TeX, LaTeX and Friends

marmot

01:39

@UlrikeFischer @DavidCarlisle @egreg @JosephWright @WillRobertson Just to say thanks for xfp, it really works great!

marmot

03:38

@AlanMunn I'm getting really old, you beat me by 43 seconds.

Alan Munn

@marmot Well it's winter. You're in hibernation mode aren't you? And non-TikZ questions surely don't have quite the same allure.

marmot

06:29

@CarLaTeX Could you please try
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay]
\node at (current page.center) {X};
\end{tikzpicture}
\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture]
\node at (current page.center) {Y};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

and tell me if I am seeing ghosts? I do only see the Y in the middle of the page.

@CarLaTeX What I want to say is that lyl has a good point, and I should have been more careful.

CarLaTeX

@marmot But you have only one page there

marmot

@CarLaTeX What fo you mean? (The result seems to be different depending on whether or not one adds remember picture.)

CarLaTeX

@marmot Ah, ok, now I see, it seems a strange behavior, however

@marmot I think it's a bug

marmot

@CarLaTeX I had noted it before, and forgot about it when writing the answer. In the pgfmanual all examples with absolute page positioning use remember picture.

CarLaTeX

@marmot Yes, but there's no reason why

@marmot You could ask a question: why remember picture is needed, here?

marmot

06:38

@CarLaTeX I am not sure if it is a bug. The examples of the manual use it, so at least there seems not to be a bug in the sense that a statement in the manual is wrong. (And I can see why one should add remember picture is needed. It is also needed when one wants to use nodes from another picture, and that's what we are doing here: we use the anchors of the current page node.)

yo'

@CarLaTeX because TikZ uses a two-pass process to determine the position of the tikzpicture w.r.t. the current page. That's why you need remember picture.

CarLaTeX

@yo' Ah, ok, there's a reason!

yo'

@marmot even without it, your X is somewhere, just not at the right place...

marmot

@CarLaTeX The perhaps more interesting question is why you do not need to use it if you hook the picture in the shipout.

@yo' Yes, I know. The funny thing is that if you do not use remember picture and put the picture in the shipout, the stuff appears at the desired position.

yo'

@marmot because even at the moment of shipout, TikZ has to coordinate itself with the page, and it uses somenof the pdftex primitives to di this.

Henri Menke

06:42

The Stack Overflow developer survey is on. Even if you don't care about Stack Overflow, I hope they extrapolate the answers to the whole Stack Exchange network. Please participate and answer this question in a similar way:

yo'

@marmot I wouldn't ever rely on this :)

Henri Menke

marmot

@yo' Yes, something like this. And I agree, which is why I added remember picture in my answer.

@HenriMenke Do you have a link for that?

Henri Menke

@marmot Here is the link under the banner on askubuntu: askubuntu.com/dev-survey/…

@marmot Actually the banner hasn't appeared on Stack Overflow yet.

marmot

@HenriMenke OK, then I wait till it is official. (I just wrote some stuff where I let xfp do the computation in TikZ in order to avoid the dimension too large errors. Are there any plans to make something like this the standard parser/computational tool, or is this what l3draw is meant to be for.)

Henri Menke

06:49

@marmot PGF will never include expl3 and I don't plan to write a similar math engine. I might try to get a tighter integration of the luamath library though. That will also solve all dimension too large problem and is orders of magnitude faster than expl3.

marmot

@HenriMenke OK, great! Let's keep our fingers crossed that the arXiv supports lualatex at a given point....

Henri Menke

@marmot I emailed them offering help. This is (part of) their response: “While it's likely that at some point we'll offer this as part of our compilation service, the timeline is unclear. I have forwarded your request to the development managers for eventual scheduling and deployment. If they are interested in deeper collaboration, they may reach out individually. Due to limited developer time, we cannot provide any timeline nor status updates for enhancements.”

@marmot They haven't gotten back to me yet.

marmot

@HenriMenke I guess that it is really a lot of work maintaining the arXiv.

Henri Menke

@marmot Probably not, but I don't think anybody is working on the LaTeX installation full time. Most likely it's even volunteer work.

marmot

@HenriMenke Yes, that's what I meant. (It seems that there were some tensions among the moderators. One of them resigned.)

Henri Menke

07:03

@marmot I don't know anything about their internal structure.

marmot

Paul Ginsparg

Paul Henry Ginsparg (born January 1, 1955) is a physicist. He developed the arXiv.org e-print archive. == Education == He is a graduate of Syosset High School in Syosset, New York. He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in physics and from Cornell University with a PhD in theoretical particle physics with a thesis titled Aspects of Symmetry Behavior in Quantum Field Theory. == Career in physics == Ginsparg was a junior fellow and taught in the physics department at Harvard University until 1990. The pre-print archive was developed while he was a member of staff o...

^^^^ he is very well known in my field and seems to be running the show.

Henri Menke

@marmot Ah, high-energy physics. That's mostly unknown territory to me. I'm a condensed matter guy.

marmot

@HenriMenke Which is not too far away. He is doing lattice AFAIK. So in principle any type of QFT.

Henri Menke

@marmot The problems I work on are neither relativistic nor conformal. Sometimes I even work on fluid mechanics which is purely classical.

marmot

@HenriMenke Lattice is not necessarily good for CFT. Anyway, he seems to be focusing on the arXiv now. In any case, I believe that lualatex may become the standard only after the arXiv supports it.

David Carlisle

08:33

@marmot you shouldn't thank any of those people (Bruno did it all really:-)

marmot

08:49

@DavidCarlisle OK, thanks, didn't know that.

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@CarLaTeX It must be for your artistic skill in drawing that arrow. Exquisite!

CarLaTeX

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Surely that, lol!

David Carlisle

10:05

@CarLaTeX Εάν ήσασταν εξειδικευμένος σε γλώσσες, όπως εγώ, θα γνωρίζατε την απάντηση από την ελληνική

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Non ho fatto gli studi classici, sono ragioniera

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX questo spiega perché non sai niente della pizza

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle La pizza è un piatto povero, non servono studi alti per farla buona

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX naturalmente, basta prendere un po 'di pane povero che non è riuscito a salire e coprirlo con prosciutto e ananas

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle giammai!

David Carlisle

10:11

@CarLaTeX avresti dovuto studiare i classici

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Il greco e il latino sono lingue morte, perché mai dovrei studiarle, quando tutto il mondo parla la lingua semplice delle popolazioni barbare?

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX La lingua di Shakespeare non è barbara, le tribù barbariche erano da sud di qui

My cat has come to check my Italian, although I'm sure it's all good.

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Good enough to be understood by an Italian :)

Skillmon

Is there a convenience macro to do \prop_put:Nnn \g_msg_module_type_prop { <module> } { <type> }? So something like \msg_set_module_type:nn? Would be a useful addition, to make things clearer, imho. It could as well be added to \ProvidesExpl...`...

So that \ProvidesExplClass automagically also does \prop_gput:Nnn \g_msg_module_type_prop { <class> } { Class }.

David Carlisle

@Skillmon wouldn't you define a module-specific version in that module so \<module>_... rather than \msg_...

Skillmon

10:27

@DavidCarlisle as far as I understood the property list is l3msg specific, to set whether to print "Package (<module>} Warning" or "Class (<module>) Warning".

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh a cat

David Carlisle

@Skillmon oh yes sorry

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Sono inglese di Souldern

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle so I think it would be a useful addition to add this to \ProvidesExplClass/\ProvidesExplPackage to also set this property. (since l3 often isn't about pure performance, the additional overhead for modules that don't print messages shouldn't be that bad, imho)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda and I thought you were a duck from Brazil:(

@Skillmon ask @JosephWright, I clearly know nothing:-)

5

Skillmon

10:30

@DavidCarlisle you know everything!

David Carlisle

@Skillmon that is google, not me

2

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle I am a duck from Brazil. :)

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle ohh

Paulo Cereda

@Skillmon ooh

Skillmon

@PauloCereda ohh

Paulo Cereda

10:31

@Skillmon ooh

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda Sono Non-Inglese di Non-Gerrard's Cross ;-)

Skillmon

@PauloCereda we should stop.

Paulo Cereda

@Skillmon ooh a fixed point, so recursion stopped. :)

@ChristianHupfer I see what you did there. :)

Skillmon

@PauloCereda ohh

@JosephWright would you consider this a good idea?

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda @Skillmon \end{ooh}\let\ooh\relax

Paulo Cereda

10:33

@Skillmon ooh

@ChristianHupfer oh :)

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda sigh...

Joseph Wright

@Skillmon Could you mail LaTeX-L or the team? I think there migh tbe issues where the naming doesn't 'line up': @UlrikeFischer has one of those cases

Paulo Cereda

@ChristianHupfer :)

@ChristianHupfer My laptop keyboard has a damaged key. Thankfully I can remap it. :)

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda The windows start button is unnecessary, though ;-)

4

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer ohh

@JosephWright haven't thought of this. In this case, it might be better to just not mail it :)

Paulo Cereda

10:37

@ChristianHupfer :)

@JosephWright Dear LaTeX-L, I am not dictating WHAT

From Skillmon dictates a letter sketch :)

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer on the keyboard? No! This one is really important, as it is Super!

@PauloCereda ?

Christian Hupfer

@Skillmon Monty Python....

Paulo Cereda

@Skillmon it's a Monty Python sketch. :)

Monty Python Biggles with random Lemon Curry

►

Christian Hupfer

@Skillmon I won't defile the concept of a Super Key by assigning it to Windows Start Key -- that's blasphemy

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer @PauloCereda didn't know that one.

Christian Hupfer

10:46

@Skillmon It's from the last season of MP, the one without John Cleese ... most of it is bad, in my point of view

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer how unfortunate.

@ChristianHupfer I have to find the time to watch flying circus, etc.

Christian Hupfer

@Skillmon It's on Netflix, for example ... and YouTube anyway... totally legal ;-)

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer don't have Netflix. But maybe the latter suggestion will do :)

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@ChristianHupfer Did you grow up using one of these?

Paulo Cereda

@HaraldHanche-Olsen ooh there are Playstation keys

Christian Hupfer

10:54

3

@Skillmon: That's CatFlix ;-)

Skillmon

@ChristianHupfer do they catflix and chill?

Christian Hupfer

@Skillmon Yes...

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Nope

Paulo Cereda

@ChristianHupfer LOL

Christian Hupfer

@PauloCereda Note the Apple computer with pink unicorn stickers /facepalm

Paulo Cereda

11:12

@ChristianHupfer oh

Stefan Kottwitz

13:14

@ChristianHupfer @PauloCereda Pink unicorns? The letter A in the title and subtitle of the book is more awful. Low centre of gravity and so not nice kerning.

Apropos unicorn: my daughter misses such a tikzling.

CarLaTeX

@StefanKottwitz Oh, what a pity @samcarter is not here!

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz There are two X360 controllers!

Kurt

13:30

I got the next palindrome:

5

Paulo Cereda

Current status

Tweeted by hmemcpy on February 3, 2019 at 9:04 PM

2

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Impressive aT kerning.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz :)

user280247

14:14

Hi guys, should I ask on the main site about problems installing vanilla texlive on ubuntu 18?

Stefan Kottwitz

14:39

@santimirandarp sure

Christian Hupfer

14:53

@StefanKottwitz Huh? Which book?

JouleV

Hi. How can I draw this?

Feeling stuck...

Stefan Kottwitz

@ChristianHupfer The one on the photo.

Christian Hupfer

@StefanKottwitz You seem to have plenty of time to scale such photos in order to detect weird kernings etc. ;-)

Stefan Kottwitz

@ChristianHupfer It's Saturday. Though the day of the week doesn't matter for procrastination.

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@JouleV Part VI of the TikZ manual seems like a good start.

Christian Hupfer

15:02

@StefanKottwitz I don't know what procrastination is...

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@ChristianHupfer You don't know what you're missing.

Skillmon

15:29

@JouleV scatter plot in matplotlib (if you want to use Python and not directly TikZ)

marmot

15:56

@JouleV I am sure such plots are on the main site. I try to find one.

@JouleV This is one example: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/348418/121799
According to my vague memory there might have been an earlier plot without lualatex.

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright I think I found a real deficiency regarding the primitive \pdflastlink.

David Carlisle

16:19

@UlrikeFischer ?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I'm trying (for tagging) to get the object numbers of the annotation objects of a link. But if a link is broken then there is more than one object, and \pdflastlink gives back only the first.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer well.. since it's an integer it can't do a lot more I guess... but some way to find the numbers would be good, are the object numbers for a broken link predicatble (if you can see it is broken?)

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle no the follow up numbers are not predicable. As far as I can see the first number (from \pdflastlink) is reserved directly, but then e.g. font objects and the page object is created. So I have e.g. 1, 6,7,.... The numbers are later on in the Annots entry of the page but one can't see which belong to which link.

@DavidCarlisle I'm just writing a question on the luatex list (it is the same problem there).

Sigur

16:52

Is it possible to insert new line in \PackageError ?

David Carlisle

@Sigur yes

@Sigur \MessageBreak (it prefixes the newline with the package name)

Sigur

@DavidCarlisle, nice. Thanks.

@DavidCarlisle, I am trying to format it also. Is there some command for blank char?

David Carlisle

@Sigur yes: x x or if you are in expl3 mode ~ of course, or\@spaces is 4 spaces, and \space is one

Sigur

@DavidCarlisle, good

David Carlisle

\def\@font@info#1{%
         \GenericInfo{(Font)\@spaces\@spaces\@spaces\space\space}%
                     {LaTeX Font Info: \space\space\space#1}}%

@Sigur ^ typical example (actually not such a good example (font) just needed here as there is no font package so it's using the lower level generic infoo, but \packgezzzz is same really

Sigur

17:12

@DavidCarlisle, \@spaces was useful to me. Many thanks.

Ulrike Fischer

17:22

@DavidCarlisle I'm holding my breath if we broke luaotfload or not ;-)

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer did you see the "question" earlier about luaotfload?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle yes, that was what I meant. But without more info it is impossible to decide if there is a real problem or not.

marmot

18:08

@JouleV And if you do not want to use lualatex:
\documentclass[tikz,border=3.14mm]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[clip] (0,0) rectangle (8,4);
\foreach \X in {1,...,1000}
{\pgfmathsetmacro{\myx}{rnd*8}
\pgfmathtruncatemacro{\itest}{ifthenelse(2*rnd<1+sin(\myx*300/pi),1,0)}
\ifnum\itest=1
\fill(\myx,4*rnd) circle[radius=1pt];
\fi
}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Harald Hanche-Olsen

18:40

@UlrikeFischer I notice that you did ask the question, plus the related one on unmatched \Uleft or \Uright delimiters, on the luatex list. Thanks! I look forward to seeing the response.

marmot

20:50

@Circumscribe Your smuggling really works great! (You do not know by chance how to confine a definition to a given environment, like e.g. the tikzpicture I am currently in, right?)

Christian Hupfer

21:14

@marmot: Shouldn't something like \pgfkeys{foo/.store in=\foo,foo/.initial=blue} result in a predefined \foo expanding to blue? tikz reports \foo to be unknown... (I don't think this is an group issue)

Circumscribe

@marmot Good to hear!

marmot

@ChristianHupfer No, use \pgfkeys{foo/.store in=\foo,foo=blue} instead (if you really want to go that way).

Circumscribe

I suppose you could maybe keep on smuggling until \@currenvir changes… (wouldn't work if an environment is nested in another one of the same type)

Christian Hupfer

@marmot That's what I am doing. What is the purpose of .initial then? Just for .get handling?

marmot

@Circumscribe OK, thanks! Seems a bit too complicated. (Sometimes one has to guess the right order... )

@ChristianHupfer You could do \pgfkeys{foo/.initial=blue} and then access this with \pgfkeysvalueof{foo}.

Circumscribe

21:18

@marmot Or hook into \end; not sure if that's better or worse :).

Christian Hupfer

@marmot Ah... that's nice... pgfkeys ist ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln für mich... (noch ;-)) Danke

marmot

@Circumscribe Nahh. I do not think it is worthwhile. If there was a standard LaTeX way, then that would be a different story.) Thanks!

@ChristianHupfer I would agree that the discussion of the pgfmanual on this is not yet optimal, and I am not sure what I am saying is correct or the intended usage, but I think it works...

Christian Hupfer

@marmot Sadly, it does not work or I am doing stupid mistakes... something like foostyle/.style={foo} (with foo as suggested by you above), is too optimistic to work, isn't it? (Compilation fails)

@marmot: Ah, got it: Since my foo key is from /foobar family, I've to use foostyle/.style={/foobar/foo}...

marmot

Or
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfkeys{/tikz/foo/.initial=blue}
\tikzset{foostyle/.style={\pgfkeysvalueof{/tikz/foo}}}
\draw[foostyle] (0,0) -- (2,1);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

@ChristianHupfer ^^^

@ChristianHupfer But you're right, \tikzset{foostyle/.style={/tikz/foo}} is better.

Christian Hupfer

@marmot Well, now I have to teach the /tikz keys to accept my /foobar path as well, without prepending /foobar/ each time

marmot

21:33

@ChristianHupfer @ChristianHupfer search also?

Christian Hupfer

@marmot \tikzset{/tikz/.search also=/foobar} then?

marmot

@ChristianHupfer The manual says \pgfkeys{/main path/.search also={/secondary path}}

@ChristianHupfer I didn't try this out so far, but if you have a key family this might work. From what I read this is what ".search also" is made for.

@ChristianHupfer Since @Circumscribe is around (at least the profile text says so ;-) : I am also wondering if one could smuggle pgfkeys. The only way out I know is to make the key global with \globaldefs1 (see e.g. here) but this can have severe side effects.

Circumscribe

21:50

@marmot Making an observation may actually change my aroundness.

marmot

@Circumscribe Are you a cat?

Circumscribe

@marmot I wouldn't know directly, but I think these are just stored in pgfk@<path>

marmot

@Circumscribe Yes, that's what the error messages suggest that I often get. ;-)

Circumscribe

@marmot Just a boring human I'm afraid :(.

marmot

@Circumscribe But at least you seem to share a crucial property with Schrödinger's cat.

Circumscribe

21:56

@marmot I'm part of the system!

marmot

@Circumscribe Not an observer?

Circumscribe

@marmot You're the only observer; everything else is part of the system :).

marmot

@Circumscribe That makes sense. ;-)

Circumscribe

@marmot I do believe I'm part of the system though, and that all of reality as I currently see and remember it is just a single observation.

marmot

@Circumscribe Yes, this is consistent with your earlier statement. ;-)

David Carlisle

22:26

@marmot not in front of the newcomers:-)

marmot

@DavidCarlisle OK, sorry, deleted it. (I was just amused that you got asked if you could recommend some packages for tables... ;-)

David Carlisle

@marmot oh i don't mind really, but it may be confusing following the line of reasoning in this chat is confusing enough if you are english, i have no idea how ducks and marmots manage

marmot

@DavidCarlisle Reasoning? What reasoning? ;-)

Alan Munn

Anyone here using pandoc to convert to MSWord? I have a question.

David Carlisle

@marmot anyway you could have referred him to this recommendation:

If you use any of the mentioned packages other than longtable then any bug or problem reports don't go to me. That is a definite advantage of using those packages. — David Carlisle May 9 '12 at 18:49

marmot

22:33

@DavidCarlisle ^^^^ really?

@AlanMunn Others have been excommunicated for less. ;-)

David Carlisle

@marmot the question is asking about longtable v supertab as far as I recall

marmot

@DavidCarlisle but do u know what package can i use for make tables?

Alan Munn

@marmot Yeah, well I have to deal with a system that requires me to upload Word documents, and I'm try to outwit it with pandoc. I don't think that counts as an excommunicationable offence.

marmot

@AlanMunn Die Wege des Herrn....

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle hm, most of the comments in the old question seem to recommend (long)tabu ;-)

David Carlisle

22:36

@marmot oh yes the current question, tell him to wait unto Joseph gets round to doing an l3table module

@UlrikeFischer you'd better fix tabu then:-)

marmot

@DavidCarlisle So I shouldn't have deleted my comment, then? ;-)

Alan Munn

@marmot Yes, Our Father, IRB, hallowed be thy name.

marmot

@AlanMunn The implication is that it is not the offender who can decide whether or not an offense is excommunicationable....

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer no reply to my fr.comp.text.tex post :(

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle well Jean-François had to wait more than two weeks, so there is still hope.

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends