Question about formatting: Suppose that you need to write a program that has as input the number of football team. This number is represented by K. You need to write this information on a document. How would you type that: $K$, \textit{K}, ....?

Another example: "Design a program that shows the sum of values A and B". How would you print the variables A and B?

@manooooh $K$, $A$, $B$

@DavidCarlisle ok, I would do that too. But isn't the $ notation refer to math notation? Our task is to use a programming language to do that, not a math algorithm

@manooooh I wouldn't normally comment on english but as yours is normally pretty good, but you used the same spelling multiple times, it's project not proyect

Thanks for the correction

Teh project, to be more precise. ;-)

@marmot LOL

@manooooh look at one of our doc eg nag.co.uk/numeric/cl/nagdoc_cl26.2/nagdoc_fl26.2/html/f08/… there is a programming variable n in roman (also red as it's a link) and a math variable n in math italic, these are sort of the same thing but the distintction is kept, also a and $A$ and m and $m$ etc.

@marmot stop screeching

@DavidCarlisle thanks for the useful link!

@DavidCarlisle if we need to output a date with the format YYYYMMDD, this also should be typed as $YYYYMMDD$ right?

nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01796-1

Anybody read this article?

Is this Nature (I mean the famous Nature)?

Because I find it quite inaccurate

@CarLaTeX I think it is the "same nature", but this looks more like some kind of blog entry.

@mickep Thanks! Yes, of course, it isn't an article

@CarLaTeX They say they want articles be submitted in word because their production workflow is based on word m(

@AlexG So it is inaccurate and biased, lol

@AlanMunn Psmith is sadly on hold because SE made a favour and changed some internals and the login broke completely. I opened a issue, so let's see when the old chap is back. :)

@AlexG Pretty standard in physical science

@PauloCereda GitKraken v6 has tabs ...

@JosephWright ooh

@PauloCereda I like GitKraken: it's probably not as powerful as for example SourceTree, but it's a good balance

@PauloCereda Particularly since they added interactive rebasing

@JosephWright I find SourceTree confusing, to be honest. Not my favourite tool. :)

@JosephWright That seems very convenient!

@PauloCereda Exactly

@PauloCereda It's pretty clean, yes

@JosephWright I still wonder if I should delve myself into advanced stuff in git, given that most GUI's now ease the tasks.

@JosephWright I just noticed I cant use the free gitkracken at work, I was trying to indoctrinate someone on git usage, I switched to sourcetree but didn't like it as much, have you tried any of the other git guis?

@PauloCereda Oh, there is still valve in using the CLI, for example for bisect but also quickly searching the log

@JosephWright woo

@DavidCarlisle git cola :)

@JosephWright AIRPLANE MODE OFF

:)

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, a while ago yes: I tried TortoiseGit for example, and the GitHub one ..

@JosephWright ew Tortoise...

@PauloCereda Well yes: print screen is the same button ...

@JosephWright uh-oh

@DavidCarlisle There are loads of alternatives ...

@JosephWright IIRC Brent is a huge fan of SmartGit

@JosephWright I chose the alternative of using commandline git in a terminal window:-)

@DavidCarlisle not inside an emacs buffer? I am disappointed. :)

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I still do that quite a bit. I like having the GUI mainly for looking at the log.

@DavidCarlisle Looking forward to your thoughts on prep for the highly-secret plan ;)

@PauloCereda well emacs of course detects files are under git control and sets itself up in git mode (as it does with svn) but I never trust it, it thinks it knows what commands need doing and I'm not sure it does:-)

@DavidCarlisle I've got Atom installed and that does Git inside the editor ... I have tried that (for blog entries, largely)

@DavidCarlisle :)

@JosephWright Have you tried VSCode? It's a very good editor.

any one on ubuntu?

@UlrikeFischer Fedora :(

@JosephWright I actually mainly wanted a nice view of the branch structure since we have a project taking a strong gitflow approach that has a gazillion branches:-)

@UlrikeFischer I'm on (x)ubuntu.

@mickep could you try a minimal lualatex example? tex.stackexchange.com/questions/496275/…

@UlrikeFischer Sure, but I do not have texlive installed from apt, but manually.

@mickep would one get texlive 2019 from apt?

@UlrikeFischer Let me check (I'm at work, and I have to look if I have the latest ubuntu installed here). I would guess though, that it is texlive2018 by default repositories.

@mickep well the op with the problem has 2019, so probably installed manually. Does lualatex works for you there?

(The document compiles without a problem here)

OK, let me update to latest texlive via tlmgr and try to run the file again.

@UlrikeFischer The TeXLive update will take a while it seems, I will ping you once it is done and I have tested the document again (but I would be surprised if this problem would have gone unnoticed).

@UlrikeFischer The minimal document provided by the person still compiles with an upgraded version of texlive.

@mickep yes, we think that it is probably some permission problem, the cache seems not to be written.

@UlrikeFischer Ah, good. Well, then I at least got me an updated texlive thanks to this. :)

@DavidCarlisle -- Actually, emacs predates gnu. The original was based on teco. (Not sure that teco really exists any more, in the sense that it's extensively used.)

@barbarabeeton yes there is a document somewhere on how forked versions of emacs lead to the start of the gnu idea. I'm sure you can find a teco emulator on the web if you need one:-)

@barbarabeeton oh there is a teco emulator here but you need to build a pdp10 emulator first:-) pdp10.nocrew.org

@DavidCarlisle -- I assure you that teco also ran on a DECSystem 20.

@barbarabeeton I'm sure it did, it may be that if you find a decsystem 20 emulator those teco macros will run on it....

@barbarabeeton last para of this emulator page claims that ther wasn't any real difference between a decsystem20 and a pdp fms.komkon.org/comp/sys/DEC.html

@DavidCarlisle -- Well, there wasn't a lot of difference, but the only PDP 10 I ever used was SAIL, and that had its own operating systen.

seems like the line was finished in 83 just as I was finishing my undergrad years (82) I remember seeing a few around the computer lab but I don't think I ever used one.

I've just noticed that the tex-related "ads" on the main site seem to have disappeared. On some pages, new ads for stackexchange "teams" show up instead. Does anyone know anything more?

@barbarabeeton you've mail

@yo' -- Got it. Thanks! Looks good, but I'd like to hear from Karl too. (Now I have to answer your question about C++.)

@barbarabeeton well, it's been submitted meanwhile, but still, we can corrected in a next version

Helloo

Is it possible to share a link of StackExchange not including the user ID?

@manooooh just delete the trailing id

I click on "share" and the site automatically adds the user id. I don't care at all, but what happen if for some reason my account is deleted?

@DavidCarlisle this.

@DavidCarlisle it is a bit annoying to do that every time I share a link, but that is one solution, thanks

@manooooh it doesn't matter the final /zzz doesn't affect the page shown it just allows them to trach shares to give you the badge for sharing a link used by so many people

@manooooh you don't have to use the share button, just take the url from your browser address bar

@DavidCarlisle ok. However the link is not shorten by its question number but includes the title

@manooooh yes but they are all the same thing really

What is the longest syllable in a dictionary of syllables by which TeX breaks words? Can I look this up somewhere?

* hyphenates rather (not breaks)

@bp2017 impossible. TeX does not know what "syllable" is.

@yo' but how does it know where to break a word?

@bp2017 there isn't a limit on the syllable but there is on the length of a word (around 60 letters if I recall correctly)

@bp2017 the texbook gives a description of the algorithm

How do words get hyphenated, in general?

I know there's is a file, but I don't know it's name, which contains instructions (macros) on how to hyphenate words.

@bp2017 by scoring positions in the word based on matching letter patterns to the word.

@bp2017 each language has a set of patterns that are matched, but as I say it's several pages of a book to describe the algorithm, I think ther may be an answer on site, i'll look

@bp2017 ^^

@DavidCarlisle, thank you.

changes afoot on luatex...

@bp2017 the first word of a paragraph is not hyphenated, IIRC.

@bp2017 tex doesn't hyphenate the first word in a paragraph

@DavidCarlisle I beat you this time :)

@DavidCarlisle, @yo', oh, :)

@yo' but i was more definite

@bp2017 fixed in luatex or start with \hspace{0pt}

@DavidCarlisle that could be a nickname: Definite David.

@PauloCereda ^^

@yo' ooh :)

@DavidCarlisle Big stuff!

@DavidCarlisle TeX 'fixed' ??? You mean 'a feature change'

@JosephWright I definitely meant fixed:-)

@DavidCarlisle Yes, well, you are of course actually right ...

In experimental there is now
luatex 1.11.0 with harfbuzz 2.5.1
It follows from the development of harftex by K. Hosny.
Please note that the code is
1) in experimental
2) marked as work in progress
so  it can stay as is, it can be changed , it can be removed completely.


We have relaxed the constrain "only C" so a recent C++ is required;
but we keep the contrain on the size the must be "small"  ---
the current size of the binary is around 8M so still good.

Feedbacks are welcome: it would be nice to have it in texlive 2020

Hopefully means @KhaledHosny's work will be re-integrated back into the main luatex release and we can have a single lualatex in tl2020.

stackoverflow.blog/2019/06/18/…

@DavidCarlisle Looks that way: I'm really excited by the announcement

@JosephWright I hope Akira builds soon - I had problems with the other version, the format was built but then the binary didn't found it.

Is "strengthed" even a word? Can't find it in a dictionary. Guinness World Records says it's the longest monosyllabic word. Did they mean "strengthen"?

TeX doesn't seem to hyphenate either of them.

Oops, after all it's on Wiki. Kind of embarrassing.

@DavidCarlisle, thanks.

@bp2017 by that standard, the Czech language has an 8-letter 0-syllabilic word :-)

@bp2017 being on a wiki doesn't mean it's true of course

@yo' probably with no vowels

@DavidCarlisle Your guess as good as mine, no one contacted me about this.

@KhaledHosny Ah

@KhaledHosny I suspected that was the case :(

@KhaledHosny maybe they are planning a surprise party with balloons, cake and some guy dressed as a lion to announce the good news. :)

@JosephWright, @DavidCarlisle ^^ :)

@DavidCarlisle of course. In Czech, it's considered 2-syllabilic, but that's obviously not the way how English counts :-)

My laptop was also stolen last week, so I'm in a very messed up state with no properly set up machine (as you can see I can't even type curly apostrophe 😢) and lots of lost files.

@KhaledHosny oh sorry to hear that

@KhaledHosny oh no

@KhaledHosny Oh my

@DavidCarlisle -- Well, this points to the entry for "strength", and that says, under the single entry for "verb" that it's obsolete, and was used only during the 12th through 17th centuries. So any conjugated forms should also be considered obsolete. The wiki doesn't say that, but should.

@barbarabeeton I only said it was on a wiki, I explictly didn't say it was an authoritative source:-)

@barbarabeeton, I found that it's obsolete here (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…). But the Guinness World Records page (guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/…) doesn't mention it.

@KhaledHosny -- Very sorry; that's a loss that would put anyone in a very bad mood. I'll hope (probably futile) that it might be found.

@bp2017 being obsolete doesn't mean that it's not a word

@DavidCarlisle -- True, it is still a word, but shouldn't be used in ordinary discourse.

@barbarabeeton if you are looking for Guinness book of record entries (about anything) ordinary discourse is probably not the most important criterion

@DavidCarlisle, well, Guinness looked easier than "several pages of a book to describe the algorithm" (and then extrapolate the information on what the longest syllable recognized by the algorithm could be in modern English, or in English in general).

@bp2017 hyphenation is only indirectly related to syllable boundaries anyway.

@bp2017 it is easier to find much longer strings that are not split by the default US English hyphenation patterns.

Thank you all

@KhaledHosny Is it insured?

@bp2017 in English, the hyphenation does not quite follow syllable boundaries, as is the case in many languages, e.g. Slavic.

@DavidCarlisle, it was suggested to use a fixed length like 5mm to leave at the end of the shortest line of a paragraph rather than searching for longest words/syllables. But that 5mm won't help if first hyphenated part of the word at the end of that line is longer than 5mm. Choosing value like 20mm wouldn't be better since the longest first part of hyphenated word can be much shorter. So I'm trying to solve this problem in the best way I can.

@yo', I didn't know that.

@JosephWright is there even such a thing?

@bp2017 the last non-hyphenatble word in a paragraph might be arbitrarily long x-foobarfumingable for example (which isn't a real word) but as tex doesn't hyphenate explicitly hyphenated compounds then any such word at the end of a line will be a limit on the line length unless you manually allow breaks or take some other action

It would've been better to "collect" lengths of all the words in the paragraph and determine the longest one but I don't know of an automated way to do it in TeX.

@bp2017 you should probably be using luatex

@DavidCarlisle, can we somehow break ANY word at each single character of that word when it (the word) doesn't fit?

Instead of breaking at hyphenation-available points.

@bp2017 not using tex's hyhenation algorithm, you need to pre-process to a\penalty0 b\penalty0 c.....

@DavidCarlisle, I can barely manage with TeX. Trying to figure out how it relates to Lua and back would be overwhelming without such information being easily available (in abundance of simple examples and explanation of the concepts in general terms).

@bp2017 oh or use a made up language that has patterns that allow hyphens everywhere (but that requires building a new format) or use luatex

@KhaledHosny Mine is covered on house contents insurance, but one can get stand-alone cover ... I'm taking it 'no' for you

@KhaledHosny Ah, right

@KhaledHosny So urgent funding required?

@JosephWright It would help for sure, though the lost files are what is giving me the most trouble.

@KhaledHosny Right of course

@KhaledHosny I've prodded in the obvious place

@JosephWright Thanks

@bp2017 -- There are some questions here that address that sort of problem: How to break long words after n chars (long genomic sequences) and How to wrap a word in line without hyphen? for two.

@barbarabeeton, thank you.

Anyone knows the story behind the life jacket badges? (And why don't have our UK users more of them, wouldn't they need them most? ;-)

@marmot stackoverflow.blog/2019/06/18/…

@barbarabeeton the \{[lr]brace\} stuff is obviously some funny copy-paste lapsus. The bottom line is that they like their pluses very small, which I personally can not adhere to

@JosephWright Thanks. (Interesting thoughts. ;-)