@PauloCereda I think your code is missing something.
\newif\ifnotasleep \def\amIasleep{\message{Are you asleep?}} \newcount\sheep \loop\ifnotasleep \advance\sheep by 1 \amIasleep \repeat
(Bother, kept hitting <return> instead of <shift+return> and then had to edit, so couldn't get the code completely right in the time allowed by the edit window. The macro \amIasleep needs a little work.)
That's the question. I really like "--" and "---", but never used `?
Luaotfload is ported from ConTeXt code, and the handling of these (fake) ligatures is now part of a different code section which is difficult to take from ConTeXt and to put into luaotfload
But I think this can't be released to the public, many, many many users will cry
@Patrick Well, accepted answer always contribute to rep. I'm sure that more can be said about that topic; I'll try to improve the answer when I find time.
@Patrick: I fully agree with your MacGyver analogy when talking about LuaLaTeX. I'm really curious about the future, I got an overview of the language and it's really fantastic.
@PauloCereda when you push it to an extreme point, you can use TeX just as a PDF library with nice algorithms (for example the glue/boxes model) and do the rest in Lua. Then you have almost no restrictions anymore and everything is easy (well, compared to plain old TeX, at least).
As @Heidar says in the comments I see there is now a package for doing the cobordism diagrams ( Topological Quantum Field Theory diagrams with pstricks or tikz) and I encourge others to use it as well. But my specific question is about a particular failed syntax in tikz that I would still like t...
@Patrick Well 'either' has pretty much gone that route already for many speakers: "Either John, Bill, or Fred" is fine for me and many other English speakers. So maybe 'both' can't be far behind. :-)
I've read somewhere that luatex is choosen to be mainstream for LaTeX development? Is it areally true? Currently I am using both PDFLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLatex to compile printed and electronic versions of my new book (it is written on Russian and electronic version has embedded movies) so I have...
@Patrick But I agree, that 'both' certainly isn't there yet. (And the OP isn't a native speaker.) Also, I probably wouldn't recommend writing 'either' with more than two elements in the disjunction. Remember we linguists are interested in describing what people actually do rather than legislating what they should do.
@PauloCereda I've voted to close. This should be discussed in a chat session. (Actually I like these kind of questions, but they just don't fit here. SX employees would be angry with us if we don't deal with 'em)
"We got both kinds of music here, Country & Western"
"We use both kinds of TeX engines, PdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX"
@AlanMunn To add another data point, "both Henry, George, and Fred" grates on my ear. However, I hear it a lot here since "både Ola, Johan, og Andreas" is (to my uncertain knowledge) just fine as Norwegian.
@AndrewStacey :-) IMHO Portuguese is a difficult language, we basically have rules for everything. And in some cases, people don't accept variations. "ambos" is one of them. :-)
@PauloCereda As opposed to English, where whenever you think there's a rule then you'll find someone who swears that Shakespeare used the exact opposite.
@AndrewStacey Do you like the "Either John, Fred, or Bill" though?
@PauloCereda @AndrewStacey I hate to break it to you guys, but there's no sensible way in which any language has more rules or fewer rules than any other language.
There's a true story of a president of a football club here that bought a player for 60,000 bucks. When he was writing the check, he didn't remember how to write "60" (in PtB, "sessenta"), if it was with "SS" or "C". Solution: he wrote two checks of 30,000 each. :-)
@AlanMunn Yes, it does sound okay with the "Either". I might have a slight preference for "Any of John, Fred, or Bill" but the "Either" doesn't sound wrong.
@AlanMunn Given that vast amounts of English is Norwegian, that doesn't surprise me one bit. (In some parts of Britain, they still speak Norwegian. They just call it "Geordie".)
@AlanMunn No, not a word! Not being a linguist, and not being aware how much English borrows from other languages - in the roots, as it were, not meaning more modern borrowings such as "c'est la vie" - I was quite surprised and how close English and Norwegian were. And particularly Geordie (where my wife's family is from).
@AndrewStacey The executive summary is the following: (I'll illustrate with German, b/c I don't know any Norwegian.) In German main clauses you can have any kind of phrase as the first element, and the inflected verb is always the second element in the clause. E.g. Gestern hat Hans den Mann gesehen. This is called "Verb Second" and is characteristic of all of the Germanic languages. However there are two distinct flavours of it.
What the paper shows is that the Northern dialects of Old English had the Mainland Scandinavian flavour (due to Viking influence) and the Southern dialects had a different flavour. The paper argues that the mixture of the two dialects resulted in Middle English losing the V2 rule altogether. English is the only Germanic language which lacks the rule.
@AndrewStacey Roughly, yes. You have to realize that although V2 languages allow X V subject ... order, about 70% of actual sentences X is in fact the subject, so for main clauses (the kind of data children are exposed to) there's lots of data that would support a Modern English analysis, of just Subject V ... The southern flavour of the V2 rule increases that ambiguity in that there are even fewer sentence types in which you can be sure that the language is actually a V2 language.
@AndreyVihrov I've been meaning for ages to look at some biblatex styles for physics. I'm trying to work out the 'main competitors'. Looking at REVTeX, there seem to be three: AIP, APS-*Physics Reviews* and APS-*Reviews of Modern Physics*. Is that about right?
I had originally thought there were just two (AIP and APS)
@AlanMunn Sorry for disappearing just there - it's evening here and the computer was required for more important things (watching TV). It's also a bit late for me to truly follow what you were saying, but I am interested: learning a second language has made me more aware of languages and their structure and it would be fun/interesting to learn a little more.
@JosephWright I'm always annoyed at how short lived positrons and muons are. I can't do anything fun with them. They can make H-Muon/electron "hydrogen" but it doesn't live long enough to DO anything with.
My understanding of how TeX makes things look so nice is that it goes over each paragraph and spaces each letter/word to look 'right' based on how dark it is, how wide it is, and the characteristics of the letters around it.
My question is: How does this work with different typefaces? Each one ...
@egreg Oh good, it has been something I've been wondering about for a while, but I was worried it wasn't what TeX.SX is for, since it isn't actually useful information.
@Canageek It's not for the casual user, but it's relevant information; particularly interesting is how to override the default, which sometimes is useful.
My understanding of how TeX makes things look so nice is that it goes over each paragraph and spaces each letter/word to look 'right' based on how dark it is, how wide it is, and the characteristics of the letters around it.
My question is: How does this work with different typefaces? Each one ...
