@PauloCereda Here, too. Wales is known for it, after all ;).

@cfr Not sunny like England?

@egreg not today: telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/17/…

Hello TeX chat o/ I hope someone can help me … I tried reduplicating the macro structure of this answer to suit my own needs. But for some reason, in my document TeX always issues a Runaway argument error (although the thing does compile if I ignore it).

I then decided to copy the answer into a file named xxx_yyy_zzz.tex and I still get runaway arguments — and even worse, it doesn’t seem to want to define the three \gdef issued macros either …

@DavidCarlisle Oh, no!

@Jan impossible to help with just that amount of information, you are best to make a small complete file that demonstrates the error and post as a new question.

@Jan well there you go, \jobname doesn't have normal catcodes, it is like \string everything is catcode 12

@DavidCarlisle But that applies to the answer I linked earlier, too, doesn’t it?

@Jan no that was input files

@DavidCarlisle It does have \filenameparse{\jobname} …

@Jan oh so it does. It is wrong then:-)

@Jan \if{f} tests if { is equal to f so it is always false

Would \if f\filenameflag work?

Hmm, apparantly not either.

@Jan it's legal but doesn't test what you want it to test \if expands tokens until it finds two non expandable ones and tests them so \if f\filenameflag if \filenameflag starts with f tests true then typsets the rest of it

Except it tested false or something really weird is going on.

Scratch that, I need to improve my TeX syntax.

Thanks anyway =)

@egreg England is sunny. Everything is relative. metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate/gcjszmp44 ...

@egreg ^^

@cfr I want to visit Wales. <3

Index: grfguide.tex
===================================================================
--- grfguide.tex	(revision 1261)
+++ grfguide.tex	(working copy)
@@ -210,69 +210,66 @@
 drivers. Consequently all these packages take options such as
 `|dvips|' to specify which driver is being used.

-You should to set up a site default for these
-options, for the driver that you normally use. Suppose that you wish for
+Normally you should \emph{not} specify the driver option explicitly
+in the document, but allow it to be defaulted automatically.

@cfr ^^^^ (@JosephWright)

@DavidCarlisle Last line of the first paragraph, 'this' should be 'This' probably.

@wilx thanks: committed

Not sure what I'm reading, but "distribute" at the end of second paragraph should be "distributed"

@Maeher yes thanks I got that (and a couple of others, it's grfguide manual for color and graphics packages latest version is latex-project.org//svnroot/latex2e-public/trunk/required/…

@DavidCarlisle Looks OK to me

Went down from the mountains after 2 days. It felt great :-) Just me, -2C outside, wooden hut, and only forests everywhere!

Anyway, gotta lose internet connection again between the valleys, see you later!

Anyone know an existinc source of logos made with tex? I am looking for some particular cases like Star Wars and Superman. For example: cliparts.co/clipart/2502772 or es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#/media/…

@luchonacho You mean, like a font glyph or as a TikZ or pstricks shape?

@yes

editable to othe text, colors, etc

\documentclass[margin=0.5cm]{standalone}

\usepackage{tikz}
\definecolor{ced1c24}{RGB}{237,28,36}
\definecolor{cfff200}{RGB}{255,242,0}

\newcommand{\surelythisblokeisnotclarkkent}{%
\begin{tikzpicture}[y=0.80pt, x=0.80pt, yscale=-1.000000, xscale=1.000000, inner sep=0pt, outer sep=0pt]
\path[shift={(-217.504,-330.416)},fill=ced1c24,even odd rule]
  (393.2520,364.1460) -- (361.1180,330.5930) -- (251.2310,330.4160) --
  (217.5040,364.1460) -- (217.5040,364.1460) -- (302.2710,466.2230) -- cycle;
\path[fill=cfff200,even odd rule] (14.7430,34.3350) -- (37.1850,11.1430) --

@luchonacho: ^^

@PauloCereda WOW!! Did you do that just now? Is it yours?

@luchonacho judging by the code, it was automatically converted from an svg

@luchonacho Yes. :) Ducks are very skilled in random things, except theses. :)

@DavidCarlisle: ^^

haha. I see. How can you convert it? Using latex or another software?

@PauloCereda

@luchonacho github.com/kjellmf/svg2tikz

@PauloCereda Great! Thanks. Still, it does not easily allow customisation.

@luchonacho Well, that doesn't come for free. :)

You can edit the code, after all, it's TikZ. :)

@PauloCereda Right. Thanks!

@luchonacho What kind of customization are you looking for?

@Maeher use the font and format style but change the text. Kind of like the old classic "wordart" of MS Office.

@luchonacho I am not sure TeX is the most suitable tool for the job, in this particular case. :(

@PauloCereda You should. Fantastic place for a duck to spend their time. Just so long as you like sheep. :-)

@cfr Why does this remind me of Rob Brydon? :)

@cfr According to hccmpw.org.uk/market_prices/industryinformation/… the number of sheep in Wales in 2014 was almost 8 million. It seems that New Zealand has about 30 million.

@DavidCarlisle Thank you!

@egreg I wonder what the sheep density is :)

Rob has been a frequent guest on Qi, Stephen Fry's quite interesting panel/comedy/celebrity quiz program. Because Rob's reaction to barbs and zingers hurled his way is one of wounded sorrow rather than spittle flinging anger, he is a frequent butt of Stephen's pointed but good natured ribbing. Once Rob mentioned his father and Anthony Hopkins grew up in the same street in Cardiff.

"In England," Stephen said, "we usually live in houses."

After making a comment on how the atomic bomb once went off in Cardiff and did £7 worth of damage, Stephen turned toward Rob. "Rob," Stephen asked, "what'…

@egreg Population of Wales (mid-2015): 3,099,100. Population of sheep: 9.5 million.

@JosephWright Estimated population of New Zealand (2016-03): 4,677,400. Sheep to people = 6:1.

@cfr They classified ducks as "other birds". :(

@PauloCereda Other than sheep? They must be very confused ...

@cfr We are. :)

@PauloCereda What are lamp posts? Something to do with that new-fangled electricity they've got in England?

@cfr I meant land area: on that basis Wales has a sheep density around 4 times that of New Zealand

@cfr it's some sort of contraption created for the sole purpose of illustrating Doyle's stories about a detective bloke living in some sort of street with a bakery. :)

oooh

@JosephWright look at them sheepses. :)

I wonder how they count sheep, if one is surely fated to sleep while counting them. :)

@DavidCarlisle: ^^

Followup: what do sheep count when they want to sleep?

@JosephWright echo 8000000/20779 | bc -l gives about 385 sheep per square kilometer (about 1000 per square mile).

oh no, people are using math!

/quacks in despair

@egreg or 3000 per square barleycorns!

I like this imperial system thingy. :)

3000 \si{\sheep\per\square\barleycorn}

@PauloCereda You do know how big a barleycorn is, I expect

@PauloCereda A clue: it's one-third of an inch

@JosephWright Actually no. :)

@PauloCereda Indeed: this is a very small distance

Hence the name ...

@JosephWright Easy, there are 190080 barleycorns in a mile.

@egreg Sounds about right

@JosephWright Much funner than asking children how many centimeters there are in one kilometer.

@JosephWright SI is just boring, isn't it?

@egreg 23!

And there's room for more, if needed. :)

@PauloCereda Or 150000, if you squeeze them.

@egreg :)

@PauloCereda You've probably seen youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk, but it's worth mentioning again.

@TorbjørnT. ooh <3

Question: What does "Non-PDF special ignored!" mean and why does it have an !? That seems important, have I done something wrong?

@Canageek A \special in PDF mode: might get it if you load say chemscheme even if you don't use it

@JosephWright So nothing to worry about?

@Canageek No

@JosephWright shouldn't the package be fixed not to do that?

I've also found something really annoying: If you have too many citations near the end of the line, they just stick into the margin and there is no good way of fixing it, other then rewriting the sentence.

Hi @DavidCarlisle

@Canageek there's code around to allow breaks in \cite but it depends a lot what citation package you are using

@sky-light hi

@DavidCarlisle I have a question please; I have a long document. The template for this document is designed for a single sided print, (the left side of each page has more space than the right side. If I want to print double sided, this template is not very useful. How to change the margins based on odd and even page number?

@sky-light most classes have a twoside option then if you don't like the classes twoside layour tweak it with the geometry package

@DavidCarlisle Oh I guess so

@DavidCarlisle Thank you.

@DavidCarlisle Currently working on xparse

@DavidCarlisle On a train running late :(

@JosephWright do you get free wine like @egreg?

@DavidCarlisle No, I did get a cup of tea (in first as it was the same as standard when pre-booking and allowing for the cost of tea/crisps). Regrettably the power is not working in this carriage so it's a bit nippy

@DavidCarlisle Looking over the 'trial' stuff in expl3, I see Bruno did have an expandable rnd approach without engine support. (I'd had the same idea, but hadn't actually tried it)

@JosephWright What can one expect on a British train other than tea? ;-)

@JosephWright Italian trains are never late!

@egreg I've been on the train in Italy, this is not true ;)

@egreg Of course

@JosephWright You caught the single counterexample! ;-)

@egreg Indeed, but I only need one

@egreg Here, on the other hand, it's the second Friday in a row that I've missed my connection

@JosephWright Well, on Tuesday 8 there was a breakage near Brescia: my train was delayed by 70 minutes. On Tuesday 15 there was a breakage at Venice. For pure luck I was at the station more than an hour earlier than planned, so I changed my booking for 11:18 train instead of 12:18. The news about the breakage arrived just after the new booking. The 11:18 train left at 12:10, so actually I arrived earlier than planned.

@DavidCarlisle ^^^^

@DavidCarlisle It looks like we'll be submitting it to one of @JosephWright's journals that presumably uses A4 instead of Letter, so I'll wait until I switch all the formatting to try and fix that. Using weird European paper might fix things. ;)

@Canageek s/European/almost whole world/ :-)

@Canageek do the journals really use A series page size?

@DavidCarlisle A4, sorry.

@DavidCarlisle No idea, I've got a Dalton around here, I'll check.

@DavidCarlisle 8.27 x 10.83 inches for a Dalton page.

....I have no idea what paper size that is. US is 8.5x11, A4 is 8.27 in × 11.7 in. So 8.27 is right, but it is an inch short.

The LaTeX template doesn't specify. o.o

It just uses 9pt (NINE?!) Times (using outdated packages too!) and sets the margins using Geometry.

What? It includes all the packages with it? Yeah, no. That seems like a bad idea. This is the LaTeX equivalent of adding your own packages to an Ubuntu system.

@JosephWright Do they look at the LaTeX code or just the PDF?

@DavidCarlisle Yes, of course

@Canageek Unfortunately, they've hacked this up somewhat

@JosephWright They don't. Dalton uses a shorter page length. o.0

@Canageek Yup, most journals are set in 9 pt (ChemDraw 7 pt labels)

@JosephWright Efff, I've been writing in 12 pt, as I assumed that was standard.

@Canageek If you look at the PDFs they produce, they are A4, so they print OK with no scaling

@JosephWright Yeah, we'll see if they notice me changing a few things in that template. I'm told usually not. >.>

@JosephWright I am. 10.1039/c3dt52413b 8.27x10.83 inches. About 1" shorter then A4.

@JosephWright (In 1977 they used what looks to be 8.5x11)

@Canageek Perhaps: has to fit into an A4 page (BTW, units are of course mm)

@JosephWright Yes, but my PDF veiwer was written by an American

@Canageek The older versions were printing on a non-ISO page size, but I don't think they were anything like that long

Perhaps I'm thinking of even older JCS ...

@JosephWright PDF viewer says 8.5 x 11.01 in (Letter). OH, I see. They have placed a smaller page on a larger one when scanning it.

@Canageek Yes, that's quite possible: I'm thinking of what they physically looked like :)

@JosephWright I think they are using a non-official page size that will print fine on both A4 and Letter.

@Canageek I have friends at the RSC: I'll ask

@JosephWright Unless 8.27x10.83 inches (210 x 275 mm) is a official page size?

@JosephWright Also I need a time machine to whomever didn't just make everything round # of cm.

@Canageek You do know why A4 is the size it is?

@Canageek 'Official' is a bit of a loaded term: in printing terms there are very different sizes to those in common office use

@JosephWright 210 x 300 mm. It is only 3 mm different! 20 x 30 cm! Why? 210x297? ffff.

@JosephWright I've never even seen a page of it.

@Canageek Really?

@JosephWright Um, wait. I might have gotten some while in Poland.

@Canageek Never get any letters from outside USA/Canada? (You lot use metric anyway!)

@JosephWright Letter (8.5 x 11) is the most common here. I've gotten letters from the UK once, but it was on a postcard.

@Canageek I get stuff from the US in their weird sizes (they are not traditional UK sizes either)

@JosephWright That is why we use their paper: Economy of scale. Same reason all our ovens use F, even when that is literally the only thing you use it for.

@JosephWright (Well, that and all our cookbooks use it)

@Canageek A0 is 1 square metre, and the ratio of the sides is the sqrt(2). Cut A0 in half, and you get A1, which has the same proportions (ratio of sides is sqrt(2)). Cut in half a few more times and you get A4.

@Canageek Ours use gasmark, which has no units at all :)

@TorbjørnT. Nope, it's 1 square metre ;)

@TorbjørnT. I looked it up. Makes sense, but 3 mm would make it easier on the eyes when reading dimensions.

@JosephWright They use what what? o.o

@Canageek It was invented by Germans!

@JosephWright Fixed.

@JosephWright Not surprised.

@JosephWright Both are in common use in Canada. I surveyed my lab, and of the native-born Canadians 3 of them use Meter and Litre. 1 uses Meter and Liter (but used to do the other way before reading a ton of American papers) and I use Metre and Litre most of the time.

@JosephWright As far as we can tell no one has done a study on this in Canada. Not surprising, it turns out our accent and spelling are highly understudied, to the point that most Canadian words aren't in any dictionary. The OED doesn't even have a proper Canadian branch anymore.

@JosephWright Did you flatten out Wales first?

@PauloCereda I don't suppose the bakery has Welsh cakes, does it? Probably not ... :(.

@JosephWright I thought of the one time I've seen A4: I got a receipt for my conference in Poland and it was full page. Everything else was pamphlets or digital. Oh and I think one of my hotel receipts.

Ok, that is odd. Copy and pasted the folloowing out of my document: 173.3(4). Result? 173:3¹4º

@Canageek Depends on the font encoding

@JosephWright Should be T1.....

@Canageek Full minimal example, please

@egreg Contemplating if that is worth it, given I'd have to cut down a few thousand lines and it might get fixed when I switch to a diffrent journal template.

Oh, and it only happens in Adobe. Sumatra PDF copies it as 173.3(4)

Diffidently not worth it.

@Canageek Oh, Reader is notorious for doing strange.

Oh efff. Not omly is the superscript in hapto wrong. (Which I noticed). The number in \bridge is ALSO wrong. Well then.