TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2015-04-14 (page 1 of 2)

Enthusiastic Student

07:03

@barbarabeeton Please see the following post on meta and post the required points as comment...

3

A: Which image to use in community promotions ads of other Stack Exchange websites for TeX.SX?

One of your users reached out to us over at GDSE in our chatroom. I have produced this for your community based on the graphics already used on your site. I can give about 5 minutes for revisions of text or slight placement issues. Leave comments below and I'll act on the most upvoted requests i...

egreg

08:47

The “minor site updates” have arrived: the code displays are awful.

yo'

@egreg I'm not sure I see any change?

ah I see some changes. Why is the vote count grey and not black?

And now, we've lost our logo :( and some text is smaller, and paddings bigger, and it all looks awful.

Manuel

:( I liked the old colors in the code.

yo'

09:03

Am I the only one who can't see the big "TeX" logo on the site and on meta?

Manuel

@yo' It works for me.

yo'

@Manuel ok, I'll see what happens. Have you tried Ctrl+F5?

Manuel

I'm in a Mac, I don't know what Ctrl+F5 is supposed to do :P

The colors are awful, at least to me. That brownish-orangish colors were realy nice. This blue colors hurt my eyes. It's not relaxing to read with those colors anymore.

yo'

@Manuel clean cache and refresh

Manuel

@yo' I'm not going to do that :P I don't have the fastest connection and I don't really want to be reloading the cache (at least on purpose).

By the way, now that you mention it. It's true, I also have problems!

In my case what I can't see are the avatars of users (e.g., nor egreg nor wipet). I only see a few avatars. But most of them just appear blank.

Now, right here in the chat, here's what I see.

Johannes_B

09:18

@Dom I like it.

Paulo Cereda

10:32

@yo' It's gone for me as well.

Enthusiastic Student

10:52

@PauloCereda I think it is better to change the phrase to Q & A site for users of \TeX, \LaTeX and Friends. with \TeX and \LaTeX as they appear in the output of TeX documents. — Enthusiastic Student 1 min ago

Johannes_B

11:10

in The Ink Spot, 2 mins ago, by Dom

@Johannes_B interesting, it's definitely possible to use it, but I think Duane Bibby still needs to be contacted for permission to use it without including “CTAN lion drawing by Duane Bibby”, I'm 99% sure they'd allow it, all you need to do is email them.

It is strange to have 3 (three) different places for one topic. Essentially, this is crossposting. And everybody trying to keep up with the discussion about a community ad logo should now know, why crossposting is discouraged.

Christian Hupfer

11:51

New design? ;-)

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer the more things change, the more they stay the same. ;-)

Christian Hupfer

@PaulGessler: Like answering box questions with Plain TeX, for example? ;-)

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer I have also been known to use the picture environment from time to time.

Enthusiastic Student

Is it possible to import data from a CSV file by datatool package and then do calculations with spreadtab?

Johannes_B

@EnthusiasticStudent It might be possible, but .... LaTeX is for typesetting. You might have a better experience by using real tools for calculating stuff.

Christian Hupfer

12:00

@PaulGessler: Most impressive ! (Deep breathing can be heard ;-)

Enthusiastic Student

@Johannes_B I am actually thinking about this question. I can not understand why he wants to do a simple calculation by means of tough codes in latex

2

Q: Plot data and the mean of each column

I have a data file which looks like this: 1 256 2 197 3 190 4 188 5 219 6 169 7 179 8 181 9 182 10 178 where the first column are timesteps and the second column contains the number of iterations an algorithm needed in the corresponding timestep. I plot this with the first ...

pgfplots

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer deep breathing? Is @Johannes_B about to indulge in some liver delicacy? :-p

Christian Hupfer

@PaulGessler: That causes deep vomitting, not breathing ;-) @Johannes_B :-P

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer @PaulGessler Do you see distorted questions (screenshot in the meta Q)?

Paul Gessler

@Johannes_B no, I wasn't able to reproduce that one.

But I did already find an issue of my own.

Christian Hupfer

12:05

@PaulGessler: I meant this guy

Darth Vader

Darth Vader (born Anakin Skywalker) is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe. He appears in the original trilogy as a pivotal figure, as well as the prequel trilogy as a central figure. The character was created by George Lucas and has been portrayed by numerous actors. His appearances span all six Star Wars films, and he is an important character in the expanded universe of television series, video games, novels, literature and comic books. Originally a Jedi prophesied to bring balance to the Force, he falls to the dark side of the Force and serves the evil Galactic Empire at the right...

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer oh, my! I can't say I've ever tried liver. My father-in-law likes it though.

Johannes_B

The question hyperlink is 1px smaller. It used to be 18px and now it's 17px. We will up the size in the next production build. As far as the missing logo. It's possible it's an issue of the filter in the logo's SVG not rendering. We did testing, but not on a Linux machine. There's a fallback png, but apparently FF must be trying to load the SVG if it is not falling back. — Kurtis Beavers 1 hour ago

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer I meant @PaulMcCartney... ! Ah, yes, Lord Vader, using \bf, \it, and Plain TeX with reckless abandon.

3

Christian Hupfer

@PaulGessler: The evil is strong in you ;-)

Paul Gessler

@ChristianHupfer if you can't beat them, join them. :-)

Johannes_B

12:09

@PaulGessler Wanna know something about tasty fried liver? -> github.com/johannesbottcher/bausteineBewerbung/blob/master/…

Christian Hupfer

0

Q: My PDF viewer does not support animations or actually my code is wrong?

I'm new in MikTex's animation world. I was trying to create a simple animation with this elementary code \documentclass{beamer} \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{animate} \begin{document} \begin{frame} \frametitle{MNNR} \begin{center} \animategraphics[autoplay,pal...

beamer pdf animations

Sound's like MikTeX being a TeX version of Disneyland ... animation world ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@Johannes_B Dagobert Duck!

Paul Gessler

@Johannes_B I don't know if I should dare click this link...

Christian Hupfer

@PaulGessler: Don't do that ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@PaulGessler Do it. :)

Johannes_B

12:12

@PaulGessler I was thinking about CVs lately because a user promoted some sort of template with speghetti code (mjam, mjam) four different folders, two of them with the same content, but one as templates, others as examples and ... I was confused. So i started up my own sandbox.

Paul Gessler

ooooh! Since when does GitHub display PDFs in the UI? This must be new since the last time I tried! (Or some browser update made it possible.)

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda I would hire tfl :-)

Paulo Cereda

@PaulGessler It's a recent update. :)

@Johannes_B LOL

Paul Gessler

@Johannes_B yes, I'm looking at it. I need to do something similar with mine—now I have two versions, one short form resume for industry, and one longer traditional academic-type CV.

Johannes_B

@PaulGessler @PauloCereda i'd love to see the look of the HR-guy reading that. If somebody sent this in by mistake. Or on purpose having hidden a camera in the office before.

@PauloCereda Not only for the potato salad, also for the multitalent part of the CV.

I think i spent more time making up the fake stuff, than LaTeX coding.

Paulo Cereda

12:24

@Johannes_B We all do research here, so fake stuff is always a thing. :P

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda :-)

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda: Research? Trial and error!!!!

egreg

The logo seems to have reappeared.

Paulo Cereda

@ChristianHupfer For large values of 2. :)

Christian Hupfer

I don't know the figure 2... I only know 8^{1/3} ;-)

@Johannes_B: I can see line breaks in the share close reopen (1) line

Paul Gessler

12:33

@PauloCereda cool, I didn't know about this. It's nice, but of course @Johannes_B was naughty and checked in more than just his sources. :-)

Christian Hupfer

0

Q: My PDF viewer does not support animations or actually my code is wrong?

I'm new in MikTex's animation world. I was trying to create a simple animation with this elementary code \documentclass{beamer} \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{animate} \begin{document} \begin{frame} \frametitle{MNNR} \begin{center} \animategraphics[autoplay,pal...

beamer pdf animations

Johannes_B

@ChristianHupfer Can't see any there.

@PaulGessler I was a bit surprised, that tfl.org leads to a real site.

Paul Gessler

@PauloCereda die Deutscher-caveat-emptor: Dieser Code kommt ohne jede Gewährleistung, hauptsächlich da das nur ein kleiner Sandkasten ist. Wenn du das für deine Projekte benutzt und alles explodiert, du wurdest gewarnt.

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Logos look different to me, are they?

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda Yes, the braces i think.

Paulo Cereda

12:44

@PaulGessler Oh my, German overdose! :)

Paul Gessler

@PauloCereda German is so aggressive to my ears (but I like it!); favorite part here is Wenn alles explodiert, du wurdest gewarnt.

Johannes_B

@PaulGessler I don't know, the sound in my head while reading this gets angry. I wonder if it is the german that makes it sound like that, or if it is my writing.

Paul Gessler

@Johannes_B maybe a bit of both... I'm used to hearing my uncle speak German while jokingly reprimanding people. :-)

I just thought it was amusing while reading, that's all. My German is rusty.

Christian Hupfer

@PaulGessler: Real aggressive German: Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! … Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput! @PauloCereda ;-)

Johannes_B

@PaulGessler Mine as well, especially when drunk.

Paulo Cereda

12:48

@PaulGessler A friend of mine once said to me: 1. say "nine" a lot of times in an angry voice. 2. Instant German. :)

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda Instant German -- Canned food that will never make it.

Paulo Cereda

@Johannes_B It needs more liver. :)

Johannes_B

@PauloCereda I need to try out Bibimbap one time.

Paul Gessler

@PauloCereda an anonymous ex-pat relative of mine used to get out of speeding tickets by pleading with the Polizei in an English accent, "Kein Deutsch! Kein Deutsch!" and waving his arms about.

Paulo Cereda

@Johannes_B :)

@PaulGessler oooh

Johannes_B

12:55

@PaulGessler viralviralvideos.com/2012/05/19/…

egreg

@PauloCereda It looks thinner on Firefox. Probably the Retina display thing.

Johannes_B

13:28

@ChristianHupfer Why didn't i know this one? It could be the hymn of our town.

♪ Diggy Diggy Hole

►

Manuel

13:51

Probably non answerable question. Why did Knuth chose to write \lowercase (or \uppercase) non expandable?

I thought that the system was to change (in a certain way) the glyph slot “at the typesetting moment”. So it was “acceptable” that it wasn't expandable (it had nothing to do with characters but with “glyphs” in the font).

But since \lowercase{\csname RELAX}\endcsname does write \csname relax\endcsname… I can't understand why it's not expandable.

egreg

@Manuel He found that way for implementing them: the token list is passed to the internal processor (with all symbolic tokens considered as \relax), where the change to the letters is performed and the resulting token list is handed back to the macro processor.

@Manuel Making it expandable would expand the macros in the token list, which is generally not wanted.

Manuel

@egreg That might be what explains why it's not expandable. But I still can't see the full picture. Why not an expandable \lowercase that acts exactly like the non expandable? Why making it expandable would expand the macros?

egreg

@Manuel I don't follow you. What should \lowercase{\chapter{AAA}} do, in your opinion?

Manuel

\chapter{aaa}

@egreg Disclaimer, I'm probably wrong, and you probably know what you mean, but I can't see (still) the reason :)

egreg

@Manuel Well, how could expansion of \chapter be inhibited?

Manuel

14:02

@egreg Well that's the thing. Why would you want to expand \chapter? The primitive should act just like the current \lowercase.

wget

Hi guys. Does anyone has ever experimented some missing space after a TeX-related logo has been instered inside a paragraph. The word following the logo seems to be glued directly to the logo.

egreg

@Manuel I'm not saying it is impossible; but it would be painfully slow: process each token, implicitly applying \noexpand to every symbolic token and converting character tokens, then restarting from the beginning.

Manuel

@wget \LaTeX{} like this?

egreg

@wget Well known non-problem: \TeX{} is a wonderful system

Paul Gessler

174

Q: Space after LaTeX commands

I have a definition \newcommand{\arnold}{Arnold Schwarzenegger} when I refer to it by \arnold is a it is rendered as Arnold Schwarzeneggeris a In order to have a space in front of "is" I would need to write \arnold\ is a Is there another and shorter way?

macros spacing xspace

wget

14:04

@Manuel @egreg Got it. I forgot the curly brackets ;-) FIxed

Paul Gessler

@wget it's the age-old spaces after macro question. :-)

174

Q: Space after LaTeX commands

I have a definition \newcommand{\arnold}{Arnold Schwarzenegger} when I refer to it by \arnold is a it is rendered as Arnold Schwarzeneggeris a In order to have a space in front of "is" I would need to write \arnold\ is a Is there another and shorter way?

macros spacing xspace

Manuel

@egreg Okey. That migh be it. From my non knowing mind, I can't see what's the different from the current definition (in my mind, since it's a primitive, I imagine the expandability —in this case— like checking a box saying “Hey, I want this one expandable, please“).

egreg

@Manuel No, it doesn't work like this.

@Manuel The e-TeX \unexpanded works somewhat like I said, but it hasn't to restart from the beginning. This would violate how TeX works on token lists.

Paul Gessler

@wget sorry for all the pings, my internet connection is freaking out at the moment. :-)

wget

@PaulGessler I actually googled it before but didn't use the same word.
No problem for your connection ;-)

yo'

14:12

Am I the only person who doesn't buy this "empty" web design?

daleif

@yo', empty? where?

yo'

@daleif well, you get little text with HUGE MARGINS. That's what I call "empty".

daleif

@yo' isn't it because it is more directed towards phones and tablets.

Manuel

@yo' Changes are not usually easy (we use to accommodate and then prefer not to change). And this change is not particularly awful (in my opinion). But there are things that were perfect before, and I don't understand why changing them.

daleif

@Manuel is it the design on this site we are discussing?

yo'

14:18

@Manuel but it's FAKIN RIDICULUS to have 6 questions per page and a 💩 of whitespace

@daleif yes

daleif

@yo' what on earth are you looking at the site with? I seem to have the same number of questions per page as I usually have in desktop Firefox on Linux.

yo'

@daleif I certainly have less. And all the text is smaller.

daleif

@yo' which browser and OS?

and exactly which page?

yo'

@daleif tex.stackexchange.com on FF, Fedora

daleif

Of course this one is not fun

tex.stackexchange.com/questions?pagesize=2&sort=newest

note the 2 in the url.

@yo' how about your screen/window size?

yo'

14:23

@daleif nothing changed from last time.

daleif

@yo' the design may have changed to react more against window size. I'm almost using full screen on a 24" monitor.

yo'

So first they increased the size of the top bar. Now they increase the spaces everywhere but in the one place where they molested it. Then introduced bright blue text in a warm esign. What's next? Pink design with yellow text?

@daleif I've got a standard notebook. I can't "zoom out" because the text is already too small, and in default zoom, I see 6 Qs per page.

Paulo Cereda

@yo' ducks.stackexchange.com

2

Hopefully. :)

daleif

@yo' how about providing a screen shot.

yo'

@daleif here you go. I can hardly read the tag names.

daleif

14:28

@yo', erh you have lots more questions, scroll down.

@yo' I have no problem reading that.

Paulo Cereda

@yo' \usepackage[bikini]{beach}

daleif

Have you set a minimal font size in FF? Also I have no problem scaling the font using Ctrl++

wget

@PauloCereda Yep. This isn't the greatest theme to keep concentration; it instead gives you libidinous ideas ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@wget :)

Dom

14:44

Hi everybody

hoping to get feedback now and finalise the ad because I won't have time later

anybody feel free to say yes we're happy or can you tweak that?

Paulo Cereda

@Dom Hello! Hold on, I might be able to help! Gimme 2 minutes. :)

Dom

@PauloCereda on I am holding :)

Paulo Cereda

@Dom Do you use Photoshop?

Dom

@PauloCereda That's what I chose for this because all assets are raster on the site atm

Do you want the file?

Paulo Cereda

@Dom No worries. :) Hold on.

@Dom: app.box.com/s/zse4mu9s812fnz2qkiy1rrkzpec6hvhi

I typeset this text with LaTeX, maybe you could import the resulting PDF, I suspect Photoshop will interpret it as some vector thingy.

Oh my, the text is red? Let me fix that.

I meant, the whole text. :)

Dom

14:58

@PauloCereda Good idea, give me a few minutes, I don't think colour is a problem

Paulo Cereda

@Dom I can fix it too, let me redo it.

Dom

@PauloCereda okay, it works nicely anyway, waiting for updated one

Paulo Cereda

@Dom app.box.com/s/qdg976qn5leikss54rt58re7u7khf3yq

@Dom: not sure if it looks good, we are tweaking too much things on the TeX side. :P

Dom

Paulo Cereda

@Dom OH MY, I FORGOT ONE!

Dom

15:05

@PauloCereda I'm not sure, I think it does look better

Paulo Cereda

I forgot ConTeXt!

Dom

:) waiting lol

Paulo Cereda

@Dom: I'm so so sorry, could you do another one? I will update it.

Dom

no worries it's longer waiting than actually placing and exporting

@PauloCereda you may want to quickly consider how it looks with 'site' after Q&A, I can't justify well with photoshop but maybe it looks good in Tex

Paulo Cereda

@Dom That's a good idea, but site will really mess with the adjustment. :)

Dom

15:10

That's the issue I had with it when another user suggested on the post :)

Paulo Cereda

@Dom: app.box.com/s/9wvrvbusgfekisr9e913ja00ftd5gj6s

David Carlisle

@JosephWright gazillions of xetex diffs due to direction nodes in math :( (run not finished yet will take a while as I'm doing all three engines)

Dom

Okay ready I hope:

oops misaligned

Paulo Cereda

@Dom it looks great!

Dom

2

@PauloCereda thanks, that should do it

Paulo Cereda

15:15

@Dom We are the ones to thank you! Great job!

Dom

You're all welcome, I should go and do some work now :) nice working with you @PauloCereda!

Paulo Cereda

@Dom The pleasure was mine! :) Have a good day! When you have some time, come to our chatroom to have a good time. :)

Dom

@PauloCereda I hope I can find the time, thanks :)

Johannes_B

15:29

@Dom Beware, wild animals are lurking here. I am a penguin, @Paulo is a duck. @Joseph is a duck, too.

user3130747

15:45

how do - I'm going to try and use 3.0 Tikz from here sourceforge.net/projects/pgf/files , do you lot generally go for the 'everything in one place' structure or Tex compliant?

I'm not fussed about adhering to Tex rules - just whatevers going to be easiest in future really

Johannes_B

@user3130747 I'm not quite sure what you are asking, but with a project as big as pgf, you should let your package manager deal with installing. Meaning everything in the appropriate place, and the needed programs run.

user3130747

@Johannes_B packet manager has the old versions though, so i need to use from source

Package: pgf
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: tex
Installed-Size: 8748
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]>
Architecture: all
Version: 2.10-1

David Carlisle

@JosephWright 0 etex , 77 xetex, 138 luatex failures

user3130747

i want to use 3.0... i only wanted to play with a diagram last night !

yo'

16:02

@wget @Paulo I got used to this one. I really like it, actually :)

Johannes_B

@user3130747 As there are various files involved, you must tell LaTeX where to find them.

user3130747

yeah, I put them in the directories recommended in ~/ but it's not worked at the mo

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Huh?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright just ran test suite,

@JosephWright xetex now adds a beginL...beginR node pair into every math list

$ more ./build/test/tlb2105.xetex.diff
*** testfiles/tlb2105.tlg       2015-03-01 18:38:08.915721800 +0000
--- ../build/test/tlb2105.xetex.log     2015-04-14 16:17:43.429653900 +0100
***************
*** 23,29 ****
--- 23,31 ----
  > \box0=
  \hbox(5.39098+0.39098)x7.7778
  .\mathon
+ .\beginL
  .\OML/cmm/m/it/10 <
+ .\endL
  .\mathoff
  ! OK.
  l. ... \showbox0

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Ah, there was something about this in the release notes for pretesting

Paulo Cereda

16:16

@yo' :)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle It's not something I love at first sight.

David Carlisle

@egreg No I think we should probably push back

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Isn't this a bug fix for something (colour?)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle And I guess that the maintainers of packages for right-to-left writing will be very happy.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yes but it only said you could use directionality in math, not that it changes every math expression

Paulo Cereda

16:18

I am getting angry with this new layout thingy.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright don't know but it seems like a big change and more or less removes any hope of getting compatible log files between etex and xetex

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Ah

egreg

@PauloCereda The tag labels on my screen are tiny!

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Here too! And I updated my glasses a couple of weeks ago. :)

yo'

@egreg they're ridiculous. I'm thinking about a metaphore, but I'm afraid it would be NSFW.

Joseph Wright

16:25

@egreg Indeed

David Carlisle

@JosephWright hmm doesn't add them in plain xetex

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle That can't be right!

David Carlisle

@JosephWright investigating, (just got out of my 2 day course so brain a bit addled)

Paulo Cereda

Math people: could you help me with a newbie question?

yo'

@PauloCereda no :p

Paulo Cereda

16:27

@yo' <3

yo'

@PauloCereda what's the problem?

Paulo Cereda

@yo' If I say f \colon A \times B \mapsto C, the relation happens on elements of these sets, right?

oh no, here comes the lecture on how I am stupid :)

yo'

@PauloCereda well, first you should say f\color A\times B\to C and not \mapsto. And it means that f assigns an element of C to any pair (a,b) with a\in A and b\in B

:)

Paulo Cereda

@yo' oooh thanks. Now comes the trick part: if I want, say, that a is also a set, I need to assume that A is a set of sets?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I get them for plain XeTeX

David Carlisle

16:33

@JosephWright no isn't right: it does affect plain

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Indeed

David Carlisle

@JosephWright I'd just set my path locally so I had 2014 in one window and 2015 in another....

yo'

@PauloCereda yes, why not?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle :-)

Paulo Cereda

@yo' I dunno I'm dummie. :)

yo'

16:34

it's quite common, actually.

Paulo Cereda

@yo': thanks Tom. <3

I wub you.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright should I query it on xetex list?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Probably: tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Build/source/texk/web2c/xetexdir/… doesn't mention this

David Carlisle

@JosephWright is this the TeX-XeT support is always enabled. must admit havent looked at difference between tex-xet and tex--xet in a long time

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Could be: I don't think there's another system readily available using TeX-XeT

David Carlisle

16:47

@JosephWright mail sent

Faheem Mitha

Did somebody just mess with the tex.sx stylesheet, or am I hallucinating?

egreg

13

Q: Site design updates are live!

I'm a designer for Stack Exchange, and I wanted to give everyone a heads that minor site design updates have just launched. Most of the changes will not be visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow: We are moving the site's CSS to a newly refactored LE...

discussion featured design

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Can't say I'm that happy about this change: we now have three different RTL systems in use (TeX--XeT in pdfTeX, TeX-XeT in XeTeX and the Omega-like one in LuaTeX)

Faheem Mitha

@egreg apparently not hallucinating yet. Thanks.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Some fixes hopefully coming up!

Faheem Mitha

17:00

@JosephWright Round 2 of fixes?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright and only the last one works

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle That's rather my concern: changing the code in XeTeX to a second version which still doesn't work well seems a bit odd

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yes when Khaled asked a related question here the other day he said eventual hope was to match luatex

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Would be a plan: I'd like if possible to base LaTeX3 support here on only one approach (and accept that pdfTeX won't be RTL-usable in those circumstances)

David Carlisle

@DavidCarlisle: That is my contiguous plan, but allowing direction primitives in math mode is simple, so I done that and was hoping to find a way to use it to globally change math direction and avoid engine changes. — Khaled Hosny Mar 22 at 15:16

@JosephWright use your powers to summon Khaled here:-)

home time, be online later....

Joseph Wright

17:05

@KhaledHosny The new XeTeX RTL support is causing some comment!

@DavidCarlisle Same here, really

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Ah the English way of telling "The world is burning". :)

Canageek

17:22

@JosephWright People use XeTeX? Isn't that replaced by LuaLaTeX?

Joseph Wright

@Canageek No

@Canageek As in 'LuaTeX isn't a replacement for XeTeX'

Canageek

@JosephWright What does XeTeX do better then LuaLaTeX?

Joseph Wright

@Canageek XeTeX for example features the HarfBuzz font shaper, whereas in LuaTeX you have to roll-your-own (or rather rely on the Lua code others have written for this)

@Canageek XeTeX retains compatibility with TeX90 in a way LuaTeX doesn't

Canageek

@JosephWright So as long as I don't use any of the things that makes XeTeX worth using (OTF fonts) it can be backwards compatible? Why wouldn't I just use pdflatex which everything supports?

Joseph Wright

@Canageek It's complicated!

@Canageek LuaTeX is experimental and there are more 'bust' things than in XeTeX, XeTeX uses a dvipdfmx-based driver so can do some PStricks code natively, which LuaTeX can't, ...

@Canageek XeTeX is faster than LuaTeX, there are security issues with Lua escape, ...

Canageek

17:29

What I've got:
pdflatex: Everyone supports it, but never going to get better then it is now, and you can't use OTF fonts, but at least it has microtype.
XeTeX: We have OTF fonts, and full unicode support! Sorry about microtype! We are also old as dirt, but no one supports us.
LuaTeX: We have OTF fonts, Microtype AND full unicode support! Oh, and we are actively supported! No one will let you use us. Ever. We are basically the promised land you are allowed to see and never reach.

@JosephWright So theoretically someone could spearfish a virus onto your computer with LuaTeX, and if you want to compile on your phone or tablet, XeTeX is faster.

@JosephWright How far off am I?

David Carlisle

@Canageek what do you mean by "no one supports us [xetex]" no one uses xetex in publishing, or no one supports the development of the engine?

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle Publishing. I was talking to someone recently who did their thesis in XeTeX and they couldn't even upload it to ArXiv as it wouldn't take the .TeX file, but the TOS says you can't upload PDFs made with LaTeX, you have to upload the .TeX.

David Carlisle

@Canageek yep that's an issue. I was confused as you switched terminology on the next line re luatex using "use" for that and "support" for maintaining the engine

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle Right, I just noticed that

pdflatex: Everyone supports it, but never going to get better then it is now, and you can't use OTF fonts, but at least it has microtype.
XeTeX: We have OTF fonts, and full unicode support! Sorry about microtype! We are also old as dirt, but good luck getting anyone to let you use us for anything.
LuaTeX: We have OTF fonts, Microtype AND full unicode support! Oh, and we are actively supported! No one will let you use us. Ever. We are basically the promised land you are allowed to see and never reach.

@DavidCarlisle Better?

David Carlisle

@Canageek then there's jsbox...

Canageek

17:43

@DavidCarlisle Something to let you see LaTeX on the web?

David Carlisle

@Canageek hehe no I told @barbarabeeton that that was an appalling name for the system and that everyone would think it had to do with javascript and the web. Hang on I'll find the link it's tex re-implemented in C++

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle WHY DOES IT HAVE JS IN THE NAME THEN?

David Carlisle

Mar 22 at 12:24, by David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton well in the context of 21st century typesetting I'd guess 99.99% of people who see jsbox will think of javascript and the css box model, and not the composer

@Canageek the conversation with barabara here and the tugboat article she linked to is all I know about the system

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle So what is the end goal of it? (I can't afford TugBoat articles.)

@DavidCarlisle It will be slower then pdfTeX (C vs C++), and will be an uphill battle to get support (aka you will never use us, ever).

David Carlisle

@Canageek it was on the web (I think) unicode support, speed and maintainable modern code as far as the article says but he's keeping it close to his chest. But Knuth has seem it apparently....

@Canageek pdftex is pascal (mostly:-)

Canageek

17:50

@DavidCarlisle I thought pdftex had been automatically translated into C?

@DavidCarlisle And the upside of it over luatex?

David Carlisle

@Canageek on the fly, but that's like many programming language compilers which go through C.

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle Oh, so it won't be as fast as native C? That makes sense.

David Carlisle

@Canageek its vapourware so hard to tell, but it passes the trip test which luatex certainly doesn't, I have no idea how it uses otf fonts for example, if it uses them via harfbuzz like xetex that would be an improvement over luatex as far as I can see

Alan Munn

@percusse I'm not usually a close voter, but I did in the one you just commented on. Other that how awful we are becoming, :) don't you think the question is too broad? Or should I turn my comments into an answer?

David Carlisle

@Canageek but if it gets released then for us (the latex maintainers) it's just work as it means we have to make latex work in a plausible way on 4 incompatible engines rather than 3.

Canageek

17:54

@DavidCarlisle The way you say that makes me imagine a deep wood with three shallow graves somewhere, and source code in a sack being dumped into each.

David Carlisle

@Canageek don't tempt me

2

Canageek

18:16

@DavidCarlisle Now I'm wondering which will be left after the LaTeX team forces them all to fight in a steel cadge death match

hftf

What does "delete (1)" mean at the bottom of one of my answers?

Joseph Wright

@hftf Someone's voted to delete it

hftf

Huh. I wonder why.

What reason would someone vote to delete this? tex.stackexchange.com/questions/238574/…

Joseph Wright

> Controversial review: more delete votes than 'looks good'

hftf

@JosephWright what do you mean by that?

Joseph Wright

18:29

@hftf It's been reviewed by people and is in the flag (moderator) queue with this statement

@hftf I suspect it's the 'this is rather short and looks like a comment' issue

hftf

@JosephWright Huh. that's an issue?

Joseph Wright

@hftf It can be: very short answers are often, though not always, lacking details, explanation, etc.

Johannes_B

Out of interest, does anybody else see the linebreaks as mentioned on Meta? -> meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/6068/37907

hftf

@Johannes_B not me.

Canageek

@Johannes_B Not on Firefox.

Johannes_B

18:36

@Canageek Well, my firefox somehow outputs them.

Canageek

@Johannes_B 37.0.1/Windows here.

@Johannes_B Could it be an extension messing it up?

Johannes_B

@Canageek I don't know, only some questions show that. Ubuntu 14.04, with Mozilla Firefox 37.0.1

@Canageek Just disabled all scripts and extensions and started up new. Linebreaks still occur.

Canageek

@Johannes_B Welp, I'm out of ideas.

Johannes_B

@Canageek @Kurtis said he'll have a look at this.

Vrouvrou

19:05

Helo, please how to write $n\rightarrow +\infty$ under $u_n\rightarrow u$ ? thank you

David Carlisle

@Johannes_B can't get it to do that (FF 40.0 on windows)

Johannes_B

@DavidCarlisle Strange. Seems like i am the lone wanderer once again.

David Carlisle

@Vrouvrou depends what you mean: \begin{align}u_n&\rightarrow u\\n&\rightarrow +\infty\end{align}

Christopher

Hello all, is it not good practice to have non-floating floats with H or h! for example, so what's the best way to replicate this scenario while maintaining figure numbering and captions?

GBeau

A single capital letter and a period doesn't produce extra spacing in paragraph mode, right? as in, "Dr. Hancock" needs to be written "Dr.\@ Hancock" to get a normal desired effect (or perhaps "Dr.~Hancock" to prevent a pagebreak?), but say "J. Hancock" doesn't need it?

Paulo Cereda

19:20

@Christopher Personally, I think if you want to have full control on images, tables or similar, putting them inside a float environment is the wrong approach. :)

GBeau

(I'm asking if I'm understanding it correctly)

David Carlisle

@Christopher [h] is always a bad idea as it drastically reduces the places the float may be placed so increases the chance it goes to the end of the document. [H] just makes it the same as a minipage, so it's probably as clear to use minipage rather than figure[H]

@GBeau yes (well apart from "single") AAA. and A. get same space for the .

GBeau

Thanks :)

In the case that there wouldn't be a pagebreak anyway, "Dr.\@ Hancock" produces the same effect as "Dr.~Hancock", right?

user3130747

the more I've used latex the more I've let it put things where it likes, that might just be me being lazy though

David Carlisle

@GBeau yes

Christopher

19:25

@DavidCarlisle If I just use a minipage does \captionof work with the numbering of the float then?

David Carlisle

@Christopher yes but either way [H] or \captionof number order with respect to floats is not guaranteed, so unless you do that for all figures they may be put of order, and if you do do it for all figures you are disabling latex's main method of ensuring good page breaks

@Christopher [H] was my idea, but it wasn't the best idea I ever had.

5

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle I'm so gonna quote this.

:)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda go back to your pond

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle I see, I remember listening to a talk of yours regarding H and I was interested to learn it doesn't quite work how I thought it did.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle /sad quack

David Carlisle

19:30

@Christopher H works in a very straight forward way, h doesn't do what people think it does:-)

@PauloCereda have some bread (~~evil laughter~~)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh bread! <3

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle Indeed, I just didn't get that H meant not everywhere else rather than here. (if that makes sense)

Vrouvrou

@DavidCarlisle I want a command like this $u_n\xrightarrow []{n\rightarrow\infty} u$

David Carlisle

@Christopher no h means that. H means always here.

Christopher

19:46

@DavidCarlisle oh right, the journey continues.

David Carlisle

@Christopher I suppose the question is why don't you want [htp]

@JosephWright posted interesting test file to xetex list:-)

\setbox0\vbox{\raggedright \hsize35pt$a + b$\par
\global\setbox1\lastbox
\unskip\unpenalty
\global\setbox1\lastbox
}

\setbox0\hbox{\unhbox1\unskip\xdef\tst{\the\lastpenalty}}

\tst
\bye

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle Because it makes things jump out of sections/subsections... sometimes. I've always found a way to hack things in and now I'm trying to do things 'properly'.

David Carlisle

@Christopher placeins package will stop things floating past a section

Vrouvrou

@DavidCarlisle ?

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle I did look at the manual for the placeins package awhile ago but it wasn't clear if it also applies for subsections.

David Carlisle

19:55

@Christopher the \FloatBarrier command works anywhere, the [section] option patches that into \section (only) but you could patch it in to \subsection as well, or use it explicitly

@Christopher but if you have lots of figures and not much text, the latex float placement algorithm will struggle and not using it is not necessarily wrong.

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle That's one of the things I've used explicitly so far. It'll be fine in a thesis for example without \FloatBarrier but in a short report sometimes there're a lot of figures. :) Side question; how does one stop ones eyes from bleeding after looking at a Word document after using LaTeX?

David Carlisle

@Christopher I only see one or two Word documents a year probably:-) (technical ones that is, I don't count reports from management:-)

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle You're living the dream then. Every time I see the letter x in equation editor instead of \times I want to cry.

David Carlisle

@Christopher the math typesetting in word 2007+ is actually pretty good, except I have never understood wysiwyg input interfaces so I have no idea how to actually input anything that gets typeset in a reasonable way. (I have been known to edit the xml in the docx zip file in emacs, but I don't think that's the intended interface)

@Christopher you know, you see worse things typeset with tex in questions posted here.

Christopher

@DavidCarlisle Very true. I remember thinking

LaTeX was far too much like a coding language before starting. It's not that hard once you get going.

percusse

20:14

@AlanMunn There is this Papiro person who thinks he can vote as freely as he wishes and review bots join him without even reading the question. But we don't do anything because of network rules bla bla. But others trying to really answer stuff and interact with new users have to deal with this person doing nothing on this site but voting to close questions and badge hunting with the few points that we have given him after he made an editing spree. That's plain bullshit and I'm getting tired.

David Carlisle

@Canageek I mis-remembered, it's c not C++; tug.org/tug2014/slides/mckenna-JSBox.pdf

Canageek

@DavidCarlisle Holy Hyperbole, Batman.

Greg d'Eon

I want to ask a LaTeX-y question, but I'm not totally sure if it's on-topic, so I'll ask it here if you guys don't mind

I'm thinking of using LaTeX to take lecture notes for school in real-time next term. Is this useful/possible/insane?

David Carlisle

20:31

@Gregd'Eon people do, you can I think find questions about that on site. personally my typing is far too rubbish to type anything in real time, but apparently it is possible to do better

Greg d'Eon

hmm, I had trouble searching for anything relevant

I type pretty quickly so that would be a big advantage for me over hand-written notes

I think I'm worried about getting lost in a hell of \frac commands mid-lecture

David Carlisle

@Gregd'Eon next you'll be saying you use more than one finger on each hand while typing.

Greg d'Eon

thumbs only, of course

David Carlisle

@Gregd'Eon ah the texting generation, of course.

Greg d'Eon

a blessing and a burden

David Carlisle

20:37

@Gregd'Eon I think you need to make a decision whether you want to type perfect latex in real time (eg if you have a continuous preview loop set up so you expect to see the pdf as you type) or if you just want to type the notes as essentially plain text with pseudo-latex markup that you can clean up later, or just read as latex source.

barbara beeton

@Dom -- the shapes of the "Q", "&" and "A" are such that if they are "evenly spaced", the "Q" looks much closer to "&" than "&" to "A". some kerning, please, for a nicer appearance. (posted this yesterday, but before you arrived yourself.)

David Carlisle

@Gregd'Eon in the latter case of course you don't need to be so exact and can use shorthands that are not formally defined, but that you can go back and define later

Greg d'Eon

mhm. I think I'm happy with plain text. good point on making it "scrappier" than a tex document normally would be.

barbara beeton

@Dom -- another comment -- spacing is very uneven. would look better ragged centered.

David Carlisle

@Gregd'Eon tex.stackexchange.com/questions/191081/…

Paulo Cereda

20:40

@barbarabeeton I'm the one to blame, I guess. :) I did with TeX's default justification.

Greg d'Eon

I am finding a good number of related questions now, so that's helpful too

I imagine that I'll need pencil/paper to draw figures (which I can add via includegraphics or Tikz later) - nobody could be real-time speed with TikZ, right?

David Carlisle

@Gregd'Eon who needs tikz when you have picture mode?

43

A: Draw an aircraft with Tikz

It was suggested in chat http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9482087#9482087 That picture mode would be the ideal tool for the job here: \documentclass{article} \begin{document} \begin{picture}(200,100) \put(30,40){\line(1,0){150}} \put(30,40){\line(0,1){60}} \put(30,100){\line(...

barbara beeton

@Canageek -- luatex: we are still under development, and not yet stable. if you use us in a production setting, do so at your own risk.

Greg d'Eon

hahaha okay. ctrl-f and swap Tikz for picture mode.

(gorgeous airplane, by the way.)

Paulo Cereda

@barbarabeeton: ^^ better?

barbara beeton

20:56

@Canageek -- the talk on jsbox at tug 2014 hasn't yet become a tugboat article. what i pointed @DavidCarlisle to was the slides for the talk: tug.org/tug2014/slides/mckenna-JSBox.pdf. as for speed, it's blindingly fast; one reason for its development was to be able to incorporate real-time generation of fractal graphics. but, as the author said, "it doesn't yet eat its own dog food", and he wants that to be working before public release.

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