TeX, LaTeX and Friends

percusse

12:08 AM

Hmm, I see that Wolfram Alpha hired a new marketing team.

percusse

12:26 AM

1

Q: Visualizing broad Tikz tree graph

Modules of software I created produce Tikz QTree diagrams for visualisation. The problem is that some trees grow quite broad... Even when I try to massively shrink them by Tikz settings, I cannot fit them on the page. I use the following, which has no effect: \begin{tikzpicture}[level/.style=...

what should we do about this question? I don't think it would ever be solved.

Marco Daniel

12:56 AM

@percusse Three month without any response. Based on the last comment of Alan I would say "too localized".

Ariel

1:44 AM

Who wouldn' t want to work at Valve - especially after seeing this new employee manual... assets.sbnation.com/assets/1074301/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf Nicely typeset btw.

Stephan Lehmke

3:08 AM

@percusse Sorry if it seems a bit late to add something to this, but one should note that a new .SX user is "socialized" a bit differently.

Blog - Stack Exchange: Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand

Jeff Atwood on June 13, 2011

In March 2010, we rebalanced our reputation system to favor answers.

While we value good questions (and asking a great question is absolutely an art), we want to explicitly encourage people to provide the best possible answers. Without people interested in providing good answers, the questions are moot. We know that answers have more intrinsic value than questions, and the reputation balance should reflect that.

The question asker already enjoys a substantial benefit beyond reputation gain from upvotes on their question — namely, they get great answers to their question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t need as much reputation gain. …

In several places reachable from the FAQ, it seems there is explicit encouragement to downvote "bad" questions. Of course most of the formulations on what is "bad" and when one should actually decide to downvote are a little vague, (ctd)

but all in all the impression is that if there is a tradeoff between scaring away a new user whose .SX record so far consists of asking one question or annoying a regular who might invest a bit less enthusiasm in answering the next question out of being annoyed, the tendency is clearly in keeping the answerer happy.

If this site has a different policy, maybe this should be stated clearly somewhere.

Stephan Lehmke

4:55 AM

I'm a bit disappointed noone commented on my \voodogobblelast ;-)

2

6

A: How does one remove material from a token list?

Here are three versions of \gobblelast: \makeatletter \def\gobblelast@nil{gobblelast@nil} \newtoks\gobblelast@toks \let\gobblelast@obr={ \let\gobblelast@cbr=} \def\gobblelast@mkspc#1% {% \expandafter\futurelet\expandafter\gobblelast@spc\expandafter\@gobble } \futurelet\next\gobblelast@mkspc...

I mean, you can say \expandafter\edef\expandafter\next\expandafter{\the\mytoks}}} and it will work because two opening braces are hidden inside \mytoks. And this after @DavidCarlisle his very self uttered "token registers can not store unbalanced lists" ;-)

This has to be worth at least a lame clapping of hands, no?

user19161

7:51 AM

@Ariel Now I am wondering whether it's because the conditions are good or the manual is typeset nicely.

Patrick Gundlach

8:22 AM

@Ariel That's really nice!

Patrick Gundlach

8:45 AM

9

Q: How do I use TrueType Fonts with PDFTeX using otftotfm?

I've heard that PDFTeX can use TrueType fonts. There have been several answers related to this, but of these only the first one mentions using otftotfm, which I'm told is the standard way to do it now, and none clearly explain how to use the font if your document after it has been created. The ot...

fonts pdftex truetype

There once was a Lady of Ronnes
who tried to install lots of fonts
 so she asked on this site
 for answers from people so bright
but she never got a response

4

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach One for a big bounty once the appropriate time has passed

Patrick Gundlach

@JosephWright I've tried to answer it yesterday (with standard tools), but I failed. But as I do LuaTeX nowadays I forgot most of it.

Joseph Wright

@PatrickGundlach I think that some of the comments miss the fact that pdfTeX is still very commonly used. There are reasons why LuaTeX and XeTeX are not always the 'right' choice. (Talk for example to Karl Berry about document portability!)

Patrick Gundlach

@JosephWright I understand that - I even use PDFTeX for some projects (customers)

Stephan Lehmke

9:06 AM

@PatrickGundlach My answer is forthcoming. Have patience. Between yesterday evening and now we're having weekend with a family of 6 here. Not much time for writing answers.

Patrick Gundlach

@StephanLehmke Hey, it was a joke :)

lockstep

10:50 AM

Can be closed as "too localized", based on the OP's last comment:

1

Q: natbib authoryear error

I'm getting natbib error: Bibliography not compatible with author-year citations. The 'help' says Check the bibliography entries for non-compliant syntax, or select author-year Bibtex style e.g. plainnat. Can someone point out the error in my ways because apalike is an author-year sty...

bibtex natbib apa-style

Joseph Wright

@lockstep Yup, closed

Marco Daniel

@cmhughes :-) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/52235/…

lockstep

11:01 AM

@JosephWright or another moderator: please un-CW this answer:

43

A: What to do to switch to biblatex?

I've made the switch from natbib to biblatex two years ago, so I should be able to answer this. That said, Seamus, Simon Byrne, and domwass have already made lots of good points. (For anyone still asking "Why should I use biblatex?": See this answer [shameless plug].) LaTeX document With natbi...

@StefanKottwitz Perhaps you could un-CW the above answer?

Joseph Wright

@lockstep Done

lockstep

@JosephWright Many thanks -- I had been wanting to correct the formatting for quite some time!

cmhughes

11:30 AM

@MarcoDaniel +1, nice work

Marco Daniel

@cmhughes Not really. I needed 13 hours to install Ubuntu 12.04 ;-)

cmhughes

@MarcoDaniel oh no! why so long?

Marco Daniel

@cmhughes imac + ati -- that isn't a goog combo. At the moment I have to work in low graphics mode. I found some bug reports about fglrx and ati but up to know nothing works.

percusse

11:51 AM

@StephanLehmke I've read that before but I agree also with @AndrewStacey 's comments under that post. The ideal case is to integrate the new users to the scheme not to scare them away with downvites. Some change their questions superbly after we simply remind them to do so and often we remove the comments afterwards but downvoted questions usually stay like that no matter what.

Note that this only applies to TeX.SX. Other SX sites found their equilibrium through downvoting.

Stephan Lehmke

@percusse Well but for this concrete example the unltimate consequence was closing the question. If people rather vote to close than downvote then the system seems skewed to me.

percusse

@StephanLehmke True. We are still not in sync about closing those. So our system is not perfect either.

user19161

@MarcoDaniel I guess you included the time you spent trying to fix the problem. If the installation itself took 13 hours, it is not meant to be done like that! It should only take about half an hour with the live DVD.

percusse

@StephanLehmke Take the recent question, number 52577. Now that seems to be valid problem but I'm not sure so I don't want to spend time on it. I tried to push the user once but apparently it didn't work. So some might also try to convince and maybe make it a better question. If I downvote it, I don't thin it would help anyway from the OP's point of view.

Stephan Lehmke

@percusse I'm also thinking a bit differently about the "piling up" discussion. My intrepretation is if a lot of people are annoyed by the question but shy to be the first to downvote, then in the moment the first downvote appears, a lot of downvotes are released.

Marco Daniel

12:00 PM

@JasperLoy ;-)

Stephan Lehmke

But they are "real" downvotes, only coming in temporal synchronization. I doubt there are so many people here who like to tread on somebody already lying just for the fun of it.

user19161

@MarcoDaniel Er, what does that mean?

Stephan Lehmke

By establishing a "minimum score -1" policy you're taking away a means to vent frustration, so people might be more inclined to vote to close or write a snide comment.

Marco Daniel

@JasperLoy Where did I write "Er"? It's German and means "he"

percusse

@StephanLehmke Indeed, there is an interesting psychological aspect to it. The slightest negative connotation about a question release a lot of downvotes.

Stephan Lehmke

12:02 PM

Furthermore, when I see a score of "-1" I automatically think "Wow this would be -50 if not everybody were restricting themselves". But maybe some questions would really stay at "-1"?

user19161

@MarcoDaniel Nope, I was the one who said "er" which is just a sound in conversation.

Marco Daniel

@JasperLoy That's new for me. In relation to your previous comment I wrote ":-)" because I would be happy if the instalation was so easy

percusse

@StephanLehmke The general idea is to run away from the frustrating cases that would create the need of venting. And most of the times, people end up here with a lot of frustration since TeX is not the easiest thing to use. So they might write up a bad and angry question such as X package is stupid and it doesn't work, tell me another way or else?

Now a downvote on top of this question is fueling the flame.

Instead we try to calm down a bit and ask them little pieces of info to understand the problem.

But not always, it works properly. Often, we get some angry comment exchanges.

Stephan Lehmke

@percusse Still I think making new users aware about the nature of downvotes would be better than crippling the logic for everybody else.

@percusse It's like the guy saying "the emperor has no clothes" ;-)

percusse

@StephanLehmke You are right. I also don't know the good way to go. Since as we do it, we create the impression that we are here to serve.

Joseph Wright

12:10 PM

For me, the key point is actually the rate of voting. Half-a-dozen downvotes in the first day is unhelpful, but if after a polite request for clarification there is no improvement then it may become appropriate to downvote.

Stephan Lehmke

@percusse Think of ctt. A posting like this would have ignited a flame war. Which is a bad thing. Here there's downvotes. If the alternative is flamewars in comments, I'd rather have downvotes.

Mind you, I'm saying all this from a new user's perspective. Which might be refreshing, but please take with a grain of salt.

So I shut up now :-)

percusse

@StephanLehmke No, of course. I understand your point perfectly. I am just not sure about the effect of the downvotes.

@StephanLehmke you are a good example of the community. Relatively new but full of expertise so that's why rep points don't mean much here among us which is another reason to take the votes lightly.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright perhaps, maybe OP will clarify, I based my guess on the fact that \ifnum (ie numeric) test was used in the sample code, even though the wording might suggest strings, (Your answer which was posted at some time as mine also uses \ifnum0#1 doesn't it?)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Yes, same approach entirely. It depends of course on what exactly is required.

@Village is a ConTeXt user, so I guess this might be done as easily in Lua as anything else, depending on the full detail

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yes just about the only context questioner I think:-)

Joseph Wright

12:23 PM

@DavidCarlisle We get a few

Bizarrely, I seem to answer at least a reasonable number of these questions!