From boiling lead and black art: An essay on the history of mathematical typography

^^ It's good to know that there is a counter wizard ;)

This is a kind invite for @egreg to comment on tex.stackexchange.com/a/409132/105447 about why there is no patch command for biblatex's CiteCommands in xpatch. (Doubt arose whether you were actually pinged by my comment there. I really don't know, but I don't mean to be pushy. So please apologize if this is reaching you in duplicity).

@gusbrs it would seem odd for me for a patch package to have code for specific other packages, that would be a never ending extension route. Why not just patch the macros that biblatex defines?

@DavidCarlisle, this might well be the explanation, it is not needed, because you can patch the macros. I've myself been faced with the need to redefine a citation command in the past (perhaps the idea was ill advised, I admit).

I'm trying to grasp the possibilities and advantages/disadvantages of patching. I'm just curious. It is not a "feature request".

@DavidCarlisle I've added a config file for the TU tests in 2e, but there are currently lots of failures (so I've not enabled them as-standard)

@DavidCarlisle As you wrote the tests, I wonder if you might take a look!

@gusbrs I see in numeric.cbx,

\DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[\mkbibbrackets]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

But then the relevant command \blx@citei@cite is defined as

> \blx@citei@cite=\protected\long macro:
#1#2#3#4->\ifblank {#1} {} {\def \abx@field@prenote {#1}}\ifblank {#2} {\let \b
lx@thenotecheck \relax } {\def \abx@field@postnote {#2}}\def \blx@precode {\del
imcontext {cite}\usebibmacro {prenote}}\def \blx@loopcode {\usebibmacro {citein
dex}\usebibmacro {cite}}\def \blx@dlimcode {\multicitedelim }\def \blx@postcode
 {\usebibmacro {postnote}}\def \blx@postpunct@saved {#4}\blx@citeloop {#3}\endg
roup .

I see no sensible interface for doing patches.

@egreg, my curiosity emerged as an user. A systemic look led me to expect that, as there are patch commands for other relevant biblatex's features, there might be one as well for DeclareCiteCommand. I'm really not acquainted with how the actual patching works, and what is required for it to work.

But I understand that no one asked such patch command before and that it might not be technically viable. Curiosity satisfied! Thank you!

Quack!

@CarLaTeX: Hey today you should get presents from the Befana lady. :)

@TorbjørnT.: Thanks for adding the missing package name in the description!

Most here are TUG members :-) anyway,

tex-talk.net/2018/01/join-tug

@StefanKottwitz A shameless trial to lure us to the Dark Side? ;-) Oh, I am on the Dark side already ...

@samcarter @PauloCereda tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7497/2388

@PauloCereda Die Vampirente ;-)

@UlrikeFischer Is the green one a Virus duck then?

@ChristianHupfer Looks more like a duck-cactus crossbred.

@UlrikeFischer Needs a lot of imagination to be reminded of a cactus... but it's thorny ;-)

@UlrikeFischer ooh

@UlrikeFischer Der Vampirerpel!

@PauloCereda Very good....

@PauloCereda ;-)

@ChristianHupfer <3

@PauloCereda You're late, it was yesterday! :P

@CarLaTeX oh no

@TeXnician only 3 palindromes? :-)

@yo' Well, unfortunately a 1 at the end is hard to get...

@UlrikeFischer Why do you want the kind Vampirente to die?

@TeXnician no, I mean you've got 14341, 3, 66, which are palindromes, and then 25

@yo' Well, when the comma isn't misplaced anymore, I can care about the fourth palindrome ;)

@AlanMunn -- nice! thanks! do you know if the author is reachable other than by twitter? (i don't tweet.) i have a couple of comments, including a couple of typos.

@barbarabeeton Hi barbara, no I don't know. A student of mine sent me the link in the fall.

@JosephWright ok will look...

@barbarabeeton There is an email adress in the "about" page.

@AlanMunn -- okay, thanks. by the way, how's your weather today? here it's clear and very cold. (earlier, -3f almost= -20c, new record low, and still sinking.) it may go up to freezing by wednesday.

@UlrikeFischer -- thanks -- i'll check there. ( i thought i had, but will do so again.)

tomorrow the knuth80 conference starts in sweden. his actual birthday is on wednesday. (links on don's home page at stanford, or i'm sure findable with a web search.)

@barbarabeeton It has warmed up considerably today, to -8C (18F) and by Thursday it's supposed to be 10C (50F)!

@AlanMunn -- ah! that's what's threatened here too by the end of the week. will believe it when i see it.

@barbarabeeton And I fly to the US next week. :-o if the flight doesn't get cancelled due to the weather conditions.

@JosephWright what's the way I'm supposed to use the config-TU.lua in the current (repo) iteration of l3build? (I'll look at doc but of you are around...)

@StefanKottwitz -- well, good luck on that. where in the u.s.? (probably somewhere near water?)

@DavidCarlisle texlua build.lua check -c config-TU

@JosephWright it's doing something...

@barbarabeeton to Miami with 21C or 70F right now ;-) so no worries.

@StefanKottwitz Hurricane season is over. You should be fine.

@JosephWright tu-asciiquotes01 (being teh first failure) says

! ! Undefined control sequence.
! <argument> \textquotesingle

which seems to imply tuenc.def didn't get loaded into the format

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, could be

@DavidCarlisle Probably the format-building stuff being tricky again: it's a bolt-on

i@JosephWright the log files for the format building have been cleaned up? I see the lualatex format in ../build/local/lualatex.fmt but no log?

@DavidCarlisle They all build latex.fmt then have to be renamed

@JosephWright yes but I couldn't see a latex.log either

@DavidCarlisle No: it's done in unpackdir but that gets zapped

@DavidCarlisle Isn't really set up for checking on stuff: like I said, format-building is a bolt-on and something of a bodge

@JosephWright ah OK, do you want me to debug or do you want to look certainly tuenc .def doesn't seem to be being used

@DavidCarlisle I'm checking on whether tuenc.def is getting loaded

If this voting pattern keeps up, I'll get the populist badge on an answer by Heiko! :) tex.stackexchange.com/q/409249/2693

@JosephWright if the fonttext.cfg in support get used?

@DavidCarlisle Yes: I've solved that but still have an issue. Working on it!

@DavidCarlisle, @egreg You'll see I've mailed the LuaTeX people ...

@CarLaTeX @samcarter: Some application of tikzducks in education:

@DavidCarlisle Found the issue :)

@JosephWright I was away, let me look at mail...

@DavidCarlisle TU tests enabled :)

@ChristianHupfer Brilliant! Nobody will be able to ever again forget the pizza formula!

Is \mathchoice fully expandable?

@Skillmon No

@JosephWright I'll give them a try...

@Skillmon it's not even a little bit expandable:-) (it is a box assignment)

@JosephWright no change in l3build?

@DavidCarlisle No: was an issue in the custom code we have for building a format

@DavidCarlisle The 2e tests are particularly tricky to set up

@JosephWright ah should have read my mail earlier I had some fun after giit pull:-) just got git status saying all is well and saw your mail..:-)

I get one TU test failure

$ more   - ../build/test/tu-tl2e7.xetex.diff
*** ../build/test/tu-tl2e7.xetex.tlg    2018-01-07 22:56:47.876878800 +0000
--- ../build/test/tu-tl2e7.xetex.log    2018-01-07 22:56:55.268531300 +0000
***************
*** 607,613 ****
  ...\glue 15.08499 plus 4.31 minus 0.86198
  ...\glue(\parskip) 0.0 plus 1.0
  ...\glue(\baselineskip) 5.92001
! ...\hbox(10.08+2.79358)x345.0, glue set 92.94252fil
  ....\hbox(9.47519+0.0)x30.6144
  .....\glue 0.0
  .....\TU/lmr/bx/n/14.4 14
--- 607,613 ----
  ...\glue 15.08499 plus 4.31 minus 0.86198

which doesn't look too bad, if you get the same?

@ChristianHupfer I think you're forgetting something.

@DavidCarlisle thx, just found out that it isn't, but now I have the reason.