TeX, LaTeX and Friends

CarLaTeX

02:53

@marmot you could go a little bit North

manooooh

Hello everyone!

Can I ask you why TeX.SE still doesn't have MathJax loaded?

Because some title questions have $...$ and it isn't rendered... It's very ugly!!

I red this topic but I think it's an old thought... Like Math.SE, we should include MathJax to our writings!!

marmot

03:13

@CarLaTeX Yes, but there the pizze are not so good. A really bad dilemma. ;-)

@manooooh This is on purpose. How would you be able to see which code the OP wrote?

manooooh

03:40

@marmot that isn't the main problem. Right click on a math formula -> Show Math As -> TeX Commands

@marmot to show a formula one could write $a+b$ instead of $a+b$

@marmot and with respect to the titles, the $a+b$ (with quotes) should also work. If not, avoid the mathematical mode in the titles. I don't think it's very difficult to program that

marmot

@manooooh I don't know. For me personally it is more reasonable if I see the code and possibly a screen shot of the result. LaTeX can achieve so many things that MathJax can't, so you will never really satisfy people here. And after all, we do want to see the code, and not necessarily a formula. Having said that, there were indeed situations in which I did want to show formulae. I ended up writing a short document and adding the screen shot.

manooooh

04:12

@marmot what happens is that you can continue to see the code, what problem is there that is not explicitly?

@marmot after all, anyone who wants to show a mathematical formula must explicitly add single quotes. I propose this because people who are new here intuit that they don't know much about the site and therefore copy and paste mathematical formulas with $...$ , and that is not very pleasant. On the other hand, when wanting to show that the function to be plotted in TikZ is for example $x^2+y^2=1$ then it isn't necessary to write it explicitly

marmot

@manooooh Even if you convince me, things won't change because it is not in my hands, um, claws. I actually do not thing that formulae are the only things that are to be put in backticks, any code element should be written that way. Imagine somebody asks how to make some quantity bold, and you'd try to say "Add \boldface." How would that work if this gets parsed by MathJax?

manooooh

@marmot hahah you have more decision than you think, dear marmot :)

@marmot anyway, you yourself write code in single quotes. Do you think "$...$" it's not code? Why don't you write it with single quotes?

marmot

@manooooh One way to go is to look at tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1272/121799. Perhaps you will convince everyone. What I meant by code is really any TeX code, e.g. \draw (0,0) -- (1,0);. How should this be rendered?

manooooh

@marmot don't link me answers from anothers, be yourself! You won't plagiarize for this

@marmot that should be rendered with ````. Also $x^2+y^2=1$

marmot

04:29

@manooooh All I wanted to say is that I am fine with how these things work, I mean the non-rendering of formulae (but of course not the new design of the site).

manooooh

@marmot okay, I thought that could get to cause you problems

marmot

@manooooh You only need to wake me up during hibernation time to cause me problems. ;-)

manooooh

@marmot hahaha you are a free-problems-marmot?!?!? Omg :O

@marmot btw your answers are great, I love your expressions, like "As @Someone say in his awesome answer [link]..." <3

marmot

@manooooh Thanks! (Actually I think one really should to that, and I have problems with users who just copy and sell things as their own stuff. Of course, one may simply not know others posts, but just copying is not so nice IMHO, but other people think differently.)

2

CarLaTeX

05:01

@marmot A big problem, indeed! :)

manooooh

Hahaha

marmot

@CarLaTeX I already know I will regret it but here is a timely example. I actually do not know how to deal with this, I do not want to have fights.

CarLaTeX

@marmot Just ignore it, remember we are here to help, not to gain reputation. If you think it is necessary, just flag the answer as "in need of moderator intervention" and explain your reasons.

marmot

@CarLaTeX Yes, I try to ignore it, and he is by far not the worst one. Still it is going on my nerves.

CarLaTeX

@marmot Keep calm and think only to the OP's good :):):)

marmot

05:15

@CarLaTeX @manooooh BTW, I even think that, if you want to get more reputation, than it is good to cite other answers because then there is a link to yours which people may follow. (I stress that this is not the reason why I (try to) "cite" other posts.)

Buona notte! ;-)

CarLaTeX

@marmot However don't start a discussion. I did it once and I was treated as childish while I was only expressing my opinion. I won't do it anymore.

marmot

@CarLaTeX But you are not. Yet I agree that there is probably not much one can do about it. (One of the worst things I experienced was that a user told me that it is OK that he just copies my answer because he joined the site earlier than me. LOL. ;-)

CarLaTeX

@marmot "All users are equal but some users are more equal than others". Do you know "Animal farm"?

manooooh

05:54

@marmot do you think that I want to get some rep? I told you I don't want to read answers from anothers. I want to read only yours, you make very good posts, but quoting someone else isn't creative at all

@marmot btw I hope you understand that I want to give the corresponding credit to the person who has the most of the answer, but I think this isn't the most important think.. Anyway as @CarLaTeX said I don't want to make a discussion, I know that I'll lost cuack! (Who cares if a discussion was lost or not)

@CarLaTeX I remember that from another situation... Maybe was here and you told that? lol I can't remember well

David Carlisle

06:39

@manooooh because it would be a bad idea:-) (we have a meta question on precisely that)

@marmot Oh not to worry, that behaviour is expected from that OP: he's always rude to people trying to help, just flick over his activity list you find lots of things like this:-)

You seem to fail to realize that the above code doesn't work on my system. Just because it works on yours does absolutely no good. I use lualatex as I said before. I also said all the code worked fine before I had to reinstall. So it is not my code, per se. You seem to be unfamiliar with programming and how dependencies and such and simply play the imitation game(on tex.stackexchange it is the MWE). In fact I have given a nearly MWE and MNWE... which is optimal. Sure, my real code might have issues but if the above cannot compile then my code can never compile. Do you not realize that? — AbstractDissonance Dec 19 '16 at 7:06

CarLaTeX

07:26

@manooooh You remember well I told you it :)

David Carlisle

07:47

@CarLaTeX and it isn't ducks or marmots that are more equal

user 2646

08:12

marmot

11:40

@manooooh No. I did not imply you at all here. This was really about some special users, not you.

@DavidCarlisle Yup. Just wanted to say that I was surprised about it and give "moral support". ;-)

David Carlisle

@marmot I wasn't surprised, in this case:-)

Skillmon

12:57

Why is \ttfamily\hskip1em not as wide as \ttfamily\phantom{m}? Does the em length not change if \ttfamily is used?

manooooh

@CarLaTeX yeah... (?

@DavidCarlisle yes yes I linked that question here, but I disagree :p

Joseph Wright

@manooooh The number of questions which actually need formulae is very small: almost always, it's the code or TeX output we are interested in (or both)

David Carlisle

13:14

@manooooh the situation is completely different to stackoverflow or math.stackexchange there the poster needs to dispay some math, the markup to get that math is just a detail. Here you very rarely "just need to display some math" what you need to do is clarify your question by showing how tex renders your markup, and using a non-tex system to do that would be very confusing.

@Skillmon 1em has no relation to the width of an m.

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle then this is a misunderstanding on my side. I thought an em was the width of an m in the current font.

@DavidCarlisle just like an ex is the height of an x (or is it not, is everything I thought was true is a lie?)

David Carlisle

@Skillmon no it's the value of fontdimen6 (ex is fontdimen5) they are just arbitrary lengths set by the font designer.

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle but I thought those should be the width of an em and the height of an x. I just go crying in the corner for a few minutes.

David Carlisle

@Skillmon actually 1ex is often the lowercase height so height of x but 1em is almost never the width of m

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle Why call it that way then?

David Carlisle

13:21

@Skillmon why are you called Skillmon?

manooooh

@JosephWright I appreciate your answer, but there are some cases where de have questions with $...$ or with explicits single quotes. Same answer for @DavidCarlisle

David Carlisle

@manooooh ?

daleif

@Skillmon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

David Carlisle

@manooooh the backtick syntax doesn't work in question titles so you will see \fooo or $x^2$ or other non-working markup, users can't be expected to know all the edge cases of the markdown rules. Which are different in titles, main posts comment and in chat just to make things interesting.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I didn't have enough time to edit... It's very ugly to see dollar signs to show a math formula

David Carlisle

13:28

@manooooh it's not showing a math formula, it is showing tex markup, if I asked a question about \footnote I would expect that markup to show, not that the title gets a footnote, the same is true of math markup.

Ulrike Fischer

@manooooh there are certainly a few cases where mathjax would be nice. But they are only a few cases. And I don't want to have to fight against mathjax in all the other cases where I want to see or show tex code. So mathjax would be only acceptable if it only affects parts that have been marked up explictly as "use mathjax here".

David Carlisle

13:42

@manooooh consider this question

75

Q: {(x+y)}^2 or (x+y)^2?

This expression is just an example, of course. My question is: should one always specify the quantity being exponentiated by surrounding it with braces, or is it acceptable to drop those braces? (Cases in which \left(...\right) are used lie outside the scope of my question.) It seems to me that...

do you think it would be easier to explain the markup difference if the title was displayed as (x+y)² or (x+y)² ?

Ulrike Fischer

14:28

@DavidCarlisle the transparent package needs perhaps an adaption to luatex: tex.stackexchange.com/a/450556/2388

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Saw that :)

@UlrikeFischer I'll soon have expl3 support for all these things :)

@UlrikeFischer BTW, need to talk to you about luaotfload: expect a mail later

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright Well currently it is more a question of getting rid of the use of some command names so that luatex85 is no longer needed.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer True

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer yes I had some plan to slowly remove all use, in that directory I see

$ grep -l luatex85 *.dtx
askinclude.dtx
embedfile.dtx
pdfcol.dtx
pdfrender.dtx

@UlrikeFischer so those packages need updating not to use it but looks like I missed adding luatex85 to transparent when it originally broke. Guess another oberdiek update coming up....

Skillmon

I just got an error from \dim_set:Nn \l_tmpa_dim { .5 * 10pt } :(

marmot

14:43

@CarLaTeX Is this the animal farm or the old Roman empire. (I always thought there was something like "primus inter pares" and then there were some who were especially equal. And I thought animal farm just copied from the Roman history, which of course brings us right back to the topic. ;-)

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon \dim_set:Nn does \dimexpr, which requires the first number to be a <dimen>, so you would need \dim_set:Nn \l_tmpa_dim { 10pt * 0.5 } (.5 apparently doesn't work too). See this: tex.stackexchange.com/a/245663/134574

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik Thanks, didn't know it is just a \dimexpr (but should have thought of this).

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer added an issue ...

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon Ooh, I just noticed. The first term has to be a <dimen> and the next an integer expression. That 10pt * 0.5 returns 0.0pt. You can use \dim_set:Nn \l_tmpa_dim { 10pt / 2 } though

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik that's what I'm doing. The bit of information that it is a \dimexpr is enough. Thank you.

Phelype Oleinik

14:53

@Skillmon You're welcome :)

boycott.se - yo'

15:08

@barbarabeeton re: willing to be silly, I just stumbled across this at wikipedia

> A joke sometimes maintained is that a haggis is a small Scottish animal with longer legs on one side, so that it can run around the steep hills of the Scottish highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33 percent of American visitors to Scotland believed haggis to be an animal.

@DavidCarlisle well, it's slightly closer to the width of M, usually. But we all know that 1em is supposed to be the width of a two-digit number

David Carlisle

@boycott.se-yo' details:-)

barbara beeton

@boycott.se-yo' -- well, anna russell does mention "free range haggis" in one of her disquisitions. and you do know, of course, that west virginia is so hilly that all the cows have legs that are longer on one side ...

boycott.se - yo'

15:23

@barbarabeeton oh hybrids between cows and haggis!

coggis!

barbara beeton

@boycott.se-yo' -- should this become a tikzling? (but what would it look like?)

boycott.se - yo'

@barbarabeeton @samcarter would think something out. But I believe that we should start with haggis himself

David Carlisle

@boycott.se-yo' she should definitely have called the package tikzmenu

CarLaTeX

@marmot I think George Orwell was referring to the Russian Revolution, but I think it's suitable for many other historical events (and not only)

@DavidCarlisle Indeed, they are not pigs :)

marmot

@CarLaTeX Well, my recollection of what I was supposed to learn in history and Latin is certainly fading. ;-) @DavidCarlisle Ducks and marmots are friends....

boycott.se - yo'

15:36

@DavidCarlisle oh no!

Joseph Wright

18:02

Everyone watching the Apple Keynote?

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright What's that?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright no

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle :)

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha annual jamboree when apple make shock announcements like "we are going to sell even more expensive phones" or "we are going to sell watches that only work if you buy one of our expensive phones"

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Sounds boycottable, actually.

David Carlisle

18:06

@FaheemMitha yes

Faheem Mitha

When it comes to Apple, I'm the opposite of whatever a fan is.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I'm looking at xmarks

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yes just saw your mail.

Faheem Mitha

@CarLaTeX He was. And the aftermath of it. Specifically the Bolshevik takeover. And events up to and including WW2.

But of course he was also making more general points about the corruption of power and so forth.

None of it particularly original. But in political literature, as in many other things, in large part it's about the presentation.

I'm pretty sure there are no marmots in Animal Farm, though. There might be the odd duck.

manooooh

18:29

@UlrikeFischer yes, exactly! That's why I say that in the majority of cases the single quotes are added so that MathJax knows that it should not render it. In addition, we should all write it in quotes: it's part of a code, so both the form of writing \footnote or x^2+y^2=1 should be in quotes. I don't understand why most don't follow this

Joseph Wright

@manooooh But we'd get loads of questions where the user was thinking they could use MathJaX to show the TeX output: you simply can't

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I already know that it is not possible. Two things happen with the title case: either the users do not write with quotes or dollar signs, or they write it because they don't know it. So my alternative to this is, simply, render simple quotes! If Math.SE could do it with the formulas, why not us?

@JosephWright it's wrong, because in the body of the question they can but in the title no. That's bad

Joseph Wright

@manooooh No: MathJaX simply isn't TeX: the output may or may not be the same

Ulrike Fischer

@manooooh No. I would only accept it the other way round: If mathjax is used only for things explicitly marked up for mathjax. When I'm lazy and write in a comment $x^2$ I don't want mathjax to interfere.

manooooh

@UlrikeFischer don't you want to use the MathJax rendering? Okay, but I don't understand why the titles don't render the single quotes. Why don't you accept this either?

@JosephWright we agree on that, but it is not homogeneous, as in Math.SE, where both the title and the body and the chat are always rendered correctly, while here a formula like $a+b$ doesn't

Ulrike Fischer

18:38

@manooooh No. In 98% of all cases I don't see a point in mathjax. mathjax is not tex, it doesn't show the tex output. I don't know how quotes are handled in titles but this is unrelated to mathjax.

manooooh

(I repeat, for the cases where you have to explicitly see the code KEEP IT)

@UlrikeFischer all I want to do for titles is render the single quotes. For example, please take this recent question and ask yourself if it's pretty to see two simple quotes in the title...

@DavidCarlisle @JosephWright please see the title of this question and explain to me why you would let the code have the same visual level as the rest of the words

@UlrikeFischer if you are asking for a function named $x^2$ so, in that case, I would probably use MathJax. Now, if the user has a problem with $x^2$ so, in that case, the user would probably write ``$x^2$` (with two simple quotes). That's it :D. This applies to both titles and messages. Why do not you like this?

David Carlisle

@manooooh that is unrelated to mathjax `$\frac$` ought to work in titles but it doesn't (across the whole network) whether or not the site is using mathjax.

@manooooh everybody agrees that the title formatting is rubbish but that is a different issue (and can't be fixed just for this site)

manooooh

18:54

@DavidCarlisle simple quotes should work in the titles... like MathJax in Math.SE...

David Carlisle

@manooooh backticks ` you mean not ' should work across the whole network in titles, I think everyone would agree with that but you asked about mathjax which is completely unrelated issue.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle why can not it be fixed? It seems so simple. I understand that MathJax is something universal, while single quotes are an invention of TeX.SE, right?

@DavidCarlisle yeah I mean backtiks `

@DavidCarlisle it's true, I asked for MathJax. But hey, since we're here, I wonder why we can't use backticks in titles

David Carlisle

@manooooh stackexchange is a private company and the details of their markdown processor are not public, so can not say why it doesn't work but it's an issue network wide so it would have to be raised on the network meta (I am sure it has been raised before) I would guess the issue is related to do with other uses of the title text, for making URL and indexing pages but it seems pretty silly to me.

@manooooh but arguing for two things in the same sentence makes it very hard to reply. One could be turned on but is not turned on on this site by design, the other is most likely a bug but no sign of it ever being fixed and is not specific to this site

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I'm sorry, I'll try not to mix two different issues together in one sentence...

David Carlisle

@manooooh i don't say it can't be fixed, I said it can't be fixed just for this site as it is a feature of the network markdown processing.

So for mathjax it isn't enabled just because we asked for it not to be enabled:-)

manooooh

19:01

@DavidCarlisle I don't understand you. Some sites don't have MathJax loaded

David Carlisle

@manooooh the back tick processing is nothing to do with mathjax :-)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle you tell me that there is private politics, but for certain things the users have the power to change things here...

@DavidCarlisle ahhhhhhh!! Why is everything so complicated to do? :(

David Carlisle

@manooooh I don't understand that comment, actually before I was active here there was a meta question asking if mathjax should be enabled and the ovewhelming view expressed in the answers there was that it should not be on this site so it is not enabled on this site, so basically that was democracy. It was also the right decision.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle you are not seeing what I want to express or I am expressing myself badly. Using MathJax on this site FOR EVERYTHING is simply a disaster. But there are options that are left out, and that can be solved in a easy way

David Carlisle

@manooooh no having mathjax rendering on this site would be confusing in almost all cases it is much better that it is not enabled.

manooooh

19:09

@DavidCarlisle confusing for whom? For those who are a few months ago suscribed? For those who have years? For all?

David Carlisle

@manooooh for anyone reading the site

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I don't, so they are not all :)

David Carlisle

What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle you know that I am new to this site. Those jokes are not funny to me

David Carlisle

@manooooh on a site that is specifically about the TeX typesetting any reader looking at a rendered math expression is entitled to assume that it is a Tex rendering.

@manooooh xkcd is the major source of all internet knowledge, if you don't like being referred to it on occasion then you probably shouldn't discuss things on the internet....

manooooh

19:14

@DavidCarlisle who believes in that besides you?

David Carlisle

@manooooh why wouldn't anyone believe that? It is also more or less the answer here:

49

Q: Why doesn't maths render as maths?

On some other SE sites, code in between dollar signs gets rendered as mathematics (using MathJaX, I believe). This doesn't seem to work here? Why not? And how do I get round it?

support faq

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I never had to use that site, to my liking

marmot

@FaheemMitha There is actually a simple reason: marmots are beings, so they do not belong on an animal farm. ;-)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle "we want to see the actual code far more often than we want to see the rendered output" that's not true for me!! For example, please take this question that I asked here a time ago. The first paragraph has code that should be written using MathJax, don't you think? It is in these cases (and others) where MathJax becomes essential

@DavidCarlisle another example (where it says "The equation is x^2/4 + y^2 = 1.")

David Carlisle

@manooooh it certainly should not be written using mathjax's tex-like parser on this site, if you want to show something a bit more formatted you could use 𝑦₁ = 𝑥² but really it's such a rare case, and if mathjax's tex input was enabled people woud use it all the time thinking it was showing tex output that it absolutely should not be enabled. If you really wanted it then the asciimath or mathml input might be more reasonable

@manooooh I prefer the unrendered form of the equation there as you are giving it so it can be plotted by someone in an answer, typesetting it wouldn't have helped.

manooooh

19:29

@DavidCarlisle thanks for the suggestion. I am a rare case, so I want to use MathJax for these situations :P. You are rare too, but you are more years here and people love you more ;). I do not think people are stupid enough to abuse MathJax. Moreover, they continue to inflict the most basic rules, so adding something that is not catastrophic will not cause major problems

David Carlisle

@manooooh again, the site would let you post 𝑥²/4 + 𝑦² = 1 if you want that

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I'll think about it, but can that script be seen by anyone from any device? I want to stick to what the site has to offer and not use external things

@DavidCarlisle I don't understand. Would you have written the equation without back ticks?

David Carlisle

@manooooh they don't have to be stupid, they just come to some tex forum that they found by google, and ask a question about $x=y^2$ and it would get rendered. Unless they have read the site manual why wouldn't they think it tex (and even if they do not think that, having it rendered makes the question harder to answer)

@manooooh I didn't use any external script or any markup actually, it's just character data,

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle but that is to assume that people think that, when I believe that it is not so. No one is going to notice the difference in Google (of course, those who would develop this would notice)

@DavidCarlisle I don't mean to use MathJax in titles, I want to see (in 98% of cases) a question title that renders back ticks

David Carlisle

@manooooh sorry I don't understand that comment at all. I think your view is coloured by asking some pgfplots questions which are really math function plotting questions and it's almost an accident that pgfplots is written in tex. such question are not typical, most questions are about tex and seeing the markup is far more useful

Faheem Mitha

19:35

@marmot Interesting perspective.

David Carlisle

@manooooh why back to the backtick issue??? that is not related at all. I don't think anyone thinks that backticks not working in titles is good.

marmot

@FaheemMitha Well, at least this is a consistent explanation of the absence of marmots on the animal farm, isn't it? (As far as I remember, there are also no koalas. ;-)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle because this is the most important thing!! It should be fixed. I am thinking to post a topic in meta to discuss this problem with more users...

David Carlisle

@manooooh yes but you keep interweaving it into a discussion about mathjax and math rendering which is very confusing. But I'm sure it has been raised multiple times on meta, let me see if I can find it...

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I do not care if I ask the weirdest questions on the site. This should be like this. Nobody is going to always render with MathJax. That's not gonna happen

Faheem Mitha

19:39

@marmot Perhaps Eric didn't know any marmots?

marmot

@FaheemMitha I like my explanation better, but you may find me biased. ;-)

David Carlisle

@manooooh several hits eg this one

13

Q: Avoid or format `backticks` in titles

I see more and more titles with backticks in the title (like mine here)... For example: Parse div `data` into JavaScript function (renamed by Bart meanwhile) Is this a good practice? I guess not because I find this ugly, so there are three suggestions possible for me: Avoid them in titles, ...

feature-request markdown title

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle ok, I'll wait you. What I write here is a rough draft of what I think. If you take it seriously I could write better and more relaxed, than being in a chat waiting for your comments. But since I know it's not important to you ...

@DavidCarlisle let me read it

David Carlisle

or this

0

Q: Escaping wiki markup in the title

The wiki markup parser is very confused about the title of Line-comment in XML — one other than <!— .. -->. The title ends in <!, so the last part gets stripped in some contexts. Some pairs of dashes (which are integral to the meaning of the question) are converted to an mdash, but others aren'...

support markdown-rendering

or this

27

Q: Fix Markdown/SmartyPants in question titles

Consider this question: is x-- > 0 && array[x] well defined behavior in c++? Unfortunately, the question title is displayed on SO as: is `x— > 0 && array[x]` well defined behavior in c++? There are two issues here: Less severe, the backticks are displayed verbatim and don’t delimit a co...

feature-request status-declined markdown title

manooooh

I see, I see

David Carlisle

19:42

@manooooh no one thinks this good except for stackoverflow staff:-)

@manooooh note the status-declined that got added to that last one.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle "Backticks in titles make no real sense". 2018 and we still writing with back ticks...

@DavidCarlisle I don't understand that question

@DavidCarlisle thanks for the warning. I also warning you that the question was asked 8 years ago...

David Carlisle

@manooooh basically this answer says that the person who co founded the network doesn't want backticks in titles, so that's the way it is. It's his site he gets to choose.

-1

A: Fix Markdown/SmartyPants in question titles

We definitely don't want Markdown in question titles it's too processing intensive it's additional complexity and overkill IMO And how do we tell the difference between these two titles: How do I "accept" an answer-- where do I click? and is x-- > 0 && array[x] well defined behavior...

CarLaTeX

@FaheemMitha marmots are not farm animals, indeed, they live in the mountains :):):)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle but Jeff isn't here anymore... :)

David Carlisle

@manooooh yes people have been asking for this for years (I could find more examples)

manooooh

19:50

@DavidCarlisle do not you think that things can change?

Faheem Mitha

@CarLaTeX That would explain it.

David Carlisle

@manooooh I know but the company reply has been consistent anyway. But don't argue with me on this one (you can argue with me about mathjax) i think it's stupid that they don't work.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle and all that questions has a status-declined tag?

marmot

@CarLaTeX They are beings who live, eat and hibernate in the mountains, and participate at the LaTeX chat. ;-)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle hahaha lol!

CarLaTeX

19:52

@marmot Of course!

@FaheemMitha :)

David Carlisle

@marmot and can be made into good salami for pizza topping

marmot

@DavidCarlisle Nonono, you got it completely wrong. Notice that Marmot jackets are also not made of marmots!

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle okay, I initially had the idea of discussing MathJax here on the site but then using the backticks I'm also interested in... Thank you for your time, David :)

Faheem Mitha

I'm puzzled. People want MathJax on TeX? To what end?

marmot

@FaheemMitha Pssst! This discussion was just about to end without any major complications. ;-)

Faheem Mitha

19:55

@marmot Ok, never mind then.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha to display some equations correctly, to not see a same-level-visual-style for dollar signs in a title (i.e. using backticks and rendering it into titles), etc.

@marmot I'm hereeeee!! :P :P

marmot

@manooooh Oh, @FaheemMitha was talking too loud. ;-)

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh On a site about a markup language, sounds like scope for confusion.

manooooh

@marmot hahaha

Faheem Mitha

Would it be fair to call TeX markup? Or just LaTeX?

I'm never quite sure what those terms mean.

manooooh

19:57

@FaheemMitha it will not be confusing. Confusing is that now the titles are all with text; confusing is that to show a mathematical equation you should use backticks (or even that), etc.

@FaheemMitha I don't know too... :(

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Hang on, you want to show equations in the title?

manooooh

@FaheemMitha in some cases, of course

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Hmm, I doubt anyone would be on board with that.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha I can try to ask in meta, we still are in democracy

Faheem Mitha

Well, I mean equations rendering as anything as raw text. Though even putting math in a title is quite unusual.

@manooooh I'm not sure what gave you that idea.

People love that word. But it's mostly imaginary. Like true love.

manooooh

20:00

@FaheemMitha nobody, that site is used to ask these kinds of questions, right? And if I do, what do I lose? They'll ground me?

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Sure, you can ask. I'm just saying, I don't think it's a democracy. The site is owned and run by a private company, who can do anything they like. And do.

It would be nice to have exactly the same kind of site run by a TeX foundation, but that currently isn't the case.

Till folks here start a multi-million dollar TeX consultancy, at least.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha yes I agree with that. There are few cases, but you never know if at some time MathJax will be needed more frequently here

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh I'm curious if you've found any convincing examples.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha don't worry about that. Do you receive good answers? That's good, even if TeX.SE is private or public

Faheem Mitha

Though the chat room probably prefers if it the topic dies quietly.

@manooooh It doesn't keep me awake at night. But I think we can all agree it's not a good thing.

manooooh

20:05

@FaheemMitha well, I just simply enter to the site, CTRL + F -> $ and search for questions. You can do it, and rarely there are questions that has dollar signs

@FaheemMitha why?

@FaheemMitha I don't understand you

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh What's the problem with dollar signs.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha being in the hands of a private or public company is not bad. Now, if there is some kind of chaos, or poorly paid salaries, or whatever, of course it is wrong

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh because the topic has been discussed before (apparently), and they don't want to rehash it again.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha we treat them as if they were normal text, and this is not the case

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Loss of control is always bad in the end.

manooooh

20:07

@FaheemMitha @DavidCarlisle show me questions at least 4 years ago... (there are a question from 8 years ago!)

Faheem Mitha

Ideally a site like this would be under community control. But I suppose that the TeX community doesn't have sufficient resources.

Or it's simply not a priority.

@manooooh There you go.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha sorry I don't understand :c

barbara beeton

@manooooh -- it seems to me that people here have complained that the handling of single quotes (well, the left-hand ones) isn't the same in the title and body. i haven't time to track that down now, but will try to do so when i can, unless someone else does so first.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha but the authority of 8 years ago is not the same as now ...

@FaheemMitha oh, that's bad :(

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh The people owning this site can do anything they want, and the actual people using the site have no say. Does that strike you as a satisfactory state of affairs?

manooooh

20:12

@barbarabeeton ok, thank you barbara :). I assumed that someone must have thought about this too ... but I would like to take it up again in 2018, because things have changed. Although I do not know if they pay attention to me, with all the problems that there were when changing to the new site ...

@FaheemMitha is that this site should not be used for much more (ask questions and answer). I'm not disparaging. I'm saying it's a public site to everyone, what else can we expect?

@FaheemMitha I can expect them to listen to my voice, but if they do not, I'll have to conform. I know I'm asking a lot for something that almost nobody is interested in, and on top of that, asking people to change the code of a very important site in a "free" way. It's crazy, but sometimes it has worked (like the format changes of the site that many active users have managed to get out of here, and I'm proud to see it, but you can not demand a lot from a public site and free)

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh If it was owned by the community, it would still be public, and it would be a safer situation.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha but unfortunately we are in the hands of a private and stingy company

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Well, yes. That was my point. But it doesn't have to be that way.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha what can we do to change it?

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh The community could build its own site.

manooooh

20:21

@FaheemMitha I ask seriously. The public is always the best. If I knew how to do it to reverse it I would already be doing it, but I do not know anyone from my country who is involved in this world of TeX, so I feel physically alone

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Building such a site would be a huge task.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha that would be fantastic! Would there be economic support? Note that by advertising many people would leave ...

@FaheemMitha yup

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh No idea. The TeX community doesn't seem to get much money.

Though clearly many entities benefit from its existence.

Notably publishers.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha Exactly. That is another subject. Work free or not?

Faheem Mitha

Academic publishers, some of them, make a lot of money.

@manooooh Obviously it would require some money.

As far as I can tell, the support offered by publishers is approximately zero.

manooooh

20:24

@FaheemMitha some, hence there isn't the main problem

@FaheemMitha that's... fine, I think?

@FaheemMitha lol

Well...

@FaheemMitha so I do not understand how there can be people like that. That is, what do the editors do here? What do they contribute, how do we recognize them, how do they earn money? That's strange for me

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh I'm not sure what you are asking.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha if the publishers don't make contributions, why are they here and what do they do to earn money? (I know that if we all knew this question we would all be publishers... hahaha)

Btw I'm searching for last questions that has dollar signs in their titles and those are very few!

barbara beeton

@manooooh -- not sure who you mean by "editors". however, some of us are here because we care about tex, find it much more suitable for the kind of work we do than other programs that are alleged to be able to handle math and other technical notation, and are willing to spend some of our own time helping others become adept at working with tex.

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Publishers want to make money. Some of the academic ones are really successful at doing so. In large part by screwing over the academic community. I don't know what you mean by "why are they here". What is "here"?

manooooh

@FaheemMitha I didn't see publishers in TeX.SE, so for me is strange talk with this kind of people. By "here" I mean TeX.SE

David Carlisle

20:39

@FaheemMitha yes:-)

Faheem Mitha

@manooooh Publishers use it. I don't know whether they frequent TeX SE.

@DavidCarlisle Hmm. So if this site was to disappear tomorrow, that would be fine with you?

manooooh

@barbarabeeton "editors" was the suggestion of Google Translate haha, I mean publishers or persons who have a famous trajectory, like @FaheemMitha pointed (I think). That's so great to read! :)

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well the content would appear somewhere else possibly with some lossage of the last month or so, several people keep the regular dumps and it's all CC licenced. But it's less likely to disappear than if it was run by a volunteer from a shed in his or her garden as a hobby project

manooooh

@barbarabeeton all of you should be recognized better than the representatives of the company. Well, I'm not going to talk about the things that you do because you already know

@FaheemMitha they use Stack Overflow to make money without any effort?

barbara beeton

@manooooh -- well, we should know from some messages posted here with verbiage from google translate that it really can be trusted only so far. about as far as i can throw a softball. (i used to be pitcher for the company softball team, so i know how far that is -- just enough to get from the pitcher's mound to home plate.)

Faheem Mitha

20:44

@DavidCarlisle No, it would need to be properly set up. Like the Debian project. I'm not saying that's a possibility. And the content itself isn't that useful without the surrounding structure.

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton I know not of what you speak, some form of rounders I would guess.

manooooh

@barbarabeeton lol

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha we could all use Stefan's site, we just don't:-)

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- close enough for government work.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Stefan's site?

David Carlisle

20:45

@FaheemMitha latex.org/forum

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Oh. Does it have a chat? And one wants something like the SE structure.

Which I'm generally in favor of.

Traditional web forums are just not very functional.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle I think it was a coincidence that I subscribed. Maybe Google recommended this page first and not Stefan's. You know, psychological aspects of human beings

@FaheemMitha we love the SE structure! <3

Faheem Mitha

Actually, a lot of web forums really suck. They're hard to use, hard to find information, and generally clumsy.

David Carlisle

@manooooh well that's rather the point, google almost certainly sends you here first and the main thing about a community is that it has the people, some people were suggesting abandoning this site when they restyled it a few weeks ago but it's hard to get that many people to move and stay together so I think it's better to stay and just put up with the fact that we don't actually control any part of the site.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha yes! It seems that they have not touched the pages for decades. Many are outdated :/

Faheem Mitha

20:50

@DavidCarlisle For such a move to work, the new site would have to be functionally very similar to the old one.

Clearly that's not going to happen in the short term, and not without a great deal of effort.

I think the SE model is really pretty good. Probably the best thing of its kind around.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it needs more than that, similarly peopel suggesting moving to gitlab when microsoft announced buying github, gitlab is virtually identical, but most people won't move, just because most other people are not moving.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle you are right in the first part. But with "I think it's better to stay and just put up with the fact that we don't actually control any part of the site" I disagree

Faheem Mitha

At least compared to the competition. So I think a free site with similar aims would do well to adopt something similar.

@DavidCarlisle Necessary, not sufficient conditions. :-)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle having changed part of the site was thanks to the struggle of some of you. You have moved to achieve this, it does not matter if it is little or very much

This interests me: does anyone know if Spivak wrote his famous "Calculus" in LaTeX? :O

David Carlisle

@manooooh they didn't change any of the important things did they?

@manooooh highly unlikely Spivak really isn't a fan of latex.

manooooh

21:05

@DavidCarlisle if we look at the achievements made over the years, which were important?

@DavidCarlisle I don't understand

David Carlisle

@manooooh Spivak write his own tex format (amstex) and when latex became more popular he wrote his own "merger" which was amstex with some latex-like features (lamstex) but still latex was more popular

@manooooh no I meant after the big restyling last month and then all the complaints about the text width, loss of customised buttons, pointless sidebars etc, the company didn't actually revert any of the main changes.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle lol, that's a good story. He's brilliant

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle People still use AMS TeX, though, right?

Hmm, 16 questions tagged amstex. So, not that many.

David Carlisle

21:22

@FaheemMitha no (not even the AMS) (well no doubt someone does somewhere)

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle the company is not obligated to do so either. It can hear opinions from their most important users, but there is no guarantee that they will carry it out. Even if there were topics where certain aspects were discussed, unless a manager has promised something, I do not think they have to reverse the changes. If they have made promises but then do not comply, of course it is wrong

Sebastiano

A best greetings to everybody. Happy LaTeX.

David Carlisle

@manooooh yes that's what I said, the users have no control in the end.

manooooh

@FaheemMitha well, at least if created a versioned language

Sebastiano

@manooooh, @marmot, @egreg, @FaheemMitha, @Skillmon, @CarLaTeX, @UlrikeFischer, @JosephWright, @boycott.se-yo', @PhelypeOleinik, @AaronHall,@StephanLehmke Happy LaTeX to everybody and good night.

manooooh

21:25

@DavidCarlisle the users do have control at the end. They can edit, create, delete, ask questions and silence, reward users. But the strategic decisions (course of the site for example) of course that users take. It happens with any private company

@Sebastiano thank you! Have a good night

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see it was taken over by LaTeX. Was Michael Spivak ever a member of the TeX community, in the sense of talking to people, participating in conferences and so forth?

David Carlisle

@manooooh but the discussion a few weeks ago was not about the content of posts but about the style of the site, users have no control over that at all.

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle it was a strategic decision. Bad, but strategic

marmot

@manooooh This requires all or at least most of the users agreeing on something and then sticking to some agreements they made. I guess that is hard to realize.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it was before my time really. although lamstex version 1 was around the same time as latex2e so we had a look but essentially no one used lamstex

Faheem Mitha

21:28

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

manooooh

@marmot I do not understand. If you were promised something and then they did not comply, you should criticize. It's a democracy with a bit of oppression, but that's how things work

marmot

@manooooh Yes, that's the idea. However, the reality seems to be a bit different. You only have finite time and finite energy and go for the things that are really important for you. We could have decided to boycott this site after the powers screwed up the design, but it it next-to-impossible to organize this, so there was no real uproar.

manooooh

21:47

@marmot I don't know how to answer you.

marmot

@manooooh Yes, not many speak marmot language. ;-)

manooooh

@marmot you're partially correct, but on the other hand we must also be aware of the company to which we belong. We are here for free, nobody obliges us to pay anything, nor is there annoying advertising. They can do whatever they want, even without listening to their users. If you don't like it, fight or leave. But don't expect them to listen to several annoying users because of the new decision making they carried out, because they do not have to. There is no legal contract or money in between

@marmot I like that

@marmot it's painful what happens, because I trust you fully and not the top executives. But legally I think they are right. All this changed if they promised things and then did not fulfill them; that's wrong

I hope that executives stop turning a deaf ear and listen to their users :) :)

marmot

@manooooh Yes, you are right, these are our choices. One may also want to acknowledge that the site runs rather smoothly overall and the powers did make it easy to opt out from some agreements that I never understood. But yes, if they decide to screw up this site/forum completely, they will certainly be able to do that. There are other sites, such as texwelt.de, which however are typically in different languages, and thus do not have so many users.

Faheem Mitha

It's instructive to look at SE competition. Quora? Experts Exchange? The options out there are rather dismal.

barbara beeton

22:07

@manooooh -- unless i'm mistaken, even the tex program didn't exist when spivak wrote "calculus". (and he's definitely not a fan of latex; i can give a number of reasons why when i have more time.)

Ulrike Fischer

@marmot and if Stefan decides to screw up texwelt he is able to do it too. From my point there is not much difference. I have no power to force changes on both sites.

marmot

@UlrikeFischer This is true but one may say that you do have an intrinsic motivation to keep it alive, which a hired top manager on a commercial site may not have.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer @barbarabeeton github.com/rf-latex

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle A Fairbairns Package Support Group? ;-)

manooooh

22:40

@barbarabeeton as you like. I thought they were from the same era!

@marmot that site has almost the same structure as TeX.SE, will they be the same owners? It seems promising, I would have liked to see something different, but it's good

@marmot I do not think that his intention is to lose users, because it does not suit them. It has been a bad decision :/

David Carlisle

23:10

@UlrikeFischer more or less, yes

Krishna

@DavidCarlisle Don't people at TeX.SX sleep? I am astonished by the prodigious energy

David Carlisle

@Krishna we are a robot collective

marmot

@Krishna One should add there is in fact only one user, all the apparent users are just puppets. That's why @egreg has such a high reputation score. ;-)

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends