@user49915 I wouldn't delete the question. It's a good question. You're probably not the first person to make the assumption you did, since vertical dots are not something that is widely used in regular text. And Werner's answer is good. You can't delete a question that has an upvoted answer.

@CarLaTeX Isn't that some kind of standardized colour scheme? :)

@AlanMunn Do you mean the panettone box color or the standard "any-Italian-food" is good?

@CarLaTeX Pantone = panettone if you squint a little. :)

@AlanMunn lol I didn't catch it

@AlanMunn ooh it's Panettone in Spanish. :D

@DavidCarlisle please do if you have time - I could manage but I have lots other things to do in the next two days.

@DavidCarlisle thanks again for the rubber duck debugging yesterday (unfortunately I was the rubber duck).

@UlrikeFischer I have to learn Arabic....

@DavidCarlisle ? the xepersian question?

@UlrikeFischer and some emails...

@DavidCarlisle ;-) I already wondered about that question when I looked in the mailing list.

@UlrikeFischer It was quick

@DavidCarlisle On the xepersian question, it could well be out-of-our control: it hacks around with fontspec internals :(

@JosephWright Lucky Will has write access to it then, he can fix it:-)

@DavidCarlisle ooh

Will is not tall :)

@JosephWright the changes in fontspec-xepersian looks completly senseless. The only thing he does is adding a xepersian error message/handling if the font is not found. One can simply remove this.

@JosephWright @DavidCarlisle did you saw the answer? That is the code doing ..

@UlrikeFischer Yes, I saw

@UlrikeFischer I have to say reading the code I'd got no idea what the test was for

@JosephWright I didn't really look at the conditional as I couldn't imagine that the code would do something like this.

@UlrikeFischer Yup

If you need help with Arabic, you know who to not ask

@KhaledHosny @DavidCarlisle?

@KhaledHosny GhostBusters?

@Sebastiano Flags do get looked at: you don't have to tell us here too :)

Oh. Sorry. :-(

Delete it

@Sebastiano Not a problem, but usually flags are 'just for mods'

@JosephWright Wait until I use the deepl pro translator

@JosephWright This morning I connected for about ten minutes before going to the hospital and I should respond to the message from your very kind fellow moderator. I always continue to be stressed by a user who has already been reported several times. If I am wrong with LaTeX you can write to me. Thank you very much. Hello

@StefanKottwitz Dear friend moderator. I'm certainly not as good with the LaTeX as you are. But for sure, even today, I was attacked by the same user that I have already reported. I didn't have much time left because I had to go to the hospital and put on the holter to check my heartbeats. I thank you with all my heart to you and others for your interest. Rest assured I am serene even though I am fundamentally angry inside of me.

@StefanKottwitz I do not accept bullying in any form but constant dialogue even if you have different views. Obviously the person concerned must always be open to dialogue. I greet you and wish you all the best.

@Sebastiano We (mod team) are aware of the issue and are talking with the StackOverflow staff: there are aspects that mean it is hard for the community moderators to take action. It is on our radar.

@JosephWright that was a bad joke :) But if anyone needs help with anything Arabic related, I don’t mind being asked.

@Sebastiano I've pushed the staff about this

@KhaledHosny :)

@KhaledHosny I'll send you some mail, thanks

@Sebastiano We don't tolerate bullying. That's why I called it by that name so people know it's not just some voting.

@Sebastiano As Joseph said, we wrote several mails to the staff. We site mods have limited ways and authority and the owner staff shall take action. We still wait for feedback.

@AlanMunn Oh no, I consider my question bad. It is the worst question ever. It actually needs to be downvoted a lot; I really don't see why folks upvote it. After all, \vdots is such a basic command; I feel really ashamed!

@JosephWright LOL

@egreg hi! Question: here you use \dots for describe the elements of a set. I would write \{u_1,\ldots,u_m,v_1,\ldots,v_n\}. Is that more "correct" than yours? Thanks! P.S. In MathJax them produce the same output

@StefanKottwitz And I thank you again with all my heart for all that you are doing. I blindly trust you. Good work and thanks for always.

@manooooh Hi, :-)

@PauloCereda Good afternoon from Sicily.

@Sebastiano hi :)

@manooooh I have to disconnect, otherwise I won't be preparing my homework for the students with LaTeX. I wish you a good afternoon and my best regards.

@Sebastiano oh! I love your world of high-programming, excellent courses, etc. Here we do not have a course like that :(. Thanks and best of luck!

@manooooh \dots is “more correct”.

@egreg ok... the question of one million dollar: why?

@manooooh $a_1+\dots+a_n$ gives centered dots.

@egreg wait, hold on a sec, does \dots adjust to the char of its right and left? Because for $a_1+\dots+a_2$ its centered, and for a_1,\dots,a_2 its down-centered

Oh, maybe only with the character of its right

Anyway

@egreg in MathJax there is no difference between $a_1+\dots+a_n$ and $a_1+\cdots+a_n$. Maybe yes in LaTeX?

@manooooh MathJaX is not TeX.

@PauloCereda I know, but in ~70% of cases they are the same

@manooooh But it's not the same thing, so you cannot expect the same behaviour.

@PauloCereda for this particular case I believed it

@egreg in LaTeX, I compared $a_1,\dots,a_n$ vs. $a_1,\ldots,a_n$ and the effect is the same. Using $a_1+\dots+a_n$ the dots are down, when I want them centered

@manooooh Are you perhaps not loading amsmath? Oh, no! That's a requisite for every document with math.

@manooooh Yes, between commas \dots becomes \ldots; between + signs it becomes \cdots. You don't need to remember what dots you need.

@manooooh tex.stackexchange.com/a/122497/4427

@egreg lol yes, I forgot that. Okay, so with "$a_1+\dots+a_n$ gives centered dots" I tried $a_1+\cdots+a_n$ and they are the same

@egreg ahh, so the only difference between them is we do not have to remember neither \cdots nor \ldots?

@manooooh More or less. Have a look at the answer I quoted.

@egreg technically speaking, I mean

@egreg and upvote it. :)

@PauloCereda Darn! I'm rep capped!

@egreg oh no

@egreg thanks, I already saw it (and not upvote it!). There are a lot of unnecessary commands

But it's a good answer

From Oct 15 '12 to Nov 29 '18, is the answer still valid?

@DavidCarlisle I remember that you told me amsmath was not affected by any update since years, right?

@manooooh ? we have made some small updates to amsmath in recent years so it must have been some years ago if I told you it had not changed (the definition of \dots hasn't changed though)

@DavidCarlisle oh, I thought when we were taking about formats you told me that. What I do not remember was "small updates", that's the point. Ok, so the answer still valid, thank you!

@manooooh if we were talking about formats then we would have been talking about amstex not amsmath, amstex is a format like latex, amsmath is not a format.

@DavidCarlisle ... but amsmath modify the format. @egreg told that I have to load amsmath. See this comment

@manooooh amstex had a small update in 2001 but mostly unchanged since 1991

@DavidCarlisle I never use amstex

@manooooh nobody uses amstex, you have to be as old as @egreg to have ever used it. But that is what I said had not changed, not amsmath.

Ya ok, I do not like to talk if I do not have the certainty of what we discuss, I should look for the chat and convince me, sorry

@manooooh no it is a latex package like any other it doesn't modify the format (although like any package it defines or redefines some commands)

@DavidCarlisle hahaha are you saying @egreg is an old man? :[. Ok, you are the man of amsmath, the important thing is that \dots has not undergone changes for this debate

@DavidCarlisle 99% of people use amsmath.... It's like the brain of LaTeX

(For tests I do not write it because 1) I forgot that, 2) I thought there was no difference)

@manooooh Do 99% of latex users typeset math at all?

@DavidCarlisle nope, and I am one of them. The point is that you never will write $a_1,\dots,a_2$ without amsmath loaded

@manooooh why not, it makes same as \ldots which is what you want with commas

@DavidCarlisle but egreg says something different

@user49915 Trust me, it's a long way off from being "the worst question ever". We upvote a lot here because we try to keep things positive. And until you change user49915 to something identifiable, your shame will be well hidden (but seriously I don't think you should be ashamed of this). If I calculated the amount of reputation points I have simply from answering things that are in package documentation it would probably amount a lot. :)

Anyone know a good LaTeX editor that's similar to Word's equation editor?

@SirCumference For Windows?

ooh pie

@PauloCereda mac preferably

@SirCumference I've never used Word's equation editor, but various editors have built in palettes of symbols. TeXShop, for instance.

@SirCumference oh

/battle

@PauloCereda If you have Windows recommendations I could see if they exist for mac

@SirCumference oh I do not have Windows, thanfully. :) I do use Mac once in a while. :)

@manooooh not really, any math document should use amsmath, but your example was poor as ,\dots, isn't affected

I don't seem to recall any application... :(

@SirCumference Maybe that's not what you mean by equation editor. There's also LaTeXit which is a great standalone app for Mac which can produce snippets for inclusion into Powerpoint or Keynote.

@AlanMunn Finding symbols isn't really the problem, I'm just used to writing equations in Word, where it's a little easier to tell which parts I need to edit and make changes (compared to finding the specific part in LaTeX code)

@SirCumference It should be in the TeX folder in applications if you installed MacTeX.

@SirCumference So you mean something WYSIWYG? Then no, other than I guess LyX. LaTeX isn't really designed that way.

@AlanMunn Yeah pretty much. It's just a little convenient since I'm more used to it

Ooh this might be pretty good

@SirCumference LyX? We don't recommend it around here much, but lots of people do use it very happily. It tends to hide much of what's going on, which in the long run makes things harder not easier.

@DavidCarlisle, @egreg, @ulrikefischer MiKTeX has updated XeTeX with all the goodies

@JosephWright I could ask "how to generate a random number in xetex" and you could answer ;-)

@UlrikeFischer 26.

(Just in case you needed one.)

@AlanMunn Huh, it seems pretty good. But honestly unless I need some pretty complex formatting, it should be fine, right?

@JosephWright should be \pdfnormaldeviate in the new primitives?

@SirCumference Probably, yes. I don't have any real experience with it, except that we find that it's a lot harder to help people when they get stuck with LyX.

Well fortunately I know LaTeX pretty well, I'm just faster at Word editing

@SirCumference Then yes, you should be fine.

@AlanMunn Cool, thanks for the help!

@manooooh With all my heart, I'm glad you appreciate my world. :-) I assure you that it is really stressful because there are technical and administrative aspects that hinder you in your work. I would need help :-) you are welcome. A hug

@AlanMunn Hi, and good evening and good dinner.

@Sebastiano Hi Sebastiano.

@JosephWright ok, I found that is should be \uniformdeviate. ;-).

@UlrikeFischer Latest expl3 knows that ;)

@JosephWright but I didn't I had to check your xetex code ;-). I should have really asked a question on the main site ...

Does anyone know why MikTex sometimes doesn't have a virticle line as a text cursur and starts over-writing everything you type if you try insert something halfway through your line

@JosephWright btw did you saw Karl's answer regarding improving \pdfstartlink?

\Delta ne^{2} = ({\frac{9\sqrt{2}\pi}{E}\sqrt{\frac{\eta^{3}v^{3}}{g(\rho - \sigma)}})^{2}

@UlrikeFischer Yup

@JosephWright I also wrote to the dev-luatex list, but it got lost. Now I'm waiting for a real invitation to the list to redo it.

@UlrikeFischer Ah right

@SpaceOtter MikTeX is a distribution, not an editor, so it has no cursor.

@JosephWright the answer that really made my day today was context using pdflatex to print a chess board: tex.stackexchange.com/a/462257/2388

@UlrikeFischer did you notice excellent choice of counter name in answer from new member:

@DavidCarlisle copied from tex.stackexchange.com/a/254905/2388

@UlrikeFischer yes Kurt just commented, I'm so disappointed:-)

@DavidCarlisle look at the answer above which was not copied ....

$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/issue26
  origin/issue43
  origin/master

@UlrikeFischer ^^ just to confirm I should merge the two issue branches to master, then re-run the tests and see what you broke fixed?

@DavidCarlisle yes, the order shouldn't matter. They are quite unrelated (26 is your code for zref-perpage, 43 mine for luacolor).

@UlrikeFischer I'll see what I can do, I had hoped to get to this earlier today but apparently it's 9 oclock already:-)

@UlrikeFischer both branches merged without issue, i'll check it builds and testsuite passes before pushing, so this evening or tomorrow, depending how tired I feel:-)

@JosephWright Now I just need to install Windoze.

@egreg I tell you that's a gateway drug to asking a question here.

@egreg perhaps if you did, you wouldn't keep getting escape characters inserted into your comments:-)

@DavidCarlisle Are they still there?

@egreg ^^^

@DavidCarlisle Secret binary code

@egreg but brilliant ascii decoding:

Result:

  U+0074 LATIN SMALL LETTER T     t
  U+0020 SPACE     \space
  U+001b ESCAPE
  U+004e LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N     N
  U+006f LATIN SMALL LETTER O     o
  U+0077 LATIN SMALL LETTER W     w

@DavidCarlisle it is a monster ;-) If I got it right around 20 packages are a dependency of hobsub. Perhaps one could as a first step split the thing up in oberdiek and oberdiek-hobsup.

@UlrikeFischer I had a plan for hobsub

@DavidCarlisle ? which one?

@UlrikeFischer I can't remember what it was, but I'm sure it was a good plan.

@DavidCarlisle create a new repository for it?

@UlrikeFischer I think roughly it was create new repos for lots of things eg one for the zref ones one for if* one for kv* etc, and then use the assumtipn that all the ho-tex repos are checked out on sibling directories so a hobsub build can find everything, do some consistency checking and build what it needs, or it may be better to be like tools and graphics keep everything in the existing oberdiek rep but have separate build scripts for the parts or ...

@UlrikeFischer my build script is still making doc, not even started running tests yet:(

@DavidCarlisle splitting the package sounds like a good plan ;-)

@UlrikeFischer one repo with subdirs or 33 new repos?

@DavidCarlisle not sure. One repo is perhaps a bit easier with the shared files for the documentations. And less git pull calls ;-).

@UlrikeFischer yes for the bidi-tex ones I have some scripts to do git commit/push/pull (or edit README) etc on all the files at once, but I suppose these wouldn't be uniform so a bit harder to script so completely

@Sebastiano I'm serious, if you need help (not technically), I am here. Are you sure it is stressful? Lol, it seems that I never prepare a course haha. Best regards

@UlrikeFischer why do you get a linebreak here

*** ./build/test/pmboxdraw-test1.tlg	2018-11-29 23:25:40.128395600 +0000
--- ./build/test/pmboxdraw-test1.pdftex.log	2018-11-29 23:25:43.976750300 +0000
***************
*** 160,167 ****
     defining Unicode char U+259D (decimal 9629)
     defining Unicode char U+259E (decimal 9630)
     defining Unicode char U+259F (decimal 9631)
! )
! (kvoptions.sty
  Package: kvoptions ....-..-.. v... Key value format for package options (HO)
  (../keyval.sty
  Package: keyval ....-..-.. v... key=value parser (DPC)

@JosephWright Thx for letting me know!