Quack :)

@percusse Ducks? I see wine glasses!

@egreg To high for wine.

@mickep Thanks ;-). And I found out why I couldn't test stix. I used \setupbodyfont{stixtwo}. Do you spot the error? ;-) I'm not sure that Hans is right in blaming the "italic mess". With cambria I see the same problem.

@UlrikeFischer Oh, the brackets! You must have used LaTeX too much recently! ;)

@UlrikeFischer Usually Hans has positive words to say about lucida, so maybe one should write to the list mentioning that the problem is there for them also?

@mickep I now mentioned cambria, so lets wait if he answers. It would be good to have one font that count as reference.

@UlrikeFischer I'm a bit worried if that is cambria. I don't think the TeX world should be in the hands of MS. :S

@mickep You don't need to use it. But there must some standard example of a "good" font that can be used for e.g. bug and feature requests to the other math fonts or for patch code.

@mickep it is a bit late to argue that cambria math should not be the reference font for the opentype math table, since the opentype math table spec is basically microsoft's sketch of what they did in Cambria

@DavidCarlisle Indeed, too late. Hopefully it will in the future work just as well as the old fonts do.

@DavidCarlisle Hans just wrote he will look into it, so I think he acknowledge that something is odd even with cambria ;-). There is an update for luaotfload, do you know something about it?

@DavidCarlisle it is a bit late to argue that cambria math should not be the reference font (for anything) -- indeed. Microsoft's "good font" choice is astonishing.

@yo' well at least they did something. Math was just ignored in modern font specs, and they took appendix G of the texbook and interpreted it as they saw best and extended it to fit the opentype table model then did the paperwork to get that spec through the standards process into an open specification. Without that, luatex and xetex math support would probably still be using 7bit fonts.

@DavidCarlisle yeah, that's right.

Hi folks. Does the error:

> Package datatool Error: Database `aDB' already exists.

suggest anything to anyone?

I guess that's pretty vague without any context.

@FaheemMitha presumably means you have a duplicate loading with datatool

@DavidCarlisle Thank you for the tip.

So, debugging update. I have two database loading lines. If I comment out one of them then it works. But they don't seem related.

One is:

> \DTLloaddb{info}{smyt57.dat}

The second is:

> \DTLloaddb[noheader,keys={RowID,Date,Filename,From,To,Email,Subject}]{aDB}{attac‌​hments.csv}

I suppose I could write a MWE (sigh), but it might be an obvious mistake.

Yes, commenting out either of these makes the error go away.

Ah, the penny dropped. I'm making a loop over the letter multiple times.

And so loading the db for each letter.

Of course, the question is then, what is a good fix?

Can the database name itself be a macro value?

Where do I look to learn how to use opentype fonts with the plain format on luatex?

@HaraldHanche-Olsen It's mainly a question of knowing the extended syntax for \font, unless you plan to write your own loader

Hmm, that actually works. But moving the db loading out of the loop is probably the sensible thing to do.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen texdoc luaotfload

Hi @JosephWright

@FaheemMitha It's a bit too vague

@JosephWright I came across that, but it is not clear to me if this is already preloaded in the format. (Or what to do if not.)

\input luaotfload.sty %
Hello world
\par
\font \pagellaregular = {name:TeX Gyre Pagella} at 9pt
\pagellaregular
Hello world
\bye

@HaraldHanche-Olsen ^^^

\input luaotfload.sty %
\font \tenrm = LatinModernRoman at 10pt
Hello world
\bye

@HaraldHanche-Olsen ^^^ Probably the simplest application

@JosephWright Thanks, that works. (Still not sure how I could/should have discovered that without your help, but now I have a head start.)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen No problem

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Unlike LaTeX, there is no-one to make a call to change how luatex works, so pre-loading the font loader is unlikely

(That said, the LaTeX team do provide the .ini files which actually build the plain formats ...)

@egreg Ok.

@JosephWright we could add \input latex.ltx and give plain tex users a more reasonable format to start from

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle The luaotfload question is though perhaps worth raising more widely: I'm not sure there is a downside

@JosephWright or presumably we could stop distributing that version and uses Hans' context derived plain tex instead?

@DavidCarlisle There is also that

@DavidCarlisle It's probably not worth worrying :)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen You can run a latex example and then look into the log-file: fontspec shows the low level call.

@UlrikeFischer There is certainly a lot of low level info there. Still looking for the call.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen You need the lines looking like this "Arial:mode=node;script=latn;language=DFLT;+tlig;".

. - 'normal' (m/n) with NFSS spec.:
. <->"STIXTwoText:mode=node;script=latn;language=DFLT;+tlig;"

@UlrikeFischer Like these? ↑↑

(I am suffering from Arial avoidance syndrome, you see.)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen yes. You can then use it as \font\test=.... or with braces instead of the quotes.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Arial is shorter than STIXtwoText so much less danger to make a typo ;-)

@UlrikeFischer ooh (channeling @PauloCereda)

@UlrikeFischer I never type such stuff. I use cut and paste. A.k.a. cargo cult programming.

New palindrome for me:

@JosephWright @egreg @DavidCarlisle Can you please add this (or whatever is better) to L3 somewhere?

It is really quite annoying to google it each time and hits almost all newcomers

also relevant

@percusse Not sure what you mean: expl3 does nothing about “real typesetting”.

@egreg Providing these macros as a default instead of making users \def it

@percusse I'm quite satisfied with the standard ~ in the cmtt font

@egreg How about A\textasciitilde B? :)

or just \~{}

@percusse I don't think that I ever needed them outside listings and urls. And regarding the position: it is a decision of the font designer. See also tex.stackexchange.com/questions/320855/….

@UlrikeFischer Font design is a different story. Defaults matter and current default is just wonky. These days nobody uses tilde at the top. All URLs in the browsers render it in the middle.

The LaTeX defult tilde is actually mimicking the so-called small tilde in U+02DC

~~~~~~~~~ vs. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

@percusse latex2e has commands and you should hardly ever need the characters outside verbatim anyway, so what would you add?

@percusse But urls with tilde are a quite new invention compared to tex and computer modern. If you want a more modern looking tilde you will have to use another default font. So you are actually suggesting that LaTeX switches to e.g. lmodern as a default?

@percusse what's wrong with A\textasciitilde B ? (in T1 not OT1) latex has no nore control over the shape of the ~ than it has over the shape of the A

@UlrikeFischer We ever get to a new format ...

@UlrikeFischer @DavidCarlisle Suppose I'm a new user. I install MikTeX or TeXLive and start typing stuff. And I want to use a tilde character in the middle because it is the standard glyph not the top one that is small tilde. What do I do?

That's why I've given those past questions. This is a pretty ubiquitous problem.

@percusse why would you want to do that, and why is ~ different to % which is more common and also doesn't work unless you read the instructions on how to get it

@DavidCarlisle Check out the votes on these questions and view counts

@DavidCarlisle Well % could be arguably available in the document body ...

@percusse I get votes for picture mode airplanes too, it doesn't prove alot

@DavidCarlisle This time it really does. 1.5 million views for nongraphical question is a slam dunk as far as I am concerned

@JosephWright an awful lot of documents have commented out sections and FIX-ME notes and stuff

@DavidCarlisle Sure, it's not simple

@percusse but why would anyone want a ~ if they are not typing a URL and \url{www.example.com/~me} works fine

@DavidCarlisle Well I can also make the same argument why would anyone have a tilde at the top of the glyph box? That's even more obscure but is the default.

@percusse You use a font where the glyphs looks like you want it and then use \textasciitilde.

@percusse Why this so for cm is explained in the answers to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/320855/…

@percusse ^^^^^ You are complaing about the design of the ec fonts, not latex, that image is made by A\textasciitilde B

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}


 A\textasciitilde B

\end{document}

@DavidCarlisle @UlrikeFischer I know how to get a proper tilde. :)

^^^ and this is fourier.

I am trying to make a case that default should be the mid tilde not the accent

@percusse ^^^^ as I say latex has no control over the shapes of the glyphs they are all just rectangles, so it is just a matter of font choice.

@percusse we can't (easily) change the default font in latex.

@percusse But as I already wrote: you only can change this by changing the default font used by latex. And this is not easy. Would you like to handle the complaints why a document looks different suddenly?

@DavidCarlisle We don't need to change anything. Just provide an easy to use macro that gives a mid tilde for the default.

If it is a modernization of ease-of-use these are the things that needs addressing from a user point-of-view.

@percusse it's hard to have a font neutral macro that raises or lowers things when you do not have any information on where the original is, so you really have to trust the font designer.

@percusse And how would you define such a macro?

@UlrikeFischer as I mentioned read this comment for a better wording of my complaint

{\raise.17ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle\sim$}}

from textcomp

I don't think you have to cover all the corner cases to provide a proper default macro that works with cm

If someone doesn't work with cm then they don't use it. Call the macro \cmdefaulttilde or whatever

horrible name though :)

But relying on googling for tilde LaTeX is also not fun in my opinion

@percusse I think that would be a poor default, it assumes \sim from math mode is a good fit for the current text font, better than taking the tilde character from the current font. Apart from the one special case of computer modern I think this is likely to be worse. It also completely messes up searching and cut and paste of the text.

@percusse Looks horrible e.g. with ttfamily. And I certainly don't want font specific commands in a document which one has to correct at every font change.

@DavidCarlisle Current default is also not copy/pastable it gets the wrong tilde

@percusse but I can not think of any real cases when anyone would want that character, when does anyone use ~ outside of file paths and URL

@UlrikeFischer Again, we are not revolutinizing LaTeX. For the default there is no easy way to get a proper middle tilde.

What you are addressing is not related to what I'm asking about.

Every font is not relevant at all.

@percusse in OT1 it is \~{} as there is no low tilde in the font, T1 has one but in cm it is not very low.

@percusse With T1 encoding it works fine.

If I type a simple document, I would like to get a middle tilde which is copy/pastable and readable. Currently this is not possible without encoding change.

And what I argue is that for the default font this should be possible.

For other fonts all bets are off

@percusse you have to change encoding from OT1 to get any reasonable behaviour for lots of things, if we were braver (like @JosephWright) then we may have changed the default font encoding by now)

@percusse I agree with you that all these special characters needing to be input in weird ways is a stumbling block for the TeX/LaTeX beginner. (See similar thoughts here: randomdeterminism.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/… and I mentioned it in a recent answer: tex.stackexchange.com/a/422207/48)

@DavidCarlisle Maybe I'm confusing you about where these macros should live.

@percusse I'm not sure whether the default should be changed (actually I'm sure it should not, to avoid breaking old documents), but maybe there can be a \usepackage{beginner} or \usepackage{sanedefaults} or whatever, so that users don't have to deal with too much nonsense like this. Maybe you can create the package. :-) Or even a separate easylatex binary/format!

I'm after a mathtools addition not redesigning amsmath. Would this be a bit more clearer?

@ShreevatsaR Yes an extra correction package or some sort is what I meant.

@percusse that may yet come to the same thing:-) but I can't see that adding a macro that just gives a low tilde and only works in OT1 encoded cmr is that useful. 99% of the time people should be using \url and not using the new command, and the 1% of the time when it might help would be swamped by the times it was used after a font change and caused confusion and bad output.

But this backwards compatibility argument I really don't buy. Then those users shouldn't upgrade. I don't see why 40 year old document is blocking all the new features of PDF. But anyway that's another argument which I would like to avoid.

@DavidCarlisle URL is quite not the exception for tilde char though.

@percusse as you may have seen we changed the default input encoding this time (to utf-8) let's see how this goes before contemplating changing the font encoding:-)

The story is the same with backticks in verbatim mode :)

@percusse I can't think I have ever seen a ~ in normal text?

@percusse a more reasonable change would be to re-issue the T1 encoded cm fonts with the ~ lowered, but I don't know if that would ever be possible politically

@DavidCarlisle Those are decisions above my paygrade.

reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19moay/…

@DavidCarlisle ^^

Just to give you a taste of new generations :)

@percusse I think the “better defaults” TeX would default to UTF-8 encoding in a Unicode engine (XeTeX/LuaTeX), using Unicode (OTF) fonts, and with ~ as a regular character, so you'd just type ~ and get that character from the font, which would be in the usual (middle) position as in present-day fonts.

@ShreevatsaR or maybe just add it to the fix-cm package. I don't know if it is already in

half-hearted solution :-)

% Compile with xelatex or lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\catcode`\~=12
\begin{document}
Look inside ~username.
\end{document}

Already works, nothing special needed, except getting beginning users to use those engines and catcodes.

@ShreevatsaR Well if only it was up-to-me we would have more fun :) But I'm not the kind who is suitable for such decisions.

I tend to break things like there is no tomorrow.

@ShreevatsaR I hate to think what this would do to all my documents using ~ as a non-breaking space.

@UlrikeFischer :-)

@UlrikeFischer Yes that's why I suggested new package or format rather than changing the default... Most beginning users aren't aware of any such thing and don't use ~ for that purpose; they don't even think about spaces I'm sure :-)

@ShreevatsaR Imho they think faster about (non-breaking) spaces than about how to insert a tilde.

I never noticed how ugly double stroke letters are in Latin Modern

This tilde business was a problem in Open Sans font and github is quickly filled with issues in many repos. So it is not just a bunch of URL stuff.

Aside (came here to post this): creating a font by writing a “program” (in this case, CSS code!) for each letter, somewhat like the idea behind METAFONT: yusugomori.com/projects/css-sans/fonts

@ShreevatsaR Sweet!

What does \a do in LaTeX?

(Background: I would like to use \renewcommand{\a}{\mathfrak{a}} because I use fraktur a a lot.)

@JohnDorian don't.

[paulo@cardiff ~] $ texdef -t latex a

\a:
macro:#1->\expandafter \@changed@cmd \csname \string #1\endcsname \relax

It's already taken and it's not exactly wise to renew it. :)

@JohnDorian It is used in tabbing environments.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabbing}
\a=a a
\end{tabbing}
\end{document}

@PauloCereda @UlrikeFischer Okay, thank you.

Soon, there might be a lot of 4's inhere.

@JohnDorian sometimes the shortcuts might cause unpredicted behaviour

@PauloCereda Yes, I thought so, but if \a had been something unimportant (like e.g. just some symbol I never use), I might have been keen enough.

@JohnDorian completely understandable. :)

@PauloCereda And I didn't know of texdef which is why I asked here.

@JohnDorian Well if you want a one letter command \a is probably the most harmless to redefine. I don't think that I ever needed it. But normally you don't need only one char, and then it makes more sense do define a meaningfull command like \vector{a} \vector{b} etc.

@JohnDorian I'd like to add that you will make yourself a lot of friends if you use such macros in projects in which everybody edits the opus. Please do not! Every editor I know is able to define shortcuts.

I think I'm in love. She is called MetaPost. :)

@percusse -- added them to the "often referenced questions" list on meta. not exactly what you were asking for, but maybe helpful.

@mickep thejosefkstories.com/2008/12/29/metapost-mea-culpa

Spooky, isn't it? :)

@PauloCereda Congratulations! How many ducks are in there?

@marmot Thanks. :) I don't have the sources here, but as soon as I arrive home, I will grep them and provide an accurate number. :)

@PauloCereda as reward:

@PauloCereda Hard covered pack of white sheets?

@PauloCereda Unbelievable! You need grep to find this out? What if they are asking you this question in your defense?

I have an amsthm environment called motivation. Had to smile when I just typed \end{motivation} ^^

@marmot Are you around?

forest defines a roof path as follows:

roof/.style={edge path’={%
      (.parent first)--(!u.children)--(.parent last)--cycle
    }

@AlanMunn What do you mean by "around"?

@marmot ^^^ How can I add a colour to it?

@marmot In the room and able to respond. :)

Or roof/.append style={color=blue}

@marmot Thanks. The [...] syntax worked. color=blue didn't, which is what I tried.

@DavidCarlisle This question is a duplicate and already has an answer!

@egreg I don't get the reference, do you mind explaining?

@PauloCereda oh no, you wiped out all the fun!

@PauloCereda All three pages? Title page, table of contents, and THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY BLANK? Impressive.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY BLANK is the title of the thesis

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@HaraldHanche-Olsen @CarLaTeX you are mean

@PauloCereda Isn't there a typo, shouldn't it be "ooh"?

@yo' no worries, there's an interesting note about this matter in the final document

@PauloCereda but we love ducks

@PauloCereda anyway, please remind me to bring you "one thing", you'll like it :)

@yo' ^^ from my thesis, really!

@PauloCereda oh goodness!

@PauloCereda Haha, lovely!

@yo' @mickep <3

@PauloCereda So when is the dissertation? Are we invited? :D

@mickep Weird tales and horror stories

@egreg do we know anyone we can blame for csquotes?

@DavidCarlisle /sigh

@JosephWright see question ? (I was just tracing, but you might be quicker:-)

@JosephWright :

\def\csq@ifutfchar#1{%
  \ifundef\@inpenc@undefined

@DavidCarlisle Yup

@DavidCarlisle Suggestion for a better test?

@JosephWright I was just working out what it was doing:-) probably it should test that \inputencodingname is utf8 as we said for the french babel one even in the old format it shouldn't really equate the utf8 internals being defined with that being the current encoding

@DavidCarlisle Yes, somebody who sighed.

@egreg well as long as we have someone to blame, all is OK.

@egreg Kind Prof. can you see my answer, please, when you have a bit of the time? Thanks a lot. Actually I have not an answer.

@DavidCarlisle It's not: there's a second test for utf8 as the encoding name ...

@JosephWright yes I didn't get the logic of what it's doing quite right at first look. do you have a better version

@DavidCarlisle I guess I need to rearrange so I always test for \inputencodingname being defined ...

@Sebastiano No, it has no answer, sorry.

  \ifundef\inputencodingname
    {\@secondoftwo}
    {\csq@ifutfenc}%

@DavidCarlisle Just ^^ perhaps in the same place?

@JosephWright oh perhaps yes: i was thinking you needed to check it was utf8 rather than just defined but \csq@ifutfenc gets called which tests that anyway

@DavidCarlisle Seems to work

@JosephWright it fails on undeclared latin 1 though (which used to work) actually scratch that, I confused myself

Looks as if I should really look up how much of utf8+inputenc has moved in the kernel. \inputencoding is not defined but \DeclareUnicodeCharacter is.

@UlrikeFischer there were some issues with including the whole package, basically utf8.def gets input but the model (as before) is that if you want to change encoding you need to input inputenc it works Ok but packages testing internals might not see what they expected to see

@DavidCarlisle Checking \inputencodingname would be naturally better -- but you need to trust the users that they don't do nonsense and setup the encoding correctly;-)

@UlrikeFischer never trust the users

@UlrikeFischer excellent plan

Is there a way to globally change the thickness of lines drawn in TikZ?

@AlanMunn You mean at the start of every drawing?

@AlanMunn \begin{tikzpicture}[line width=4pt]

@marmot I tried that with \tikzset{line width=4pt} but no change. Should there be a difference?

... but of course this will be overwritten by \draw[thin] (1,0) -- (2,0);, say.

@marmot This is all forest environments...

@marmot And it seems to have no effect at all on anything.

@AlanMunn Try \tikzset{every picture/.style={line width=2mm}}

@marmot Bingo! Thanks.

@AlanMunn But please do not blame me for side effects ;-)

and ` \tikzset{every picture/.append style={line width=2mm}}` is somewhat safer

@egreg Prof. always thank you very much.

@marmot True. :)

@marmot The side effects so far are very nice. (I'm making trees for a poster, and the standard thickness is too thin.)

@marmot @AlanMunn Hallo and I have appreciated always your excellent works.

Goodbye to everybody.

@Sebastiano Thanks. Buona notte.

@AlanMunn \useforestlibrary{sequoia} 😁

@Sebastiano Grazie e buona sera!

@AlanMunn I see. How many trees have to die for your poster? ;-)

Shaky bus

@AlanMunn Are you really a linguist? ;=) How can a thickness be too thin? ;-) Isn't that like a mass being too heavy?

(just kidding of course ;-)

@marmot proper picture mode has \thicklines

@DavidCarlisle \renewcommand{\thicklines}{\tikzset{every picture/.append style={line width=2mm}}} could work, yes.

@marmot :) Language has many mysteries. For example, the plural really means '1 or more', and the as comparative John is as tall as Bill means 'John is the same height or taller than Bill'. And John is taller than Bill doesn't entail that either of them are tall... So yes, a thickness can be thin.

@marmot As many trees as are needed to make a 40x32 inch poster. :)

@marmot Another TikZ question if I may:

\documentclass[landscape]{article}
\usepackage[margin=.5in]{geometry}
\usepackage[linguistics]{forest}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{gb4e,cgloss}
\def\1{$'$}
\def\uD{$u$D}
\newcommand{\TR}[1]{$\langle\text{#1}\rangle$}
\forestset{default preamble={for tree={inner sep=1pt,edge path'/.append={very thick}}},
expand/.style={s sep=#1},
blue roof/.style={edge path'={%
      [blue](.parent first)--(!u.children)--(.parent last)--cycle
    }
},}
\tikzset{red arrow/.style={->,red},every picture/.style={line width=2pt}}

@marmot How do I remove the kink in the red arrow?

@AlanMunn Alternatively you can play with two bend lefts with different angles, sth like \draw[->,red,] (TRACE.south) to[bend left=10] (A.center) to[bend left=8] (SUBJ); and adjust 8 and 10 in such a way that the kink disappears, but I find the in and out easier because you don't need to adjust, just make the first in and second out differ by 180.

@marmot So there's no way to have a smooth curve that includes a coordinate but doesn't connect it on the path? (Intuitively \draw (A) to [passing through C ] (B).)

@AlanMunn Probably I do not understand the question. My proposal passes through (A.center).