TeX, LaTeX and Friends

cfr

12:40 AM

@barbarabeeton Thank you!

David Carlisle

8:05 AM

@barbarabeeton @PauloCereda is acquainted with every video on youtube.

5

Fix one bug, spend the next 27 years adding more:

1

A: Looking for an (old?) problem with \\

You have good memory, the change predates LaTeX2e but in the latex sources you find... \begin{macro}{\@gnewline} \changes{v1.2u}{1996/10/29}{Added macro} The |\nobreak| added to prevent null lines when |\\| ends an overfull line. Change made 24 May 89 as suggested by Frank Mittelbach and ...

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@cfr The question was about using Green's theorem (with plenty of hints) to derive d'Alembert's formula for the solution of the one-dimensional wave equation. I had just been reading about the wave equation in a different context, so I already knew the formula. (But this derivation was new to me.)

Paulo Cereda

9:14 AM

@cfr He was part of a comedy duo with a bloke named Michael Flanders. They were so awesome! Donald was a linguist and pianist. :)

@barbarabeeton I blame Andrew Stacey and Alan Munn for introducing them. :)

@DavidCarlisle ooh that's quite accurate

Paulo Cereda

11:46 AM

Quaaaaaack!

egreg

12:18 PM

@PauloCereda /me enjoying the holiday ;-)

Paulo Cereda

12:34 PM

@egreg oooh :)

yo'

1:05 PM

@PauloCereda Boo!!!

Paulo Cereda

@yo' Tom! <3

yo'

@PauloCereda how do you do?

Paulo Cereda

@yo' Fine, and you? :)

yo'

@PauloCereda busy but well :-)

Paulo Cereda

@yo' Yay!

yo'

1:16 PM

@PauloCereda you know the feeling when you have a nice arrangement of some carol, but it's low tone is D and the sax you'll play with is an Eb one? ...

Paulo Cereda

@yo' Oh my

yo'

@PauloCereda in other words, transposing from a nice G major to Ab major :-/ lots of LilyPond fun and lots of troubles playing

it's Adeste Fideles if you were interested, with a British style descant

Paulo Cereda

@yo' Ouch. :(

daleif

Given a \NewEnviron env, say, test, how can I test if \BODY corresponds to a blank line? (it seems it catches \par ). I'm attempting to use etoolbox to test (I'd prefer not to use expl3 here). Ideas?

Paulo Cereda

@yo': could you transpose the Clavinova?

yo'

1:20 PM

@PauloCereda you mean the pipe organ? :D

Paulo Cereda

@yo' ooh let's find a way. You might need a hammer. :)

yo'

And no, I can't actually play a transposed piano. My hands shift spontaneously when I do that.

@PauloCereda you know that an organ is tuned by bending the pipes' ends in or out to decrease or increase the pitch? And when the pipes' ends are worn out, teared etc., all the pipes are shortened, thus increasing the organ's pitch?

Paulo Cereda

@yo' how nice!

yo'

@PauloCereda well, not nice, it's difficult to tune organs to basically anything :-( and one organ I played recently has an Oboe register that is in tune only in winter, in summer it's completely out of tune...

David Carlisle

1:38 PM

@daleif \ifx\BODY\foo yes \else no\fi where \foo is defined to be whatever \show\BODY says in the case you want to be yes, probably \long\def\foo{\par}

daleif

1:59 PM

@DavidCarlisle Does not seem to work well, I have something that sort of work with etoolbox, but I have to hide it in a savebox (bad user, bad user)

Joseph Wright

@daleif What does \show\BODY give in your case?

@DavidCarlisle I'm (almost) in your part of the world (Didcot)

daleif

@JosephWright Seems to be just give \par (hmm, my etoolbox hack did not work on real life data)

barbara beeton

@yo' -- when don knuth was in providence last week (cs.brown.edu/events/kanellakis/knuth) he got to play two local organs, one at the cathedral of saints peter and paul, and the other, the university organ in sayles hall (brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2003-04/03-022.html and today.brown.edu/articles/2009/03/organ-0). that is quite a fine organ, and is kept in good trim. we got to visit the pipe chamber last year. wonderful!

daleif

@JosephWright This is a hack that almost work, but bad code (fails if is uncomment the two lines)

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{environ,etoolbox}

\newsavebox\hst
\newtoggle{isEmpty}
\NewEnviron{hest}{%
\sbox\hst{
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\ifdefvoid{\BODY}{%
\global\toggletrue{isEmpty}
}{
% \expandafter\ifdefequal\expandafter{\BODY}%
% {\par}{\global\toggletrue{isEmpty}}{}
}
\end{minipage}
}
\iftoggle{isEmpty}{\emph{is empty}}{
\BODY
}
\par\global\togglefalse{isEmpty}}

\begin{document}

\begin{hest}

\end{hest}

\begin{hest}
% hest
\end{hest}

\begin{hest}
brian

yo'

@barbarabeeton opening the pipe chamber is better than unpacking Xmas gifts!

daleif

2:09 PM

Probably a bit more relevant:

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{environ,etoolbox}

\newsavebox\hst
\newtoggle{isEmpty}
\NewEnviron{hest}{%
\sbox\hst{
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\ifdefvoid{\BODY}{%
\global\toggletrue{isEmpty}
}{
\ifdefequal{\BODY}{\par}{\global\toggletrue{isEmpty}}{
\typeout{non empty}
}
}
\end{minipage}
}
\typeout{hest}
\iftoggle{isEmpty}{\emph{is empty}}{
\BODY
}
\par\global\togglefalse{isEmpty}}

\begin{document}
\typeout{1}
\begin{hest}

\end{hest}

\typeout{2}
\begin{hest}
% hest
\end{hest}

Joseph Wright

@daleif You want \def\temp{\par}\ifdefequal{\BODY}{\temp}

daleif

@JosephWright thanks, I'll try it on my real data

barbara beeton

@yo' -- yes, it really is. when i was in denmark some years ago, attending an iso working group meeting, the chair of the group (who is an organ fancier) arranged for just a few of us to visit a castle that had a working box organ. the air supply was provided by three bellows behind the organ, each operated in sequence by pulling down on a rope. and after his concert, the organist opened the pipe chamber to show us what was inside. nothing large, of course, but just magnificent!

daleif

@JosephWright woo, works, much better interface for my form

Next year, I'll make this as a web form instead (using LaTeX or Word for this in not a good idea)

@PauloCereda might want to pick your brain for some web stuff sometime

yo'

@barbarabeeton when you come here, I can show you the (probably) only English baroque organ in the Czech Republic :) It's actually just a positive, but still, beautiful :-)

anyway, gotta go now, see you later!

David Carlisle

2:23 PM

@JosephWright isn't that same as my \ifx suggestion? :-)

Paulo Cereda

@daleif Feel free to poke me any time. :)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle Mine was obviously clearer ;-)

daleif

@PauloCereda thanks

egreg

2:49 PM

@JosephWright If there are two blank lines…

David Carlisle

@egreg then you blame the OP for having given an incorrect problem specification.

@Johannes_B so if I take a long name then there is a good chance that it does not clash with an existing definition \def\DeclareTextCompositeCommand{} should be good then?

David Carlisle

3:14 PM

@barbarabeeton anyone else, you asked I ping you if the videos of Sebastian's memorial meeting were available, You may have seen Frank's post to latex project site but:

podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/sebastian-rahtz-celebration-his-work

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- thanks. (frank did circulate this info to a list, including me. well worth watching.)

egreg

@daleif Is this what you want?

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{environ,etoolbox}

\NewEnviron{hest}{%
  \ifdefempty{\BODY}{\typeout{empty}}{\checkblanklines\BODY}%
}
\makeatletter
\newcommand\checkblanklines[1]{%
  \expandafter\check@blanklines#1\check@blanklines
}
\def\check@blanklines{%
  \@ifnextchar\check@blanklines
    {\typeout{empty}\@gobble}% remove the last token
    {\check@par}%
}
\def\check@par{%
  \@ifnextchar\par
    {\expandafter\check@blanklines\@gobble}%
    {\typeout{not empty}\@gobbleall{\BODY}}%

David Carlisle

3:35 PM

@barbarabeeton yes it was quite an inspiring meeting really

daleif

@egreg Something like that yes. So far this has worked fine in my real doc:

\ifdefvoid{\BODY}{%
  \global\toggletrue{isEmpty}%
}{%
  \def\foo{\par}%
  \ifdefequal{\BODY}{\foo}{%
    \global\toggletrue{isEmpty}%
  }{}%
}%

egreg

@daleif Try with two blank lines

daleif

@egreg argh, well did not say it was perfect. The file is meant to be filled in by the user, not left blank, just wanted to leave a nice interface so it behaves when it has no data yet (I'm using envs for all data entries)

Sean Allred

I don't suppose anyone here is fluent in SVG? :(

Paulo Cereda

3:50 PM

@SeanAllred I only speak duck. :)

daleif

@SeanAllred Not really, but I've gotten some use out of the data

Sean Allred

:(

daleif

What is the problem

Sean Allred

I'm trying to make a custom card deck for my girlfriend (proposing in two weeks!! D:) but I'm having trouble centering the suit on the card for the ace

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred oooooooooooooooooooooooh

daleif

3:53 PM

uhh, hope she does not read chat

Sean Allred

@daleif she probably has no idea this exists XD

Paulo Cereda

@daleif Let us make sure she will read it. :)

daleif

@SeanAllred hehe

Sean Allred

I tried to enlighten her to the ways of TeX, but she remains in the darkness

daleif

What are you using to make the SVG?

Sean Allred

3:54 PM

@daleif emacs

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred oh no

Sean Allred

:P that is, I'm doing it by hand

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred OH NO

Maeher

clearly the solution is to use tikz!

Sean Allred

the graphical tools aren't precise enough and I can't get a good center

@Maeher I thought of that XD it's at least something I'm more familiar with

Paulo Cereda

3:55 PM

@SeanAllred Maybe Inkscape could help, then you could clean the source afterwards.

daleif

@SeanAllred Have you tried inkscape? And then perhaps figure out from there how centering works

Sean Allred

@PauloCereda Also tried that

Paulo Cereda

WE MUST HELP SEAN

Sean Allred

The source is disgusting first of all and I can't make complicated documents

Paulo Cereda

I cannot wait to wear a tuxedo!

Sean Allred

3:56 PM

My SVG is now literally too complicated for graphical editors to handle

daleif

@SeanAllred Scroll up in the history for my conversion of a TrueType font into tikz, just using the SVG data

Sean Allred

But hey, if someone wants to create a deck of cards with TikZ, there's a case of beer in it for you.

Paulo Cereda

I love Google so much.

daleif

Sounds strange that Emacs can handle it but not inkscape

Sean Allred

@daleif Well emacs is editing the SVG; firefox is rendering

Paulo Cereda

3:57 PM

@SeanAllred HOLD MY BEER

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Shouldn't that be duxedo?

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn ooh I see what you did there. <3

Sean Allred

The main thing I'm using that seems too complicated is xlink:href

daleif

@PauloCereda the correct term is: Hold my beer; watch this y'all

Paulo Cereda

@daleif ooh

If there's liquor involved, I think it's time to summon @percusse.

Maeher

3:58 PM

@SeanAllred Please don't tempt me, I have slides I should be working on :P

Paulo Cereda

@Maeher I have a thesis. I blame this people. :)

Sean Allred

@Maeher a case of beer (or pizza (or …))

I'm desperate

daleif

Hey, I'm at work, but still here.

Sean Allred

@PauloCereda Same goes for you.

Maeher

@PauloCereda see, my thesis is done, but I still need to defend it ;)

daleif

3:59 PM

Do you have some data we can play with?

Paulo Cereda

6

Q: How to draw the cards of a deck?

How to draw the cards from a deck using a Latex package, as TikZ?

tikz-pgf

Sean Allred

@daleif My SVGs are based on code.google.com/archive/p/vector-playing-cards

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred: ^^ something to begin, perhaps?

HOLY DUCK

 texdoc setdeck

Sean Allred

@PauloCereda I love this game!!

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred <3

daleif

4:01 PM

And what exactly is wrong with the cards?

Sean Allred

@PauloCereda Perhaps, but I have vectors for the face cards and the suits (and a ver special vector for the ace of diamonds)

@daleif the ones on google code?

They're not uniform; they're misaligned, etc.

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred ooh

Sean Allred

@PauloCereda basic idea:

David Carlisle

@SeanAllred you still have time to switch to an enlightened partner

daleif

@SeanAllred yes, they are not stable at all. Numbers are jumping

Sean Allred

4:04 PM

@DavidCarlisle XD I think I can live with this one :)

yeah

David Carlisle

@SeanAllred as long as she doesn't use vim you'll be fine

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle you are mean. :) Could be worse: she could be a vim user.

Sean Allred

@DavidCarlisle We had a close call with that one but I showed her the light of Emacs :)

daleif

I'd probably grap the basic shapes designs and the designs for jack, queen and king, and then redo this in tikz. There seems to be too much fiddling to fix those number placements, not enough programming.

egreg

@SeanAllred I prefer this one

Johannes_B

4:08 PM

@DavidCarlisle The Chance is not as high.

Sean Allred

@egreg I don't recognize that – what is it?

David Carlisle

@Johannes_B I would say the chance of that long name clashing is around 100%

Sean Allred

I do recognize 'treviso'; I think that's the name of the airport I landed in

Or the city where the airport was

egreg

@SeanAllred “Asso di denari” (which corresponds to the ace of diamonds) in our traditional cards.

Sean Allred

@egreg very ornate :)

egreg

4:10 PM

@SeanAllred Treviso is a city, not far from where I live (about 40km)

David Carlisle

@SeanAllred when he's not chatting here @egreg spends his time shuffling tarot cards in fairground tents telling fortunes.

3

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle LOLOL

@David: you are mean. :)

egreg

@SeanAllred Here are all four aces:

Sean Allred

@DavidCarlisle Hah!!

daleif

@egreg tried your solution. Now somehow I sometimes get repeated data, shouldn't your code completely eat up \BODY?

egreg

4:13 PM

@daleif Didn't do much testing.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda recognise the emblem ^^^ ?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I only use my crystal ball for guessing the meaning of some questions on the site.

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle E.g. "You got the death card. I see one of @DavidCarlisle 's packages in your future".

2

daleif

@egreg Seems, changing \long\def\@gobbleall#1#2\check@blanklines{#1} to \long\def\@gobbleall#1#2\check@blanklines{} works. No idea if it is correct.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle oh

egreg

4:17 PM

@daleif An example of doubling?

Paulo Cereda

!!/help

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Good afternoon! I'm Psmith, the friendly TeX bot - the p in my name is silent, as in pshrimp. I'm here as a companion to our fellow users in the typographic land. As you probably noticed, I always reply under Paulo's account, but do not despair, I say, my replies are always preceded by my own name. Enjoy your stay at TeX.sx! If you need any help, just ask our chat residents. Cheerio!

@DavidCarlisle: guess who's back. :)

daleif

@egreg I'm using the test to set a flag, not to typeset \BODY that comes later.

egreg

@daleif Then you don't want \BODY there, but just to gobble everything up to \check@blanklines, so no argument is good.

daleif

@egreg it seems to be working

Paulo Cereda

!!/battle

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 215 vs. 205 David. So far, egreg is winning.

egreg

4:22 PM

@PauloCereda Nice to see Psmith is back!

daleif

@egreg At least, I've passed it on to the secretary who commissioned it

Paulo Cereda

@egreg <3

egreg

!!/fortune

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Psmith, the TeX bot: Here is your fortune: Error 404: cookie not found.

egreg

!!/cricket

Paulo Cereda

4:23 PM

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last cricket results:

- Tasmania 203/10 &  387/9  v Victoria 319/8 &  230/10 *
- Western Australia 265/10 &  227/2 * v Queensland 353/10 &  138/10
- Baroda 138/4 * v Uttar Pradesh 481/10
- Bengal 279/8 * v Madhya Pradesh
- Gujarat 307/10  v Tamil Nadu 78/1 *
- Mumbai v Punjab 434/6 *
- Delhi 237/10  v Saurashtra 92/10 &  37/2 *
- Karnataka 251/5 * v Maharashtra 163/10
- Rajasthan 140/10  v Vidarbha 116/10 *
- Andhra 190/10  v Hyderabad (India) 49/4 *

Maeher

Apparently I understand so little about cricket that I cannot even come up with a way of interpreting those results

daleif

@Maeher Apparently it is some people, usually dressed in white, running around for days on a field playing a some sticks and a ball

Maeher

@daleif That about sums up my understanding of it

Sean Allred

4:38 PM

The Tikz reimplementation is going well. thanks for bringing me back to sanity, folks :)

She's asking the important questions

Paulo Cereda

@SeanAllred MARRY HER

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda did you say Psmith was around to check battle status (just asking...)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle yep :)

Paulo Cereda

5:07 PM

!!/battle

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The current score is egreg 215 vs. 210 David. So far, egreg is winning.

percusse

@PauloCereda Where is the booze

Paulo Cereda

@percusse ask @SeanAllred :)

Johannes_B

@DavidCarlisle That one in particular, yes.

Paulo Cereda

@percusse: it's a big project, he will propose!

barbara beeton

@egreg -- you've got mail.

percusse

5:18 PM

\advance\beer by \shot{\jagermeister}
\let\jagerbomb\beer

3

Paulo Cereda

@percusse oh

percusse

Then after a few of those .... \leavevmode

Paulo Cereda

!!/choose jagermeister, beer

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great oracle says: beer

percusse

!!/answer How old are you really?

Paulo Cereda

@percusse Psmith, the TeX bot: I'm deeply sorry, old chap, but the command ask does not exist.

percusse

5:21 PM

aah

Paulo Cereda

@percusse Psmith, the TeX bot: Good afternoon! I'm Psmith, the friendly TeX bot - the p in my name is silent, as in pshrimp. I'm here as a companion to our fellow users in the typographic land. As you probably noticed, I always reply under Paulo's account, but do not despair, I say, my replies are always preceded by my own name. Enjoy your stay at TeX.sx! If you need any help, just ask our chat residents. Cheerio!

I think it's !!/answer :)

Unless Wolftam Alpha changed the API. :)

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

really  (English word)
1 | adverb | in accordance with truth or fact or reality
2 | adverb | in actual fact
3 | adverb | in fact (used as intensifiers or sentence modifiers)
4 | adverb | used as intensifiers; “real” is sometimes used informally for “really'; `rattling” is informal
5 | interjection | used to indicate surprise at or requesting confirmation of some new information; used to express skepticism; indicating that what was just said was obvious and unnecessary, used as an expression of contrived incredulity

percusse

!!/answer How old are you?

Paulo Cereda

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

How old is Wolfram|Alpha?
7 years 6 months 24.14 days
(right now)
394.5 weeks
66279 hours
3.977×10^6 minutes
2.386×10^8 seconds

percusse

!!/answer Why don't you act like an 7 year old then?

Paulo Cereda

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

7 years (age)
84 months
365 weeks
2555 days
61320 hours
3.679×10^6 minutes

!!/answer tell me a joke

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode:

Tell me a joke.
Q: What do you call a young eigensheep?  A: A lamb, duh!
(according to what passes for mathematical humor (my favorite sub-genre), drawn from several sources but primarily from P. Renteln and A. Dundes in their paper "Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor" in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 52, pp. 24-34, 2005)

percusse

5:24 PM

ufff,.... that hurt

Paulo Cereda

:)

!!/eightball Should I work on my thesis?

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: outlook not so good.

percusse

!!/play Metallica - Sad but true

Paulo Cereda

@percusse Psmith, the TeX bot: here

percusse

nope I'm not clicking that

Paulo Cereda

@percusse this time was for real. :)

!!/eightball should Sir click the link?

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: my sources say no.

percusse

5:26 PM

well, you can't be too careful. I don't want to sing it for another 6 hours in my head

Paulo Cereda

Stupid bot.

percusse

ahaha

egreg

@barbarabeeton You too.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda oi

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle <3

Joseph Wright

6:03 PM

Could you elaborate on why you see “you have an old version, update” as being a close reason, rather than an answer? It’s a good solution to the OP’s problem. It looks like an answer, it quacks like an answer… — Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine 4 hours ago

@PauloCereda ^^^ A duck!

Paulo Cereda

6:43 PM

@JosephWright ooooooh :)

Sean Allred

7:14 PM

@percusse I set a beer bounty on a TikZ deck of french playing cards with a few customizations that I can set post-hoc

3 hours ago, by Sean Allred

Richard

9:03 PM

I seem to remember a post that resulted in Beamer code that automatically compiled a PDF displaying all of the color options along with their names; this created an easy reference for modifying particular colors in a given template. I can't seem to find this, does anyone know where it might be?

Ah! tex.stackexchange.com/questions/66465/… Color vs. colour :-)

David Carlisle

@Richard I blame @barbarabeeton for the variant spellings

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- hmmmmph. the spelling of "color" happened long before i came along. blame noah webster.

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton Too complicated, It's simpler just to blame you for American spellings and weird American squiggles claimed to be a G

barbara beeton

9:26 PM

@DavidCarlisle -- oh, okay. then i can blame anything that's clearly british on you, including badly hyphenated words. makes explanations a lot easier!

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton not badl-y hyp-henated, just hyphen-ate-d acco-rding to ru-les that are not clear in count-ries that don't speak p-roper english like what we do

David Carlisle

11:13 PM

what should the log be for the following. answers on a postcard to....

\scrollmode

\ifx\primitive\undefined
\let\primitive\pdfprimitive
\fi



\expandafter\show\primitive\zoopla


\expandafter\show\primitive\hfill

\end

@JosephWright, @egreg ^^

egreg

@DavidCarlisle \pdfprimitive is not always expandable.

If the control sequence was initially expandable, \pdfprimitive expands either. Otherwise \pdfprimitive doesn’t expand.

egreg

11:52 PM

@DavidCarlisle This is even funnier:

\scrollmode

\ifx\primitive\undefined
\let\primitive\pdfprimitive
\fi

\expandafter\show\primitive\if

\expandafter\show\primitive\hfill

\end

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