TeX, LaTeX and Friends

vlg

00:45

reading thru the docs expl3, xparse (and interface3 sooner or later), I'm getting excited about what's to come, well, it's already here for the most part.

Would it be reasonable/meaningful to rewrite my package with the new language, possibly improving on this and that- but does it serve only programming needs or does it also perform better too?

Raaja

04:29

@egreg good morning. Could you tell me what is the difference between \newcommand and \newExpandableDocumentCommand and why you specifically chose to use this? I saw the latter in your answer here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/475613/border-strip-tableau/…. I ave no idea about this because, this is the first time I have seen this command.

CarLaTeX

05:54

@Raaja You're welcome!

Ulrike Fischer

08:14

@vlg expl3 isn't really so "new". A lot important packages use it already since years, e.g. siunitx and fontspec. I use it for every new code, and wish I had the time to use it for some old code too, see e.g. tex.stackexchange.com/a/458937/2388.

David Carlisle

@vlg I have been using essentially that syntax since about 1992:-) It is mainly to improve programming possibilities, whether it improves performance depends on what you are doing, Will and Bruno (especially) have done a lot of work optimising that code, so it's unlikely (but of course not impossible) that you can get better performance offering similar features, ...

@vlg ... but like any high level language it is translated to lower level code so if you want a specific thing and are prepared to write that functionality in tex primitives it must always be faster to do that.

Paulo Cereda

08:47

My PhD advisor told me to put a ten dollar bill between the pages of my thesis in the university library. "So I can check to see if anyone read it?", I asked. "No, of course no one will read it," he replied, "but when you come back into town you'll always have money for lunch." https://twitter.com/NoahHaber/status/1097565095272636421

Tweeted by CT_Bergstrom on February 19, 2019 at 9:16 AM

egreg

09:28

@Raaja You can't hide \multicolumn in a command with optional argument defined through \newcommand, but this is possible with \NewExpandableDocumentCommand.

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@UlrikeFischer One small worry about using expl3: If I use it in writing classes or style files for my colleagues, I'd be afraid of inadvertently using a recent addition to the language. The problem being that many of said colleagues tend to have very old TeX distributions. Usually, they'll install some distribution when they get a new computer, then they'll never update it. Do I worry needlessly?

Ulrike Fischer

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Well no, if you use a new command and they have an old system they will get an error. But this problem is not restricted to expl3, you get it with every package that evolves. You can't use all the goodies from tcolorbox if you don't keep your system up-to-date. People really need to get rid of the idea "latex doesn't change so I never need to update". This was never true and today even less.

daleif

@UlrikeFischer that might be quite interesting. We need to test this in as many PDF viewers as we can. I was testing it using Evince on Linux. Works fine. And using the uncompressed version of the saved PDF, the data seems easy to get out.

Anyone know if there are general CLI tools that can get form data out of a PDF?

Paulo Cereda

09:44

@daleif I know qpdf has some interesting features, but I am not sure if it can handle form data extraction... Maybe it's worth a check...

daleif

Here is from Emacs

/FT /Tx
/DA (/Helv 10 Tf 0 0 0 rg)
/Subtype /Widget
/Type /Annot
/V (\376\377^@2)
/F 4
/T (test3)
/Rect [270.349 643.646 314.861 657.593]
/Q 0
/DV ()
/BS

Had to type out some control sequences

The value here is 2

So at least in this case the data is parsable

Ulrike Fischer

@daleif tex.stackexchange.com/a/386853/2388 (this users has quite a number of useful answers to this topic).

Joseph Wright

@HaraldHanche-Olsen We document ever addition: you can check which commands you use and set a warning. See for example the start of siunitx.sty.

daleif

@UlrikeFischer Lol is already using pdftk to decompress, never occurred to try an dump the data. I just tested Edge, FF and Chrome on Windows. They are a no-go. The first two could not show the fields. Chrome could show the fields, but does not seem to be able to save the data into a PDF. (using a form send to is a no-go in this case, the exam system does not support it)

Ulrike Fischer

10:02

@daleif imho you will need a "real" pdf viewer, the plugins in the browsers miss a number of functions.

daleif

@UlrikeFischer that is my impression as well. A recommendation would of course be save the PDF to disk, and double check the filled in data before you upload.

and pdftk + dump_data_fields is SO much easier

Vrouvrou

10:23

Dear all,

how to do to obtain the bibliography on blue ?

" I use polyglossia

Harald Hanche-Olsen

10:57

@JosephWright Took me a while to figure out where to look, but it seems that source3.pdf is the best place to find out when a function was added. Or did you have anything else in mind? (I notice also l3syntax-changes.pdf has useful information. l3obsolete.txt, maybe not so much.)

@UlrikeFischer True, but when things do break, guess who gets to deal with the fallout? (The package author, that's who.) I think the best self-defence is to not use features added in the past year or two, say, and to make sure the package yells at the user if their installation is too old.

Ulrike Fischer

11:14

@HaraldHanche-Olsen you can't avoid that things break. If you stick to old stuff, documents of users with new systems can break, if you use new stuff old documents break. You only need to look at the recurrent problems of miktex users with differening user/admin states. I tell people to update their stuff when something breaks - and normally they are quite reasonable and do it.

Vrouvrou

any idea?

David Carlisle

@Vrouvrou blue?

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright I'm just trying to import the new unicode-math test files from Will's repo, and he has at the end of every tlg the line Compilation 1 of test file completed with exit status 0. Do you have an idea where it is from? I don't find it why my log doesn't add it.

@JosephWright one only has to ask a question to find the answer, recordstatus = true;-)

daleif

11:54

@UlrikeFischer bug repport on hyperref. Why is field height zero inside a matrix?

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[]{hyperref}
\parskip=1em
\newcommand\BOX[1]{\text{\TextField[name=#1,width=15mm]{}}}
\begin{document}
\begin{Form}
\[
\begin{pmatrix}
1 & 2 \\
\BOX{test1} & 4
\end{pmatrix}
\]

Test2: \BOX{test2}

\end{Form}
\end{document}

David Carlisle

@daleif probably because \baselineskip is zero there.

@daleif is it different in a normal array without amsmath

daleif

@DavidCarlisle normal array + \textrm instead of \text => same result. I can just set a \baselineskip inside the \BOX

and that helps

Vrouvrou

@DavidCarlisle a bibliography in blue

or in red

David Carlisle

@Vrouvrou \color{blue}before the bibliography.

Raaja

@egreg thanks for the explanation ;) now I see the difference

David Carlisle

12:08

@daleif OK we should probably check for that being 0 and use \normalbaselineskip in that case.

Vrouvrou

@DavidCarlisle only the title is in blue I want all the table

Sebastiano

Good morning all users into chat.

Ulrike Fischer

try `\renewcommand\DefaultHeightofText{\normalbaselineskip}
`, and make a bug report at ho-tex, imho that would be a better default.

David Carlisle

@Vrouvrou then something is wrong, as I am sure has been mentioned to you before it is far easier to help if you make an example that reproduces the problem and post a real question on the main site.

Sebastiano

@DavidCarlisle Ah ok, thank a lot same.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage{boondox-calo}
\begin{document}
$\mathbcal{A}(\theta,\phi)=$
\end{document}

David Carlisle

12:11

@Sebastiano no I don't have that package

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle \usepackage{BOONDOX-calo}

Sebastiano

@DavidCarlisle Thank you very much the same.

@UlrikeFischer Hi and good morning.

0

A: Does anyone know how to write this symbol?

N.B. Yet this is not tested because I'm using not register LaTeX online. \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} \usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath} \usepackage{boondox-calo} \begin{document} $\mathbcal{A}(\theta,\phi)=$ \end{document}

Ulrike Fischer

@Sebastiano no, the symbol from boondox look different:

Sebastiano

@UlrikeFischer Thank you I remove my answer now. But I saw that calligraphic A from somewhere, but I don't remember where. Maybe Stix-font.

David Carlisle

@Sebastiano why post an untested answer?

Sebastiano

12:16

@DavidCarlisle Because I thought that logging in with another online editor with github I had the required package.

cocalc.com/doc/latex-editor.html

GermanShepherd

While typsetting a vernacular language (kannada), there are issues in alignment. Some words spill out of the margin. Any ideas on what to do? @DavidCarlisle

daleif

@UlrikeFischer it does not seem that such a widely used PDF viewer as Preview on the Mac can handle such PDF files. No boxes appear. One can write on the PDF using the commenting tool, but that makes the PDF harder to parse

Ulrike Fischer

@daleif a fast search for "mac preview pdf form filling" suggests that it should be able to handle form fields.

daleif

12:33

@UlrikeFischer Hmm, maybe we need to test on a newer Mac

@UlrikeFischer any idea why the hyperref bugtracker is not listed in doc/latex/hyperref/manual.pdf, which is the default result for texdoc hyperref in TL18. It is listed in hyperref.pdf from the same location.

Ulrike Fischer

@daleif ask @DavidCarlisle. But the easiest is to add an issue to the bug tracker so that the manual is corrected ;-)

daleif

@UlrikeFischer I was going to until I noticed that it was there in hyperref.pdf and there might be an idea behind that.

Ulrike Fischer

@daleif if the main manual (which is manual.pdf) doesn't contain this info, there is no idea behind it, it simply has been forgotten.

David Carlisle

@GermanShepherd xetex?

@daleif as @UlrikeFischer says:-)

daleif

13:10

@DavidCarlisle already added

David Carlisle

13:22

@daleif thanks

Harald Hanche-Olsen

13:49

@UlrikeFischer I am not trying to completely avoid breaking stuff, only to minimise breakage. So I figure, if I use features that have been in for ≥ 2 years and are not marked obsolete or deprecated, I have a better chance at achieving that. (And people can be remarkably unreasonable when they're facing a deadline and can't typeset their documents.) I also imagine that the expl3 authors are better than most at avoiding breaking changes.

user0

@StefanKottwitz Now I wanted to finally answer cis, but found my texwelt account blocked. Since our last conversation, nothing happened from my side. Anything wrong?

yo'

14:11

@egreg Why in the world do people write blabla ~\cite{foo}.

David Carlisle

@yo' because they want to get a linebreak before the citation which is then indented by one word space?

yo'

@DavidCarlisle I dunno. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would you use a tilde at all then?

David Carlisle

@yo' I think at one point we did consider making ~ do an unskip but worried it would change too much existing stuff.

@yo' yes sorry it makes no sense I was just trying to get inside a user's head:-)

yo'

14:47

@DavidCarlisle I know, after all, we could blame @JosephWright for users' illogical behaviour :)

David Carlisle

15:04

@yo' seems like a reasonable plan.

Skillmon

15:29

@StefanKottwitz I can't open texwelt.de/wissen/fragen/24167/… , I get a OperationalError do you want me to send you the traceback or is there any known incident?

Stefan Kottwitz

@Skillmon I worked on the database - is it ok now?

JouleV

0

Q: How to get automatic line-breaks using tabularx and makecell?♀

I'm using the tabularx and makecell packages for the aesthetics of my tables. I used the X column type for columns with long texts and \makecell{...} for line-breaks into the cells. But when I try to use both together, the effect of the X columns doesn't work. In the MWE I'd like that the long t...

My god, three answers within one minute and two answers within 5 seconds :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@user0 Software issue, cannot simply unsuspend - manual change in the database is not possible right now. Perhaps use the other account user-0

Skillmon

@StefanKottwitz yes, back up and running :)

@StefanKottwitz maybe it's a good idea to switch to some "Maintenance..." screen while making changes to the database.

Stefan Kottwitz

@Skillmon yes, sometimes I'm too casual...

marmot

15:54

@JouleV This doesn't prove that time is quantized. ;-)

Faheem Mitha

Hi folks.

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle lol, I got the tick: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/475838/… :)

@FaheemMitha hello

Faheem Mitha

@Skillmon Hey.

egreg

16:22

@yo' The first incarnation of amslatex did remove spaces before ~

Faheem Mitha

I've got a short document (a letter). If I put a tabular inside a quoting environment on what should be the first page, it pushes it to the second page. I assume the quoting environment puts an invisible box around the quoted text, which pushes it over the edge.

I'm mostly using the quoting environment because it puts a nice clear black border around the text. Suggestions for workarounds?

G. Bay

Anyone want to add something? https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/475707/environment-for-chemical-reaction-with-reference/

@egreg your solution from another question is better IMO but I h ave to choose some answer...

egreg

@G.Bay Should we close it as duplicate?

G. Bay

Maybe... it would e shame but I guess it applies.

egreg

16:38

@G.Bay I should make some test. Stay tuned.

G. Bay

Paulo Cereda

@G.Bay NO, HEAVENS NO

G. Bay

@PauloCereda Dollyinho is your friend :) don't worry

Paulo Cereda

@G.Bay you will be stabbed

G. Bay

Thats evil, whats wrong with dollyinho meme?

David Carlisle

16:43

@Skillmon the teachings of @egreg are spreading...

Paulo Cereda

@G.Bay It's the awful soft drink with an annoying commercial

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha \enlargethispage{1cm} ?

@egreg I thought I remembered something along those lines

G. Bay

@PauloCereda LMAO, its so funky and brega... that becomes funny on its own

I don't drink any sort of soda anyway so...

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I tried \setlength{\textheight}{1.2\textheight}, which had no effect.

@DavidCarlisle Where would I put that. In the preamble?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha that would work before `\begin{document}

@FaheemMitha no \enlargethispage just applies to the page it is on

Faheem Mitha

16:46

@DavidCarlisle Ok, I'll try it. Isn't it possible to stop the quoting environment from gobbling space?

@DavidCarlisle And \enlargethispage{1cm} would apply to every page?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha no idea, you could always precede it by \vspace*{-1cm} to move it up a bit

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

Ulrike Fischer

@FaheemMitha a lot of things are possible, but if you don't show a bit concrete code one can only guess.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle No visible difference.

@UlrikeFischer Yes, I realise that an example is better.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha you did something wrong or it is more overfull than 1cm or there is a page break for another reason or something else or....

Paulo Cereda

16:50

@DavidCarlisle hm

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, lots of possibilities.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha blame @PauloCereda

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle oh no

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok, I'll do that.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda ^^

Paulo Cereda

16:52

@DavidCarlisle oh no

Harald Hanche-Olsen

Jun 29 '17 at 16:15, by Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle you are not mean :)

Paulo Cereda

@HaraldHanche-Olsen oh

egreg

@DavidCarlisle This is in amstex.sty: \def~{\unskip\nobreak\ \ignorespaces}

@G.Bay Here's what I get by just adding my code from \makeatletter up to \makeatother to yours

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{chemmacros}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\makeatletter % patchcmd from etoolbox, loaded by chemmacros
\patchcmd{\hyper@makecurrent}
 {\edef\Hy@param{#1}}
 {\xHy@param@def{#1}}
 {}{}
\def\xHy@param@def#1{%
  \edef\@tempa{\csname theH#1\endcsname}%
  \edef\@tempa{\expandafter\@car\@tempa\@nil}%
  \edef\Hy@param{\if R\@tempa reaction\else#1\fi}%
}
\makeatother
\newcommand\reactionautorefname{Reaction}

\chemsetup{
    modules = {reactions} ,
    formula = mhchem

G. Bay

@egreg That looks great, if you replace the curly braces I would have to accept your answer. Thats what I did actually. But if you want to make as duplicate its ok for me too.

egreg

17:08

@G.Bay I'm not sure that you really want to replace the curly braces, unless reactions share the counter with equations, so you'd get (1) for the equation and (2) for the reaction. Otherwise readers would have a hard time in interpreting which is which.

G. Bay

I see, that makes sense. Maybe then I should add like "Eq" in front of equations or something like that.

egreg

You can use

\chemsetup{
  modules = {reactions},
  formula = mhchem,
  reactions/tag-open=(,
  reactions/tag-close=),
}

@G.Bay But I'd really share the counter.

G. Bay

@egreg I gotta check that damn ABNT standard... but I have to agree you got a very good point there.

David Carlisle

@egreg better not use it at start of a para then:-)

egreg

@G.Bay Unfortunately there does not seem to be an option for chemmacros to share the counters. :-(

@G.Bay There should be. It might be a feature request.

G. Bay

17:17

hehehe

ABNT only says to number "equations and formulas" thats very vauge

Paulo Cereda

@G.Bay use different counters, trust me

G. Bay

@PauloCereda For sure, but some reader might be confuse with both counters, maybe "(Re 1)" is better then just (1)

Paulo Cereda

@G.Bay Ah yes, you need to preceed them. :)

G. Bay

I think I got Cerada's blessing now, lol

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle did you see the mail?

egreg

17:23

\chemsetup{
  modules = {reactions},
  formula = mhchem,
  reactions/tag-open=(R,
  reactions/tag-close=),
}

@G.Bay ^^^^^^

G. Bay

@egreg Thank you! Do you want to post as an answer or make it dupe? I gtg now, be back in 2 hours

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer yes will try to look later (although I may have to generate a suitable windows texlive tree to drop it in to)

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I can try too (after all I already have a suitable windows texlive ...), but what I'm not quite getting is, do I need all the mingw stuff when I have working windows texlive?

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer possibly or at least you'll need a mingw luatex not the win32tex one so the dlls are compatible

Ulrike Fischer

17:40

@DavidCarlisle hm yes, so I will use the whole folder. But I should really at first sort luaotfload.

@DavidCarlisle but it is good news that there is something going on ...

Paulo Cereda

18:04

@AlanMunn: journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/jist/article/view/722

The power of language, to the extreme. :)

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda wtf? Is this a joke? It seems like a totally ridiculous question.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn I think it's a joke...

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda Not completely a joke, but not completely serious, I guess:

The journal is published as an educational tool by students on the Natural Sciences/Interdisciplinary Science undergraduate degree programmes at the University of Leicester (UK) and iScience students at McMaster University (Canada).

The journal accepts brief articles on topics original to the authors. It does not accept reviews or summaries of other peoples work. It is managed by an editorial board which rotates around the student body and is overseen by a member of staff. The journal forms part of the assessed element of both the BSc and MSc degree (UK). Assessment is by number and qualit…

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn oh that explains it.

Phelype Oleinik

@PauloCereda Looks like it came from what-if.xkcd.com :)

Paulo Cereda

18:23

@PhelypeOleinik :)

Harald Hanche-Olsen

20:11

@PauloCereda @AlanMunn “Blistering remark” is a common figure of speech. So a natural question is, what does it take for a remark to actually raise a blister?

@PhelypeOleinik Speaking of which, my favourite is What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? Pretty apocalyptic, as it turns out.

Werner

10

Circumscribe

@Werner Nice!

Werner

20:26

@Circumscribe Fooooooooouuuuuuuurrrr!

...four the golfers.

Or gholphours.

Circumscribe

@Werner :)

Phelype Oleinik

@HaraldHanche-Olsen That's an excellent one :) Those articles have the bad habit of being apocalyptic.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Even Sunless Earth, which looks promising for most part of it, ends with a “We would all freeze and die”.

barbara beeton

@Werner -- following up on that theme, it's quite nice "foursome".

marmot

22:38

@Werner May the fourth be with you!

vlg

23:46

Read in [1] that one shouldn't make set count values directly rather use `\advance`. First, why? Second, to set to zero, just advance by negative itself, right?

[1] https://www.texdev.net/2009/11/17/tex-counts-and-latex-counters/

egreg

@vlg \addtocounter operates globally.

@JosephWright In the texdev.net/2009/11/17/tex-counts-and-latex-counters page there are several > that should be >

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