@barbarabeeton Sure, topology derives from the Italian word topolino. ;-)

@samcarter I guess everyone is waiting for your answer there. This is the only answer that makes sense. ;-)

@barbarabeeton :)

@CarLaTeX Or MikZ

@samcarter tihs is so cute!

I suggest Alfred

Alfred the mouse

@samcarter: the whiskers path could be closed and we would have a fancy mouse with a bowtie. :)

@JosephWright: when our meeting will be?

@PauloCereda did you get my mail on thursday?

@UlrikeFischer yes, I did! Sorry, I was a bit busy, but I promise to reply it in an hour or two (I have mass now). :)

@PauloCereda no problem. I was only worried because my mail account was broken at that day.

@UlrikeFischer oh my

can someone try the second example here: tex.stackexchange.com/q/455001/2388 and tell me if he gets the broken output too? I can't reproduce it.

Friends, I am thinking of creating a dedicated account for Psmith, now that I have a good bot framework.

If I really create an account, I might need to ask/answer a question in the main site in order to get the minimum reputation required to talk in the chatroom.

The bot would reply under a different name, but always under my control.

@UlrikeFischer @marmot for me it doesn't look like either of the versions posted

@DavidCarlisle ;-). uncertainity ?

@PauloCereda Meet Alfred ^^^

@DavidCarlisle do you have special luatex? For me with luatex53 it doesn't compile at all due to integer/float problem in the code.

@UlrikeFischer that was with the stock 1.07 from texlive

@UlrikeFischer lua 5.3 integers are going to be a recurring theme in next year or so, better start a integer tag so we can all pick up a new gold badge

@samcarter cat food?

@DavidCarlisle that's why I'm pestering @JosephWright about the test suite ;-).

@DavidCarlisle Either cat food or the answer to life, the universe and everything - hard to tell the difference :)

@CarLaTeX This is Tokz

@CarLaTeX This was also @UlrikeFischer and my favourite :)

@marmot You seem to mix up something: it's not my answer that will make sense, but the tikzmice in it are the only beings that know the one answer that makes sense :)

@CarLaTeX @marmot TikZmice answer added to the cheese question :)

@samcarter where is the sloth? Doesn't he/she like cheese?

@samcarter its :-)

@samcarter meta.stackexchange.com/a/316767/399040 is soooo good. ;-)

@DavidCarlisle Did you add orientation=Australia somewhere?

@UlrikeFischer No, this is a tree level diagram, which corresponds to the classical limit (or \hbar=0), so the uncertainty principle is not of much help here.

@marmot No I just blame Ulrike for any problems in lualatex

@DavidCarlisle How so? There is a latex in lualatex, and we all know who to blame for "features" in latex. ;-)

@marmot -- more percisely, i'm referring to a beloved puppet mouse -- "topo gigio". i'm sure he could have charmed the whiskers off a cat.

Hi all, I am unable to evaluate the merit of the Acrobat Education Bundle (aeb) by D.P.Story

On the one hand, it looks like the bundle covers a lot of important and useful cases

On the other hand, the bundle doesn't seem to have much uptake here and elsewhere

And the documentation is confusing

I am just wondering what are the thoughts of the members here in chat.TeX.SX about this aeb bundle?

@marmot @JosephWright.

@Krishna he's been working on it a long time, but it's just for acrobat and the licencing was a bit odd as I recall so it can't get much coverage in a site that's mostly covering open source solutions

Yes. He talks about retirement so often :)

@barbarabeeton How good is he at topology?

@Krishna i only use the acrotex parts for forms sometimes. That's quite good (and often better documented than the hyperref forms). But it has a rather curious, selfmade keyval-system.

@UlrikeFischer I see

@UlrikeFischer Interesting. Does that mean one should inform the author of tikz-feynman about it?

But PDF2.0 deprecated XFA

@marmot @UlrikeFischer would it help to compare with the log I get

@samcarter <3

@UlrikeFischer You are referring to eformman.pdf

@DavidCarlisle I compared already my with marmots but couldn't see anything. The problem naturally is that the lua calculations (and many files) don't really show off.

@samcarter perfect :)

@UlrikeFischer -- to the best of my knowledge, sloths eat mainly leaves and any insect or small animal living thereon. at the providence zoo, they are sometimes offered fruit as a treat. i doubt that there is much chance that a sloth gets to taste cheese, so whether they like it is unknown.

@marmot @samcarter gorgeous!

@samcarter upvoted <3

@Krishna oh I don't think I'd noticed that pdf 2 was out last year

@marmot -- i suspect he's never been exposed to it as a discipline.

@egreg but "mouse" does not begin with "t", as "topo" and "TikZ" :)

@marmot well he certainly should know that the code will break with lua5.3.

@UlrikeFischer Yup, but if he has the same output as you, he won't know about the other gimmick.

@marmot but perhaps he can reproduce your problem.

@barbarabeeton sorry forgot that I wanted to answer: I know about the ideas of Ross to add more math structure. But the problem is that one doesn't know which one (if ever) is or will ever be processed by the readers. Currently my bet is that one should embed html with mathjax or mathml which can be opened in a browser ...).

@samcarter OMG

@UlrikeFischer -- that sounds like a reqsonable approach. but it does require significant effort from an author, who first of all has to be made aware that it needs to be considered. and that is a big requirement.

@marmot @UlrikeFischer is any of these three the expected answer?

@barbarabeeton no, not really. context e.g. add mathml structure automatically. And if something mathjax based would work, many equations could be processed verbatim. The author would naturally have to avoid special things like halloween math and so but if we would know that it is the target it should be manageable.

@DavidCarlisle imho the middle one. Where did you insert the floor?

@UlrikeFischer twice on line 217 of /usr/local/texlive/2018/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pgf/graphdrawing/lua/pgf/gd/force‌​/SpringHu2006.lua

local direction = Vector.new{x = math.random(1, math.floor(spring_length)), y = math.random(1, math.floor(spring_length))}

@DavidCarlisle looks like my suspicision was correct that it had something to do with the random ;-).

@DavidCarlisle When I use math.floor I get the left output ;-(. But only with luatex53.

@DavidCarlisle Yes. PDF2.0 was out last yer. I think the changes are rather minor.

@UlrikeFischer I haven't checked what it is doing, but I tried doing multiple runs to see if that random value affected the output but I always seem to get the same output for a given setup. Perhaps not though, it isn't the easiest code to follow...

@DavidCarlisle Yes, the one on the middle is correct @UlrikeFischer

@DavidCarlisle I can change the output by forcing a different seed: \begin{feynman}[random seed =40]

(with lualatex and unchanged lua).

@marmot so what's this showing, is random output expected? where is math.random being used?

Looks as if the code is faulty and adds a bit too much randomness ;-)

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@PauloCereda if only we had an (non secret) ooh counting bot.....

@DavidCarlisle ooh a secret

@DavidCarlisle How would I know? I barely use the graph drawing mechanism for Feynman diagrams. Apart from the fact that you cannot upload these on the arXiv (because lualatex is not supported there) these algorithms really reproduce "random" results (not in the above sense, but bad enough that manually placing the vertices is usually the way to go). I just investigated this a bit because I was accused by a user of purposely posting a non-working code.

Hi mr. @marmot!

@DavidCarlisle You had similar interactions with users, this one obviously did not like getting told that his diagram was physically incorrect, so he was looking for something where he could tell me that I am even worse, and perhaps the fact that lualatex does not work with tikz-feynman without fix gave him enough confidence. (Of course I compiled with pdflatex at that time, so I would not know....)

@PauloCereda Hello Dr. Duck!

@PauloCereda If we had a penguin here, we could address her/him Prof. Penguin.

@marmot ooh

We do have a penguin, where's @Johannes?

I miss him. :(

@marmot sorry I assumed marmots knew all about everything

> 15:00 Come postare correttamente sul Forum del guIt e vivere felici. Herr Professor Paulinho van Duck.

GuIT meeting 2018 ^^

@CarLaTeX ^^

@DavidCarlisle Only those with crystal balls. Mine got stolen.

@marmot ask a mouse

@DavidCarlisle They cannot be trusted, they steal cheese.

@PauloCereda <3<3<3

@UlrikeFischer -- i'm thinking here of ams journals. context isn't possible. mathjax is workable for much of the material, but not all, not yet. i still haven't seen a successful "content mathml", although i know that it's being worked on. a person with impaired vision is going to want/need to know what something means, not a description of what it looks like on paper.

@DavidCarlisle Das Maus

@PauloCereda Die Maus.

@UlrikeFischer oh

@barbarabeeton content mathml works OK from systems that are generating structured maths (maple, theorem provers etc) inferring it from a normal document source is tricky and not clearly a good plan.

@DavidCarlisle -- okay, fair enough. but that's not how most authors write. any suggestions for changing their practices?

@barbarabeeton that's what I mean you can't change the authors, so you need to make what they produce accessible, but that might mean reading the tex source rather than trying to infer some meaning and then reading that possibly incorrect inferred form.

@DavidCarlisle -- yes, that's the obvious approach. but what if a display to be interpreted is twelve lines long, with nested fractions and stacked limits? and such groupings occur multiple times in a paper to the point where pagination is a real problem? i've been seeing such stuff quite frequently recently. and manuscripts don't get through to the publication queue unless they've passed review by the journal's editorial committee.

@barbarabeeton as you know, there is no good answer.

@DavidCarlisle -- yes, i do know. which is why i'm trying to make more people aware of the problem. maybe someone, someday, will have some new workable ideas.

@DavidCarlisle I looked a bit at the math in pdfs created with context and activated tagging. The structure tree looks like quite reasonable mathml. The problem is that is not used by the screen readers so it looks like quite fruitless effort ...

@barbarabeeton I suspect that what would work best is a system that understood the high level display markup at least to the level of knowing lines separated by \\ and that could be read naturally (not reading "backslash basckslash") but once you get to the finer specific markup for individual terms, reading the literal tex source might be better than guessing the wrong meaning and reading that

@UlrikeFischer My understanding is that the commercial screen readers do read mathml (there has been a lot of support to keep the mathml output from mathjax, even if it is expanding everything to html+css for that reason)

@UlrikeFischer eg freedomscientific.com/Services/TrainingAndCertification/…

@DavidCarlisle mathml in a browser seems to work, at least after some trying around I managed to get NVDA to read a page in firefox with an installed mathplayer. The problem is mathml in a pdf.

@DavidCarlisle -- is there a "literal tex source" reader that can read out "fraction with numerator ... and denominator ..." rather than "begin fraction open brace ... close brace open brace ... close brace"? i'm sure one could be written to do that much (raman did it with aster), but has anyone done such a thing for an enhanced pdf file?

@UlrikeFischer ah OK yes. But probably in practice there hasn't been enough well tagged pdf (math or not math) to bother trying and they just try to read the visual text. perhaps if we start making some it will get used.

@UlrikeFischer Although for a system like tex really the whole "accessible pdf" issue is perhaps a non-issue as it is easy to have multiple output forms and a pdf with an html+mathl version is possibly always going to be more accessible even if it doesn't pass some statutory requirement to have the pdf in pdf/a

@barbarabeeton I don't know

@barbarabeeton one way rather than hoping each individual screen reader gets to make a reasonable reader would be to generate the entire spoken version string from within tex and then ask the screen reader to read the text for the whole expression. that works well until people need to zoom in and re-read subterms when you have no structure to do that

@DavidCarlisle yes as I wrote above to Barbara I currently think that adding some (embedded or externel) html/mathml is a better idea than real tagging of math. Probably one can use the tex4ht code to get the mathml. Then one could tag the equation simply with an alt text "see attachment 2".

@DavidCarlisle -- but who is to generate the spoken version? either someone has to create a workable automaton, or some knowledgeable human has to insert it. if i remember correctly, raman's method was "cooperative" -- the author definitely provided structure that isn't usually there in a typical latex manuscript, so the resulting audio representation was definitely intelligible, if a bit stilted.

@barbarabeeton in an ideal world the author would but assuming that we are in a non ideal world where some automatically generated reading is needed, it may work best if the tex community works on a rendering of tex markup to pure ascii text that needs to be read and getting the screen readers to read that, than hoping that all the screen readers manage to read well structured mathml or tex markup#

@DavidCarlisle ans @UlrikeFischer -- i'm going to send you mail about this, but it may not be until tomorrow. i know of some things that are being worked on, but i don't have either full information, or permission yet to share what i do know publicly. this is a topic i really would like to see explored, and plausible approaches developed, if not a "perfect" solution. please stay tuned.

@DavidCarlisle Fixed! Thanks a lot for pinging me!

@samcarter see I'm fluent in English as well as German, Portuguese and Italian.

@UlrikeFischer The sloth is not yet in the branch visible to public. It is giving me a hard time with its arms ...

@samcarter oh a secret ;-) So @PauloCereda should name it ;-).

@UlrikeFischer ooh more secrets

@PauloCereda back from mass?

@UlrikeFischer Writing an email to you. :)

@CarLaTeX :) Thank you!

@PauloCereda then I should better not distract you ;-)

Hello everyone!

I would like you to help me determine which environment is optimal for writing equations in display mode aligned to the left. For example, `\[\begin{aligned}&\lim_{x\to a}{\big(f(x)+g(x)\big)}\\=&\lim_{x\to a}{f(x)}+\lim_{x\to a}{g(x)}\end{aligned}\]` produces a bad spacing between the `=` sign and the math expression. If I use the `array` environment, the expressions are not in display mode `:(`. What should I do?

=& should be &= but why not just use an equation and globally specify fleqn ?

@manooooh also never use \big it should be \bigl( and \bigr)

@UlrikeFischer Thanks to @barbarabeeton the sloth is already named Riley -- but there will be other South American tikzlings for @PauloCereda to name :)

@samcarter ooh

@DavidCarlisle thanks! But I would like to divide the signs and the math expression

@DavidCarlisle ohh "never use", that is rude :). Ok, I will do that. What is the difference between them?

@DavidCarlisle oh never mind. But in the cases that @Mico pointed out I would like to treat the math operators as binary, not unique. See $\Bigg[ -2x - 4y\Bigg]$ vs. $\Biggl[ -2x - 4y\Biggl]$: I like the first one because the first - is treated as binary operator (as it should be)

@samcarter Armadillo (Gürteltier), Capybara (Wasserschwein), Chinchilla, Anteater (Ameisenbär) ....

@manooooh why do that, aligned (and all amsmath environments) are designed for the syntax &= not &= (you can use &{}= if you really need to in specials cases, but not here)

@manooooh \Biggl[{}-2x - 4y\Biggr] if you want the first - to be a binary - with no left hand argument.

@manooooh sorry I meant to say: designed for &= not =&, you can use ={}& if you really need that, but not here.

@manooooh why do you say - is a binary operator in -2x ? what are the two operands?

@manooooh \big is just the internal command used to defined \bigl,\bigr,\bigm it's not intended as a document command (it would have an @ in its name, but came from plain tex which does not hide so many internals with @ names.

@DavidCarlisle Yesterday I passed through the corner of Italy you know very well.

@egreg you were lucky it's not guarded, so you could get back in

@DavidCarlisle I had very good čevapčiči in Kranjska Gora.

@DavidCarlisle oh really? Because the two symbols are too close to each other. For example:

@DavidCarlisle ^^^^^^^^ with no {} (I wrote the natural code)

@DavidCarlisle nono, I am sorry, I mean I want that minus sign to be a binary operator

@DavidCarlisle I don't know what is a document command

@DavidCarlisle i.e. I want something like this to serve the entire document:

@DavidCarlisle yeah I like that!! How could be set for the entire document and not manually?

Guys... it's going to happen...

@DavidCarlisle ^^

Had to change the name to keep it short. :)

@PauloCereda Oh, I thought you were the bot.

@mickep I am the bot. :)

Now it will live on its own username. :)

@mickep: it generates a lot of traffic, so it conflicts with my own messages.

@PauloCereda Sounds great! :)

@PauloCereda Note that the p has nothing to do with the Japanese version of TeX, as it stands for a silent uppercase Rho, lowered like the Epsilon.

@egreg ooh

@PauloCereda You can set up Psmith to automatically maintain the “ooh” counter and issue a report every day at 0:00 UTC.

@egreg we have a ooh counter. :)

@egreg ^^ :)

@manooooh The natural code in ams environments is always to put the & before the operator.

@manooooh I mean a command used in a document as opposed to some command just used in package code to define other commands.

@DavidCarlisle ok

@manooooh just use &= or use {} as in ={}& or redefine all the AMS environments to make a new package.

@manooooh that is what I don't understand, a binary operator requires two arguments, hence the name, what are the two arguments iof - in -2x ?

@DavidCarlisle please see this proof of a theorem and see after the "So". Do you think it's nice to use (naturally without the {}) the align environment?

@manooooh yes the markup is wrong so you get bad spacing round the =

@DavidCarlisle and that is repaired by adding {}?

@manooooh you can use align but the & should be before the = not after it.

@manooooh in some cases you need to force a different alignment but that is a standard alignment for which align was designed, it is just user error forcing bad spacing around the =. Please look at all the examples in the AMS documentation.

@DavidCarlisle ok, but I want to separate the signs and the expressions, the symbols in one column and the rest in another one

@DavidCarlisle like array but using displaystyle in any cell

@manooooh I'm sorry but if you implement your own system, you get to choose the syntax, if you use an existing language then the syntax is already chosen.

(and with more vspace)

@manooooh if you used array then both &= and =& would give bad spacing, the AMS alignments fix that and make &= work naturally.

@DavidCarlisle so for that reason I am asking if there are a environment that meets my requirements

@manooooh not as far as I know. Why would you want to go to all the effort of re-implementing amsmath?

@DavidCarlisle because I think it was bad designed.. not at all

@manooooh It's open source you are free to change a copy, but it seems a very strange thing to require (compared to actual typesetting improvements and options as for example were implemented in mathtools)

@manooooh and even if you implemented a new version,it wouldn't work in mathjax on the math site, there you really are limited to just what is provided.

@DavidCarlisle I don't know what options were implemented in mathtools, but if @barbarabeeton has not complained about this kind of thing then I should least do it

@manooooh why would anyone complain, the expression is a=b and you need to add a visual alignment point, the syntax for that is a&=b I can't see any reason why you say a=&b is more logical.

@DavidCarlisle I don't have the skills to modify a package, but I think I see a command that redefines the behavior of an environment. If you know something about that I will be grateful

@manooooh modifying amsmath would be a major undertaking and as I say, would not be possible on the math site at the link you gave as stackexchange do not allow you to upload new javascript.

@DavidCarlisle does $\begin{align}a&=b\end{align}$ produce the same space as $a=b$? I think yes, right?

@manooooh yes

@manooooh well without the $ of course, with the $ it is a syntax error.

@DavidCarlisle what?

@manooooh $\begin{align}a&=b\end{align}$ is a syntax error, it should be \begin{align}a&=b\end{align}

@DavidCarlisle oh you are right (I tested it on MathJax's math.SE site) Is like tabular (with no $...$)? Wow, I didn't know that. Anyway, I meant to be aligned, not align

@manooooh well not very like tabular as that isn't math at all. align is like equation it produces a displayed math enviornment, except align allows more than one line.

Anyway, $\begin{aligned}a&=b\end{aligned}$ actually produces the same space as a=b. I think you are right, we must have the same spacing in all our math expressions, so putting the symbols in a different column will break the same-space-premise

@DavidCarlisle thanks. That's weird: a natural environment of TeX/LaTeX that does not need $...$ O.o

@manooooh no, you could use ={}& with align and get the same space as well, and eqnarray you use &=& and only get different space because teh implementation is poor. It is just about choice of syntax.

@manooooh ???

@manooooh you don't use $\begin{equation} a=b\end{equation}$ either.

@DavidCarlisle I didn't notice that because I never use equation but \[...\] (before $$...$$, except that in MathJax ;))

@DavidCarlisle ok

@manooooh you don't use $\[...\]$ either.

@manooooh you don't have any numbered equations?

@DavidCarlisle \[...\] ≈ $$...$$ :)

@DavidCarlisle no

@manooooh strange

@DavidCarlisle I don't write thesis, so I don't have to recall equations

Btw

@manooooh usually in even 1 or 2 page articles equations get numbered in most disciplines.

I wonder why in MathJax we can write \begin{array}2112\end{array} (with not $) and render it without caring

@manooooh that must be a non standard setup. It is configurable in the javascript what markup triggers mathjax. I'm fairly sure that array would not do that by default.

@DavidCarlisle I usually write LaTeX documents to answer math questions of my university, and since every excercise is in a different index (I use enumerate for that), then it is not necessary to number them. In addition there are not many, but I must put emphasis on how to do them since in 2018 they teach us how to (for example) integrate when a machine can do it much faster :)

@DavidCarlisle wow! A "non standard setup"! Would you like to correct it? I would be happy to help you as much as I can

@manooooh actually it might be standard I forget, the setup they use has:

MathJax.Hub.Config({"HTML-CSS": { preferredFont: "TeX", availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"], linebreaks: { automatic:true }, EqnChunk: (MathJax.Hub.Browser.isMobile ? 10 : 50) },
                    tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ["$", "$"], ["\\\\(","\\\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, ignoreClass: "tex2jax_ignore|dno" },
                    TeX: {
                        noUndefined: { attributes: { mathcolor: "red", mathbackground: "#FFEEEE", mathsize: "90%" } }, Macros: { href: "{}" } },

@manooooh so $$ and \[ both supported, but perhaps the \begin{...} syntax always triggers mathjax, I'd have to check.

@DavidCarlisle we have to focus on displayMath: [ ["$$","$$"], ["\\[", "\\]"] ]?

Oh, ok

@manooooh yes by default you have to use \( and \[ but stackexchange like many other sites configures it to allow $ and $$ as well.

@DavidCarlisle and... Why does MathJax not accept the tabular environment??? In other forums with MathJax it would be great to have it

@manooooh why would it do tabular (it doesn't do any non math latex commands)

@DavidCarlisle sometimes yes

@DavidCarlisle so what happens with the environments?

@manooooh it doesn't do \begin{center} or \section so why should it do tabular ?

@manooooh they are not listed as I don't think they are configurable. If you install the amsmath emulation then they are enabled.

@DavidCarlisle we don't have to write an article in stack exchange's site, so thinks like a title or centered text would cause the essence of question-answer to be lost a little. For example, tables in chemistry would be great or, in general, any info we have to write in text mode table, also would be great to put it into MathJax

@DavidCarlisle ok. I like that, although unfortunately it serves only one person :(

@manooooh you could use array (which is the same code as tabular, but math mode) or use an html table.

@DavidCarlisle before we start programming in html, is not it easier to enable it in the MathJax commands?

@manooooh no, you are writing an html page so html markup is the natural markup. Adding any math is the complicated part,

@DavidCarlisle even with $\require{amsmath}\begin{tabular}123\end{tabular}$ it does not work! :/

@manooooh of course not. there is no reason for mathjax to implement tabular: use array

@DavidCarlisle ok. Does MathJax create the code of any command entirely or does it load from a web?

@manooooh no idea what that means. It is a javascript library so it all comes from the web

@DavidCarlisle yes, there are many reasons: "For example, tables in chemistry would be great or, in general, any info we have to write in text mode table, also would be great to put it into MathJax"

@DavidCarlisle so why do you say that "adding any math is the complicated part," if the commands come from the web?

@manooooh no that doesn't make sense sorry. in latex a tabular has text cells, so you can't use any math commands in the cells and use latex text commands. Mathjax does not implement any non math commands, so what would you put in the tabular?

@manooooh the web isn't a mythical being with supernatural powers. Someone would have to implement it but implementing non-math parts of latex is explicitly out of scope for mathjax.

@DavidCarlisle okay... Mathjax is for Mathexpressions... you are right

Thank you

@DavidCarlisle It implements \LaTeX, but the result of $\LaTeX$ is painful and one has to type $\mathrm{\LaTeX}$ to get something sensible.

@egreg WOW, I did not notice about that!! For MathJax I will use $\mathrm{\LaTeX}$ and for LaTeX \LaTeX :)

@manooooh why would you ever need either

@DavidCarlisle Exactly!

@DavidCarlisle what? Write "LaTeX" in MathJax?

@manooooh I have used LaTeX for 30 years and I think the only documents where I used \LaTeX have been the latex companion books and the latex news documents that come out with each release.

@AlanMunn or don't mention it at all.

@AlanMunn I don't think so. So many documents describing LaTeX use \LaTeX when referring to it. Also, in some forums I like to say to new users "Remember to use $\LaTeX$ (now $\mathrm{\LaTeX}$) for..."

@manooooh Yes, and what @DavidCarlisle and I are saying is that using it is completely unnecessary.

@manooooh but why are you writing a document describing latex, I thought you were writing a document using latex.

@manooooh It's kind of like using a logo for a company name instead of just using the company name.

@DavidCarlisle I don't write documents describing LaTeX, it was just an example

@manooooh don't tell new users that.

@manooooh but that is what I mean, unless you are writing about latex you should not need to mention it at all. It certainly isn't a command to show to new users.

@DavidCarlisle hmm... Actually I copied the welcome message from an admin... he does not use \LaTeX but I do

@AlanMunn I recently had to make a video about qdex and in the video I used its logo instead of the plain name. My director did not tell me anything about it

@DavidCarlisle please... the logo is \LaTeX, not LaTeX...

Every time someone writes LaTeX without format I feel it is a mistake

@manooooh Well I think this is a mistake. Logos are not meant to be in running text. So if you're using it in running text it's IMO wrong, and certainly annoying to read.

@AlanMunn who wants to read a plain welcome message, absent from format?

I do not think at all that it's annoying to read

@manooooh 99% of the time they don't need to be mentioning latex at all, and if the document is being typeset with something other than latex it is best to use latex or LaTeX rather than try to fake it.

@manooooh I'm not sure what that means. I was just talking about the general (mis)use of \LaTeX in e.g. documentation. So IMO \LaTeX should only be used in a context where a logo would be appropriate, which usually means very rarely.

Nor decorate the text too much ... If the LaTeX logo had been a degraded I particularly would have continued writing in black, not with multiple colors because it is too much

@manooooh showing the command to beginners is definitely the wrong thing to do. Firstly they don't need to know the command, and secondly it is one of the few standard commands that has no argument but is used in text, so you have to introduce the whole issue of space after command names, which is complication you do not need.

@AlanMunn of course, the only way when we have to write latex with no format is when we are referring to...:

Source

@manooooh I'm not advocating no format, I'm advocating using LaTeX not \LaTeX. Also the command line invocation of latex is definitely latex, so your statement isn't actually correct.

@DavidCarlisle first I already said that I am not completely strict with the format. In that case, one should write an entire answer or, even a whole document with $ and/or $$: crazy. Second, the users I write do not try to learn LaTeX, so IMO it is correct to show them a formatted symbol

@AlanMunn it was a joke, LaTeX is not the same meaning of latex

@manooooh I can't see why any beginner would ever need to mention latex in a document, and as I say it's a tricky command to use (and to use properly requires re-implementing for each font choice)

@manooooh the joke may have been mildly amusing in 1982 when Leslie thought of it, now it's just tiresome

@DavidCarlisle yes, the joke is old

@manooooh and generated for me several thousand spam emails I'd rather not have,

@DavidCarlisle as I say, I am not completely strict with the format

@DavidCarlisle that's probably because you use email for important things, such as ads from your credit card, travel, LaTeX work, etc. I never had spam, I don't use every day my email

@manooooh No it's because the latex sources have been on the internet with my email on them for decades (and before the internet they were on janet)

@DavidCarlisle janet?

@manooooh I get hardly any spam these days as spam filters are far more aggressive but there were periods when I would get over a thousand a day which is painful if handling them over dialup where you are paying by the kilobyte

@manooooh joint academic network (UK's pre-internet network, still exists in name, although uses internet protocols these days)

@DavidCarlisle wow :/, I'm sorry for that

@DavidCarlisle lol this will take some explaining. there was also bitnet

@DavidCarlisle @AlanMunn wow I didn't know that. I have 19 years old and I live in Argentina... Of all the teachers who taught me so far, none of them told me about those tools

@manooooh Some of us predate the internet...

@manooooh did you think the internet has existed since adam and eve?

@AlanMunn that's why you are too smart people!! ^-^

@DavidCarlisle since adam and eve does not exists (although I am a believing man), we can conclude everything we want :), even if I think or not that haha. But no, Internet is not too old

I don't understand why we have a "\begin{chat}" with italics: why don't write "\begin{chat}"?

@manooooh I think the chat is network wide styling, that is just the subtitle for this room and they are all in italic, it isn't supposed to be verbatim code

Like titles on TeX.SE... Oh I'm wrong, even titles do not support formatting of any kind

@DavidCarlisle you are right. We are the parents of many of the Stack Exchange sites... we should have a small consideration :P, like use ```` in the titles!! Omg I can't believe that

@manooooh didn't we have that discussion already? No formatting in titles is deliberate policy.

@DavidCarlisle yes we do

@DavidCarlisle did you read all the privacy policy? (I don't). Do you think that I could think adding this feature is a "deliberate" policy?

@manooooh ? what has it got to do with privacy But as I said we had this discussion already, no need to re-do it

@DavidCarlisle I thought this feature would fit in a (privacy) policy

@manooooh I can not even start to guess what you mean by that, but it doesn't matter.

@DavidCarlisle you said "No formatting in titles is deliberate policy" so I use the policy meaning to say that formatting in titles is a (good) policy (not deliberate for me)

Please see this paper uploaded on arXiv

There the authors use ~ in equation environment!! That's bad, right? Because ~ should be used in text mode if I remember correctly. Why did they do that?

@barbarabeeton look at that paper! They have a command for the text on the first page, at the left margin: \preprint{arXiv:1803.04517 [hep-th]}

Oh, and they used article and not amsart lol

@barbarabeeton we thought it was added after they publish on the site. Anyway, the date is not coded but added. I don't know how they did that