(Wanders back in for a bit.) Should have actually posted what I was coming here to ask when I popped my head in here last night and nobody was home; let me fix that now: how does one get leading indentation for paragraphs of text within a \parbox contained in a cell of a tabular environment? I tried using indentfirst, but it didn't work. Or would resolving this involve me posting my source in a new question outside of chat?

@RandomDSdevel I think if you ask a question it will certainly answered. They are all sleeping in Europe and America at this moment...

@RandomDSdevel just set \parindent but why have you got a parbox in a tabular, rather more usual to have a p column (although they have 0 parindent by default as well)

@samcarter neat ;-) (and I won't suggest a lot of zeros and ones one the stripes ...)

@egreg: should I add a background music?

@PauloCereda Lady Gaga?

@egreg I was thinking more of a Venice song. :)

@PauloCereda @egreg rockol.it/testi/43217430/…

@CarLaTeX, @egreg: I will prepare two versions and let Claudio choose. :)

@PauloCereda @CarLaTeX youtube.com/watch?v=c2YtGsRet3c

@egreg LOL

@egreg I drank a (very good) spritz in Venice: only 3 euros (not in S. Marco)! In Milan impossible to find at that price.

@samcarter: Can we have a Spanish Inquisition duck? So can I add in my slides and say that nobody expects it?

@PauloCereda Should it sit on a cushion or hold it? ;-)

@UlrikeFischer ooh it's a good question. :)

@PauloCereda \duck[hat=red!80!black,tshirt=red!80!black,book=$\dagger$]

Oh lord...

@samcarter ooooh

@egreg I felt sorry for the poor data -- did nothing wrong a was but behind all these bars.

@UlrikeFischer You just gave me a great idea for our counter wizard! Thanks!

@samcarter We think it needs a goatee or a beard ...

Don't we have macros that can resize non gfx to a box of a given size but keeping the aspect ratio? Say I have something that needs to be scaled to fix a box of size 2x1, then I can use \resizebox{2cm}{!}{...} if it is something wide, but have to use \resizebox{!}{1cm}{...} if the contents is narrow but tall. What have I forgotten here?

@daleif Not sure what you mean: what's wrong with the \resizebox operations?

@DavidCarlisle Would appreciate any thoughts on the colour checkin I've just pushed

@JosephWright I need these two boxes to also have the same height (or the contents to fit inside that size)

Perhaps I should just use a double \resizebox

@daleif Yes, so resize them to the same height!

@daleif Ah, perhaps you mean 'resize only if larger than X'?

@UlrikeFischer Totally true -- however I am not sure where to put it, the bill interferes with the location...

@JosephWright or resize if size larger than given X \times Y (like keepaspectratio in \includegraphics but in general)

@daleif Package adjustbox?

@JosephWright looking at it, it is just not clear about the aspect ratio

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{expl3,xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand \resizecontent { m m +m }
  {
    \group_begin:
      \hbox_set:Nn \l_tmpa_box {#3}
      \box_autosize_to_wd_and_ht_plus_dp:Nnn \l_tmpa_box {#1} {#2}
      \box_use:N \l_tmpa_box
    \group_end:
  }
\ExplSyntaxOff
\begin{document}
\fbox{\resizecontent{1cm}{5mm}{Test test test}}

\fbox{\resizecontent{1cm}{5mm}{A}}

\end{document}

@daleif ^^^ perhaps?

@daleif Ah, much the same thing

Now I just need to figure out how to typeset a russian char. (trying to recreate an x-word puzzle via tikz).

Done

@JosephWright OK although might not be able to look until tomorrow

@DavidCarlisle No rush

@egreg tex book lies again then? :-)

@DavidCarlisle See the discussion on funny space tokens

@egreg yes but that's uppercasing to change the character code your exanpl eis just using teh character scanner, oh isn't \if?!\message testing space and message?

@DavidCarlisle Yes. The right test should be

\catcode`?=10 \catcode`!=10
\def\qm{?} \def\em{!}

\let\$\empty

\if\$?\$!\message{equal}\else\message{not equal}\fi

\ifx\qm\em\message{equal}\else\message{not equal}\fi

\bye

@DavidCarlisle You can answer tex.stackexchange.com/questions/393359

@egreg no time actually, tick is yours for the taking:-)

@DavidCarlisle, @egreg Spaces keeping us entertained :) (I think I've annoyed someone ...)

@JosephWright ooh Frank

I like annoying Frank too

:D

@PauloCereda Possibly, but not the person I have in mind

@PauloCereda I'm tempted to star that ;)

@JosephWright let's annoy him regardless. :D

@JosephWright I'd star it too. :)

@JosephWright I blame git:-)

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle Made CW

@egreg thanks, back later this evening, will be offline for a bit. pineapple pizzas to be eaten

@DavidCarlisle Have fun

@DavidCarlisle, @egreg Please check my latest attempt to explain spaces :)

@JosephWright: are we planning our annual meeting? :)

@CarLaTeX Actually, no. :) I don't like the show. :)

@PauloCereda Why do you know bazinga, then?

@CarLaTeX I know a lot of things. :)

@PauloCereda Duck are clever! :):):)

@CarLaTeX We are. :D

@PauloCereda Er, yes: I need to book it

@JosephWright uh-oh. :)

@DavidCarlisle How'd I manage to forget about p column specifications?! Now the solution seems obvious. Thanks!

@PauloCereda just got back, it wasn't me that had duck:-)

@DavidCarlisle: Hmm, the obvious fix doesn't seem to be working; maybe the \flushleft environments I'm using within the table cells are messing things up somehow, but I'm not sure I can see how that would be the case… (Scratches head.)

@RandomDSdevel flushleft adds vertical space, you probably want \raqggedright\arraybackslsh but hard to tell, you would be better asking a question on site really.

Yeah, I figured I was testing my luck trying to work through anything more complicated than something just a line or two long here in chat.

@DavidCarlisle: I thought I'd try \raggedright\arraybackslsh before heading over to the main site, but I get an 'Undefined control sequence' error for the second of those two LaTeX commands; is it in a package I haven't included?

@RandomDSdevel oh \usepackage{array} you pretty much need that for any non trivial tabular environment

Ah, makes sense.

@DavidCarlisle: That did the trick! Looking at the documentation of package array, though, I'm not sure I need the functionality of \arraybackslash, at least not for my use case. Let's see if removing it changes anything…

(I'm only putting one paragraph of text in each column.)

@RandomDSdevel if you use \raggedright in the last column you will find out why we introduced it...

Yep, I don't see any difference.

(perhaps I'm missing some context here, though…?)

@RandomDSdevel how are you ending your table rows, with \\ ?

I've only got one row.

@RandomDSdevel or rather you have the context but everyone else is missing it as you didn't ask as a question on site with a proper example:-)

@RandomDSdevel there is absolutely no point in a one row table the whole point of a table is to align things in columns.

(Laughs.) I knew it was around here somewhere… It just goes to show how often I misplace things.

@DavidCarlisle: And, yes, just using something that made text columns would probably be a better idea, but I'm still in that same tutorial I was in the other day, and it hasn't introduced anything of the sort just yet — plus, this part of it's on tables, so I was using tabular environments. The next few exercises are less silly, I think…

@RandomDSdevel \parbox{3cm}{a b c}\parbox{3cm}{a b c} would make two side by side paragraphs each 3cm wide, no table is needed

@DavidCarlisle Of course. I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

(Though that makes me wonder what one would do to just type out a bunch of text without having to manually reflow all text in those columns while editing…; ah, that's rather irrelevant to what I've been doing, so I'll just research that later when I need it.)

@RandomDSdevel manually reflow?

@DavidCarlisle: If you end up making one of the columns so long that its text goes off the page.

I'm guessing there's an environment for automatic wrapping of text between columns or something, maybe in a package somewhere, but, again, I don't need to look for it just yet.

@RandomDSdevel if you want text to flow from one column to another they are not separate paragraphs so parbox (or tabular) are the wrong thing use multicol package and just have a single text flow in multiple columns

…and there's the package! I should try and remember that it exists for when I need it.

(None of my columns need wrapping right now, of course, so I think I'm done here.)

Thanks again, @DavidCarlisle.

(Wanders off.)