OH MY GOD THE PERFECTION

Oh I did not see the marmot's comment, sorry

@Sebastiano Don't worry, I was only telling you that you don't need to close a question of yours, you can directly delete it. Relax and go outdoors, don't stand in front of a computer, you will feel better, ciao!

When do \let and \futurelet ignore a blank space and when do they not ignore it? So how can I force something like \let\foo= \bar to make \foo have the \meaning blank space , and how can I force it so that \foo will have the \meaning of \bar. I'm never sure whether it will ignore spaces or won't.

@Skillmon \let<cs><optional =><optional space><token>. On the other hand, \futurelet ignores nothing.

@egreg ok. Thanks. So \futurelet will always let to space (if the space is not ignored because of the parsing rules of TeX gobbling spaces after cs)?

@Skillmon Yes, see

\def\:{\let\@sptoken= } \:  % this makes \@sptoken a space token
\def\:{\@xifnch} \expandafter\def\: {\futurelet\@let@token\@ifnch}

Or else

\expandafter\futurelet
\expandafter\spacetoken
\expandafter\relax\space

\show\spacetoken

@egreg ooh a token from space :)

@PauloCereda well at least that's one tex detail that @egreg knows something about.

@PauloCereda But is it from \outer \space?

@mickep test with \ifinner

@DavidCarlisle Good suggestion. There is no \ifouter? :)

@mickep \unless\ifinner (either way this may be the first reasonable use of that command, which is almost never useful:-)

@DavidCarlisle Ohh, \unless

@mickep I am very modern with these new e-tex additions, ask @JosephWright

@DavidCarlisle I take your word for it. :)

I'm modern too: I managed to reinsert my first link in a \includepdf with luatex and the pdfe library ;-)

@UlrikeFischer wow that's even more recent than 1993

@DavidCarlisle ;-).

@HaraldHanche-Olsen I just had a look at the headlines. The ship is now safe, it is so good.

@JouleV glad to hear!

@JouleV Yes, they docked in Molde harbour around 16:30 yesterday. I was watching live on TV as it came in the fjord accompanied by three tugboats. (No, not that TUGboat.)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen So it is broadcasted live? It's awesome!

Well, every time I google "tugboat" or "tug", it shows me the ships ;-) I have to type "tex user group" if I want to search for that TUGboat :)

@CarLaTeX Actually, I don't understand anything. Between my health, between the intermediate polls, between the work...I'm in tilt. I only understood that I had to cancel the question. In any case, you are very free to delete it or to do whatever you think is most appropriate. I should go to bed after I finish answering everyone. I have dizziness.

@StefanKottwitz I sincerely thank you. Everyone tells me to think of myself. Friends, colleagues and especially students. But I can't think about myself :-(:-( I always think about helping others.

@StefanKottwitz It's worth mentioning that with Office Word I tried to help a gentleman who works at funeral services and who knows who asked him for help, so that I could help him to create posters for deceased people. I'll send you a big hug and good work. Now I have to go and get some sleep, see if it's even better than last night.

Hey. Do you know what the Chicago Manual of Style knows about positioning of float environments (tables, figures)? I could not find it yet.

@JouleV Well, this whole affair was seriously big news in my corner of the world.

@Lukas As LaTeX probably is the only system with that concept I don't think CMoS knows they concept of floats.

It has recommendations on, say, figure placements.

@daleif, Yes, that is what I search for.

In 12.10 (on figure placement), it only says that an illustration should appear as soon as possible after the first text reference to it (unless ina gallery...). It may preceede the reference only if it appears on the same page or same two-page spread as the reference or if the text is too short to permit placing all the figures and tables after their references.

A gallery seems similar to our float only pages.

Oh great. That is exactly the phrase I was searching for.

This is usually what LaTeX does, if floats are used properly.

Ok, good. We were unsure here about the "preceed on same page" part. Thank you.

Here is a question on math fonts: I'm playing with virtual fonts and adding letter and numbers from a text font into a given math font. I made a program that can just grap data from other vpl files and inject them into another. Seems to work fine. But I'm having an interesting spacing issue on my numbers

@samcarter 'cycle of money' fountain in Aix-la-chapelle commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/…

@marmot ^^^

On top is 1-0 in the text font I'm copying from. Below is used in MATH. Of course in this case the bounding box on each letter is not the same, but it is obviously not using the same bounding box as in the text case? Any idea on what I don't know about?

Interesting, there seems to be added space on the right of 1 2 4 and 0

And a little on 8 and 9

@AlexG Very good detective work!

I was there in December.

@AlexG :) Where the ducks also there in December?

@samcarter No, I would have taken a photo.

@JouleV The comma is not in the middle. ;-)

@marmot Well, I *only* need 103,334 more ;)

@AlexG Stupid me! Of course we would have heard of the ducks!

Hi. In all LaTeX3 answers on TeX.SE, I see that the "tab size" is only 1. Is this an obligation or not when LaTeX3 is released?

@JouleV Huh?

@JouleV Website turns all tabs to spaces

@JouleV That should be quick. Even I got there.

@mickep ooh

@mickep ooh

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@samcarter ooh

@samcarter Exactly! Quack.

@JouleV ^^

Duck pulling a tugboat! LoL

@AlexG weeeee :)

@PauloCereda This duck is propeller driven.

(Judging from the wake vortex)

@AlexG ooh

@PauloCereda Love it :)) but it would be even nicer if the captain duck is behind the driving wheel ;)

@PauloCereda ohh's for everybody :)

@JouleV lilalu-shop.com/en/products/rubber-ducks/ducks-at-work/…

@PauloCereda Where did you get this from? let me guess: a conspiracy theory site on how Titanic sank. ;-)

@marmot How could there be a conspiracy theory about the sinking of the Titanic when the cause is crystal clear: fire :) (medium.com/s/story/…)

@samcarter Well, some say it was sank by a duck.

@marmot A duck that tugged the ice berg there?

@samcarter No, pretty much as in Paulo's picture. They say they could exclude all other possibilities, so this must be it.

@marmot Ah, if they wanted to set a new record time to cross the Atlantic, they would needed duck speed.

@samcarter No, the only thing they didn't consider is that a ship is at most as unsinkable as its duck.

@marmot ooh a marmot theory

@PauloCereda At least we do not sink ships. ;-)

@marmot that's your side of the story. :)

@HaraldHanche-Olsen ooh

From the Land of the Rising Duck ^^

@UlrikeFischer ooh

@PauloCereda 5891

From Wednesday till Friday the annual Spring Conference of DANTE e.V. will take place at Darmstadt/Germany. The Bär who has discovered his penchant for this kind of event will be one of the participants.

Apart from some certainly groundbreaking lectures there will be (on Wednesday, 27th, at 9:15) a small tutorial in which certain prominent Tikzlings will have major supporting roles - the reason being that the Annual Congress of the International Federation of Tikzlings (IFT) will be held parallel to the DANTE meeting.

@UlrikeFischer The First Annual International Congress of Procrastinators has been scheduled at this time too, I believe, but alas, it has been postponed. And not for the first time …

Welp, time to delve into the pgfplots manual and try and figure out how to plot two sets of data on two different y-axis so I can put my TGA data into my ESI

Never found the derivative that useful, but shrug

@Canageek Ah, the joys

@JosephWright Turned out to be simpler then it first appeared, but now I have to figure out how to merge the two legends.

This is all based on code you gave me for plotting IR data about 6 years ago

@UlrikeFischer I wish all the members of the IFT a lot of fun in Darmstadt!

@UlrikeFischer I'm very sad that I cannot attend myself -- I'll try very hard for next year's IFT Congress!

@barbarabeeton ^^^

@samcarter ooh

@PauloCereda I'm not sure why, but since @barbarabeeton recounted the story of Riley the sloth, they seem to appear everywhere. I even had paper handkerchiefs with sloths :)

@samcarter ooh more sloths

@PauloCereda I should complain, the other tikzlings also want their own merchandise!

@UlrikeFischer I hope you are taking the the tikzlings out for a suitable conference dinner

@DavidCarlisle I hope they take me out for a suitable dinner after I made them such a nice conference poster (and organized an art exhibition) ;-)

@egreg Hello very kind. Can I ask you a very quick question? But with MathJax (since I'm also registered on Physics) is it possible to write mathematical characters in bold? I couldn't do it. I wanted to do a parenthesis [ in bold but I made many unnecessary attempts.

@Sebastiano I'm not sure you can.

@Sebastiano With MathJax you can do what they let you do.

@Sebastiano There is no “boldface square bracket” in Unicode.

@egreg In fact I have searched on this site asciimath.org but I have not found anything. Thank you immensely.

@egreg My best regards.

@UlrikeFischer If this is a reasonable conference, they will offer you honey liquor.

@marmot I'm more hoping for this:

@UlrikeFischer I think the being on the picture will prefer honey liquor. Champagne is not so special, you can find it everywhere.

@marmot depends on the champagne ;-).