TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2019-07-15

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12:27 AM

@texdr.aft As the article that @DavidCarlisle linked mentions, “that language ran
only on Xerox workstations” and Xerox I hear were very strict about keeping everything closed, so it's unlikely you'll find the source anywhere, or even if you find it that it will be of much use as it's in a language you won't be able to run easily

(Somewhere Knuth mentions that before writing METAFONT he first went to Xerox asking if he could use their facilities to digitize the Monotype Modern font, and they said something like “yes, but we will own the resulting digital font” and so Knuth rejected it as he expected/intended the fonts to be public... so I imagine it would be similar for the programs)

In any case it seems like a different time, when “programmers were real programmers” and it was common for someone to take someone else's several-thousand-line program, read it and understand it, and translate it into another programming language for another OS :-) The early TUGboat issues contain “site reports” of various people porting / reimplementing TeX in various places IIRC

it was always funny to me how like 3 different people re-implemented TeX between 1979-1980

I imagine it may have been much more than that... that's just the ones that Knuth mentioned in the introduction. BTW Leonidas Guibas and Robert Sedgewick (two of the three people listed as implementors of it) were both former PhD students of Knuth

7 hours later…

8:04 AM

@texdr.aft have you seen the SAIL sources, eg version 1 of texhdr.sai here is dated 1978 saildart.org/allow/%5bTEX,DEK%5d

8:31 AM

@DavidCarlisle i have

@texdr.aft that is probably all there is from that time

9:30 AM

PGF is tripping up on this line. I found a similar example suggesting that PGF/TikZ doesn't like the macro usage, and wants literal coordinates.

\draw \gridbottomleft to[grid with coordinates] \gridtopright ;

\gridbottomleft and \gridtopright have values (-4,-20) and (16,4.3) respectively.

This question has a similar issue:

3

Q: Unexpected behaviour of TeX condition in \draw macro

Let's consider code below \documentclass[tikz]{standalone} \usepackage{amsmath} \usetikzlibrary{arrows} \usetikzlibrary{calc} \begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture} \foreach \i in {1,...,5} { \draw (\i,0) \ifnum\i=2 node [below, black] {$a$}\fi to nod...

tikz-pgf conditionals tikz-node

Is this a case where I need to post a MWE?

Note that if I put in the literal values, there is no problem.

@FaheemMitha tikz isn't always that clear when it expands and when it doesn't but is it documented to expand there? you can't use a macro hide a (1,2) in a standard latex \put command either, nor optional [t] arguments in any command.

@FaheemMitha I suspect you'd just get the same answer as that question.

9:46 AM

@DavidCarlisle I see. What's the remedy, then?

@DavidCarlisle I don't see how to apply the recommendation made there to my situation.

I guess I could put in the key directly. I suppose that's not a macro.

@FaheemMitha no I just meant the answer "don't do that" which was the real answer, although I see you left a comment saying to add some of the following comments to the answer.

@FaheemMitha I'm not sure what you mean by put in a key here, more or less everything in tex is a macro if it is not a tex primitive command.

@DavidCarlisle Hmm. So, don't use a macro, just the literal value?

Not sure how to do that. Let me think.

@FaheemMitha use a named coordinate. That's what the names are for.

@FaheemMitha or \expandafter\draw \gridbottomleft presumably works as well, it depends what you are trying to do

@UlrikeFischer Oh. Ok.

Steven B. Segletes

9:55 AM

@Sebastiano I am sorry, Sebastiano, I cannot recreate the problem with the snippets you provide. With the first bits of code benumerate, it works for me. With the latter bangenumerate, I couldn't get it to work, but the error was not what you report. The maco \@STRT is part of stackengineand defined by th etwo macros that need it. I suppose you could always try \let\@STRT\relax in your preamble to assist debugging.

@DavidCarlisle I'll try what @UlrikeFischer suggests. When using PGF/TikZ, do as PGF/Tikz does. Or something like that.

@DavidCarlisle which to this very day, we still have no idea. :)

10:07 AM

@PauloCereda do you have any idea what you are trying to do?

@DavidCarlisle of course not. :)

@PauloCereda you had me worried for a moment

@DavidCarlisle apologies :)

Now, cake time!

@PauloCereda swan upping day today.

@DavidCarlisle ooh will you go catch one?

10:15 AM

@PauloCereda I think that is treason and life in the tower of London

@DavidCarlisle ooh I watched Doctor Who, there's a secret in that tower.

@PauloCereda that may not be the most accurate source of information

@DavidCarlisle but there were three doctors in that episode, they cannot be wrong.

10:30 AM

@PauloCereda they could be wrong now but later go back in time and fix it, but how can you tell where you are in that loop?

@DavidCarlisle ooh a conundrum

@DavidCarlisle this is hurting my brain

11:24 AM

@StevenB.Segletes Don't worry, absolutely, indeed I thank you and I will always thank you as I have done in these years.

12:19 PM

@egreg you are doomed: how will you get any more points if other people answer questions like this:

0

A: Mysterious horizontal space when using conditional macro

You have several spaces inserted by newlines... \newcommand{\vs}[2]{% \relax\ifmmode \ifemptyarg{#2}% {#1\text{-vector space}}% {#1\text{-vector space }#2}% \else \ifemptyarg{#2}% {$#1$-vector space}% {$#1$-vector space $#2$}% \fi} wo...

@DavidCarlisle it's somehow curious if people "adapt" egreg's code by removing carefully placed percent chars.

@UlrikeFischer yes I can understand them fixing his code but at least his comments are usually in the right place.

@UlrikeFischer do you know the Eifel National park?

12:35 PM

@DavidCarlisle not directly. I naturally know the Eifel - that's quite near. Why?

@DavidCarlisle I got a tick for the “center align” question. :-P

@UlrikeFischer apparently the school is going to send the boy there for a week to hunt for z or something next year

12:52 PM

@DavidCarlisle ah. Well lots of nature there - they even speculate if there are wolfes somewhere ;-).

@egreg but I got a badge and more people liked my answer, so keep your undeserved 15 points:-)

@DavidCarlisle ooh

1:23 PM

ooh reutenauer/hyphenation

@PauloCereda ?

@DavidCarlisle Arthur created a GH repo. :)

This repository is empty.

Bah.

@PauloCereda so I see

@DavidCarlisle :)

@JosephWright happy swan goose duck catch thingy day!

I see polyglossia updated a few days ago in that gh

1:27 PM

@DavidCarlisle ooh

1:39 PM

user image

3

@barbarabeeton, @AlanMunn ^^ a cute 404 not found page. :)

1:59 PM

@egreg -- What's the functional difference between your answer to tex.stackexchange.com/a/500020 and my answer to tex.stackexchange.com/a/85081 ? Yours uses a patch, an \mbox rather than $ $ , and no \ignorespaces, but otherwise I see no functional difference and I'm not sure what the OP means when he says he has "some different needings". (The only difference I see is that he wants always to have proof on a different line, but that difference is trifvial.)

@barbarabeeton Well no functional difference, apart using proof instead of myproof and avoiding the clumsy $ $ .

@egreg -- Thanks. I will dispute his contention that the code he cribbed from my answer doesn't avoid a page break. (Answer was tested thoroughly before posting.)

@barbarabeeton does this look familiar at all, I looked through the old bug reports you gave us but didn't spot anything obvious

github.com/latex3/latex2e/issues/136

@DavidCarlisle -- No, I don't remember seeing that earlier. I saw the report here, and wondered about the indentation of the align block. Looks new, and puzzling.

2:29 PM

@barbarabeeton If the suggested fix is right it's been in amsmath forever, might be interesting to see if it goes back to amstex

@DavidCarlisle -- Yes, that would be good to check. My guess is that it's likely. But why has it taken so long to show up? Oh ... probably the fact that reqno isn't the default for AMS. What happens when equation numbers are on the left?

@barbarabeeton don't know, I'll check later

@JosephWright it is quite unfair - I dare to change a typo in l3backend and travis fails ;-(. But I think it is not my fault, it fails also if I revert the change, I would guess it is the change in pgf regarding xetex transformations.

@DavidCarlisle I just got a badge out of it. Still behind in votes, but I'm hopeful.

3 hours later…

5:13 PM

@UlrikeFischer here is a Windows / texlive one for you: tex.stackexchange.com/q/499765/3929, I'm not near a pc or windows. There seems to be several of these cannot spawn cmd windows

5:39 PM

@daleif I'm currently not at my pc either. I can look in the evening.

5:57 PM

@UlrikeFischer thanks, it seems we're seeing several of these where the system32 is missing from the path and people blames texlive for not working. I wonder why these systems does not see system32 in their path

6:10 PM

Das Komputer

6:21 PM

@PauloCereda Der Computer :-)

@Mensch ooh thanks. :)

Der Computer ist gut!

@PauloCereda oder ein interessantes vielseitiges Werkzeug ...

@Mensch uh-oh

/quacks in despair

@PauloCereda You should come and visit germany to get more practice with your german language knowlwdge :-)

@Mensch ooh :)

I know important sentences!

Ein Bier, bitte!

6:27 PM

@PauloCereda Very good, you need that for the comming Oktoberfest in Munich :-)

@Mensch ooh I am ready

Hallo, mein name ist Paulo, ich bin ein Erpel und ein Bier, bitte!

@PauloCereda LOL; would be interesting what they would do in the Festzelt hearing that ... Hopefully you get no duck served ...

@Mensch I would really quack in despair. :)

@PauloCereda Abendessen im Gespräch.

@DavidCarlisle oh nein

@DavidCarlisle Der Google Übersetzer-Dienst ist offline. Bitte versuchen Sie es später erneut.

6:35 PM

@PauloCereda Du bist zu spät. Abendessen wurde serviert.

Oh no

user image

5

The next (2021) £50 note ^^^^

> Computer Pioneer and Codebreaker Alan Turing To Appear On UK Money

@DavidCarlisle You beat me to it!

@PauloCereda ducks are slow

@DavidCarlisle oh

@DavidCarlisle no Euros?

6:44 PM

@PauloCereda maybe Brexit will be cancelled and we'll switch to the Euro before then.

@DavidCarlisle ooh maybe

@DavidCarlisle As far as I know, they did not appreciate him very much when he was alive...

7:09 PM

This is another case where a macro seems upset by having a macro substituted for a value.

\documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\def\pagenum{1-}
\includepdf[pages=\pagenum]{foobar.pdf}
\end{document}

\def\pagenum{1} is fine. It doesn't like dashes or commas in there.

Including those values directly in \includepdf is fine, of course.

@DavidCarlisle If we were on the Continent, might see one, but no hope in the UK

@CarLaTeX to put it mildly

@JosephWright no hope of seeing a £50 ?

@FaheemMitha most cases will be like that unless they are explicitly programmed to expand ahead of themselves eg this fails

\def\zzz{[12pt]}
\documentclass\zzz{scrartcl}
\begin{document}

\end{document}

Ah, someone already asked this.

3

Q: how to expand a keyval argument

I'm trying to expand a value for an argument which will be the range of pages included in the document, but I can't figure out how to do that. At first, I was getting ERROR: Missing = inserted for \ifnum. The MWE is \documentclass{article} \usepackage{pdfpages} \newcommand{\myargval}{1...

pdfpages key-value arguments

The SE search is completely useless. I have to find things using Google.

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I figured something like that.

I suppose I'll now have to learn how to use expansion to get around this stuff. Sigh.

Any point filing a feature request with pdfpages? Assuming there is somewhere to do it.

@DavidCarlisle When did you last use one?

@JosephWright I want it

7:25 PM

Isn't 50 pounds a lot of money?

@JosephWright "granny" aka mum dished some out last Christmas :-)

@FaheemMitha not if you are buying a house

@DavidCarlisle clean money

@PauloCereda I wonder if the new £50 will be infinitely long and printed with a finite alphabet?

@DavidCarlisle ooh we could also transform the infinte tape into two semi infinite tapes and thus get twice the infinite money

@PauloCereda with a non deterministic tape you could spend and not spend the £50 and decide later which you wanted to do.

7:31 PM

@DavidCarlisle ooh excelent idea!

@DavidCarlisle our brainstorming made me remember of this particular model: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCchi_automaton

Have you heard of it?

7:54 PM

@PauloCereda linear temporal logic was the day job for a while:-)

1 hour later…

9:02 PM

Hey, is there a simple way to add a decoration at one or more rectangle sides?

\documentclass[margin=5pt, tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[decoration={zigzag,segment length=0.4em, amplitude=.3mm}]
\draw[] (0,3) edge[decorate] (0,0) --+ (0.5,0) edge[decorate, red] (0.5,0) edge[-]+ (0,0);

\draw[xshift=2cm] (0,0) rectangle (0.5,3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

This is a complicated and incomplete way ....

\draw[] (0,3) edge[decorate] (0,0) --+ (0.5,0) edge[decorate, red] (0.5,0) edge[-]+ (0,0);

user image

9:31 PM

0

Q: TikZ: How to decorate one or more rectangle sides?

How can I change the left and the right line of a rectangle to 'zigzag'? \documentclass[margin=5pt, tikz]{standalone} \usepackage{tikz} \usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing} \begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture}[decoration={zigzag,segment length=0.4em, amplitude=.3mm}] \draw[] (0,3) edge[d...

tikz-pgf pgf-decorations tikz-decorations

10:05 PM

If I have a command \foo{A B C {D E} \bar{F}} is there a way to count the number of spaces where for this example, the number would be 4 (spaces inside a grouping are not counted)? And one space = n spaces or anything TeX considers a space.

@DavidCarlisle Ironically, since Turing is indirectly responsible, hardly anybody uses cash anymore.

\def\foo#1{\xfoo0#1 \xfoo}
\def\xfoo#1#2 #3{%
 \ifx\xfoo#3%
   \the#1%
  \else
   \afterfi
   \xfoo{\numexpr#1+1\relax}%
  \fi}
\def\afterfi#1\fi{\fi#1}


\immediate\write20{[\foo{A B C {D E} \bar{F}}]}


\bye

@AlanMunn ^

@DavidCarlisle which reminds me. What does "hunt for z" means?

10:20 PM

@DavidCarlisle Cool. Thanks!

Hey, a simply question: If I want to draw

`\draw (0,0) -- (1000,1420);`

how to I have to set the "scale"?

scale=0.001, x = 0.1mm, y=0.1mm does not work....

Ah... this works......

\begin{tikzpicture}[x =4*0.001cm, y=2*0.001cm]
\draw[] (0,0) rectangle (1000,1420);

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