I don't understand TeX so I couldn't say if only the documentation of floatrow is lacking or the code too

had a look at hvfloat too but it seems not to be able to do what I want

Martin Scharrer

@egreg You mean the one about currfile? Yes, I saw it, but I don't like to rely on write18 and it's mainly about the main file name and \input files, so \@currname etc. wouldn't be any good. You could of course use your code with the file names already known by currfile instead.

lockstep

@NN IIRC, The author of floatrow, Olga Lapko, is a Russian. I use the package -- though only some of its features --, and so far the code doesn't seem to be "lacking" in any sense. The package also interplays well with Axel Sommerfeldt's caption package.

N.N.

@lockstep aye, e.g. subfloatrow relies on subcaption. maybe I should've used another word than 'lacking'.

lockstep

Here's a nice example of what floatrow can do:

7

Q: Table and Figure side-by-side with independent captions

Looking to put a table and a figure side by side so that the table and figure have their own captions. A crude sketch ------------ ----------------- TABLE | a | b | FIGURE | c | d | ------------ Table 2: Caption --------------...

N.N.

nice

egreg

9:18 PM

The `\@currname` was just a placeholder. To get the full path of, say, the current main file, one has to use a different strategy than with `kpsewhich`:
`"find `pwd` -name \jobname.tex -print"`
Instead of `\jobname.tex` one can use other things from currfile. Of course this is only for Unix, but maybe there's something also for Windoze.

Paulo Cereda

9:38 PM

@AlanMunn: this is a catchy book name, you'll find it very funny: livrariadafisica.com.br/detalhe_produto.aspx?id=31855

Zak

10:55 PM

Can anyone either explain or link me to how typesets work and what the difference between them is?

lockstep

@Zak Does this help?

17

Q: When to use each kind of text type?

I'm a little confused on the purposes of each kind of text in LaTeX. I know the function of some of them, but sometimes people use each for different reasons. For example: \texttt is for code (no discussion right?). \emph is to make emphasis. \textsc is used for names, right? \textbf when sho...

fonts formatting best-practices typography

Zak

11:10 PM

I'm talking about like pdfLaTeX, XeTeX, ConTeXt, LaTeXmk

lockstep

Search within tags like pdftex, xetex, and context. Here's a good question:

59

Q: Differences between LuaTeX, ConTeXt and XeTeX

I’m interested in the differences and commonalities between the “new” (La)TeX processors: LuaTeX, XeTeX, and ConTeXt. Personally, I’ve only used XeTeX so far and without having the time to try out all three systems, I’m having a surprisingly hard time setting them off from one each other. As...

xetex luatex context

Zak

11:42 PM

Great, thanks!

Gonzalo Medina

@lockstep: sorry for bothering you with my comment.

lockstep

@GonzaloMedina No problem. I wasn't quite sure about the effects of center myself. :-)

Transcript for

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends