TeX, LaTeX and Friends

3:41 AM

I finally got TeX to compile with TeX-FPC

This is exciting

4:31 AM

@texdr.aft See if you can compile it with “debug” on, and hit D when TeX shows an error to get into the secret debugger (never tried it... just wondering whether it would still work. Probably not)

texdr.aft

@ShreevatsaR It almost works. I can get into it, but it doesn't work well. I'm going to try to fix it (debug it I guess)

@ShreevatsaR Actually take that back. I didn't realize how to use it. It works fine, but it only prints numbers, so you have to know what everything represents

Faheem Mitha

5:51 AM

@DavidCarlisle I see. I didn't know any of that. Do you have a link to a more extended discussion? Other than the actual list messages? Like a blog post or something?

And I see the thread of September 2002 starts with a message from you, i.e. lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/09/msg00024.html.

But from what I've heard, there are many, many others.

Actually, I'd be surprised if LWN hadn't covered this somewhere.

I see that Russ Allbery is being (as usual) the voice of sanity here. But I'm not sure anyone is listening.

Can someone tell me what LAPL means when used in this discussion? I assume it's a TeX/LaTeX license, but I'm not getting any hits when used in search.

Torbjørn T.

6:55 AM

@FaheemMitha Do you mean LPPL? latex-project.org/lppl

Faheem Mitha

@TorbjørnT. The thread says LAPL. See, for example, lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/09/msg00061.html

But it's possible that the thread meant LPPL and got it wrong, of course. It's not clear to me from the discussion.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha I think that's the case: perhaps 'LAtex Project Licenese'?

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Yes, possibly. Though that's not a standard acronym.

I see that thread also suggests contacting Knuth. Interesting suggestion - I wonder if anyone tried that. lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/09/msg00072.html

daleif

Native English speakers, I have a question for you. The the order of this sentence correct: "Do not use lift in case of fire". (It is in my local elevator). I tihnk it is much more clear the other way round: "In case of fire do not use lift".

texdr.aft

7:14 AM

@daleif I don't think the statement is incorrect, but yours does sound much better

David Carlisle

@daleif either but I would say the lift not lift (with either form) and add a comma after fire in the second inverted form.

daleif

Thanks. We were having a debate on what was correct. I had the idea that the current form could be misinterpreted as if using the lift would cause a fire.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha don't stir that up again, it was a very unpleasant experience that ended up with a more or less workable truce, LPPL 1.3c is what it is due to those discussions and it's accepted as an OS licence by Debian and at that point it's best to just stop the discussion.

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@UlrikeFischer Great! Thanks for testing.

Faheem Mitha

8:33 AM

@DavidCarlisle I wasn't stirring up anything. I have no position of any kind in these matters (obviously), nor does anyone care what I think (also obviously). It's also not a discussion, because it takes two to have a discussion.

I'm just making comments on some very old mailing list posts.

And in this particular case, was just wondering if anyone did actually contact Knuth during any of this.

There's something quite amusing about the idea, somehow.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha by stop the discussion I meant it stopped back then for good reason. (

@FaheemMitha honestly there was very little amusing about that thread.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle If you were actually part of it, then I expect it wasn't (amusing). Annoying and frustrating, I expect.

I was talking about the idea of contacting Knuth to be amusing, to be clear.

Debian can be very tiresome. It's not unusual for people to have problems with them.

I myself tried to submit a package to them, and got rejected for some very silly reasons. I wrote back and pointed out that the stated reasons didn't make any sense. And then the person who rejected it just ignored me. It was quite irritating.

But at the end of the day, they're still on the side of the angels.

Paulo Cereda

12:23 PM

RAF Hunter Pilot Goes Rogue over London 1968

►

Paulo Cereda

12:34 PM

2

This is a black and white photo, only the crossed lines have colours!

But our brain "extends" the colorization to the objects as well. :)

Alan Munn

12:51 PM

@PauloCereda Better get a release out soon. :) tex.stackexchange.com/q/502105/2693

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn OOH I NEED A MANUAL

Alan Munn

Jul 25 at 21:55, by Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle Documentation is overrated.

Sometimes new users are funny. cooking.stackexchange.com/a/100472/42797

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn :)

David Carlisle

1:18 PM

@PauloCereda I shall refer to this when people complain about vertical and horizontal rules with colortbl

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle LOL

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda "my software is perfect, your brain is over compensating" seems like a good response to a bug report.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle glad to be of service, m'lord. :)

barbara beeton

1:34 PM

@daleif -- As said by @DavidCarlisle, both are grammatical, but I agree that mentioning "fire" first puts the more important point first. I also agree about "the" and the comma, but "sign language" tends to eliminate less essential bits to decrease the size necessary for the sign.

@FaheemMitha -- This is one of the reasons that Knuth doesn't have an email address.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton So it's hard to contact him?

Or licensing issues in particular?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha his contact details are here www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

barbara beeton

@AlanMunn -- I rather like the kitchen axe. (By the way, there's a new "non-answer" that nobody has challenged yet.)

@FaheemMitha -- Email is an unnecessary distraction when he's trying to finish TAOCP.

Alan Munn

@barbarabeeton It's that answer I was referring to. Although the question is kind of funny too, with all the pictures.

barbara beeton

1:49 PM

@AlanMunn -- Ah. The first time I followed the link, it took me to the accepted answer. Finicky browsers.

Paulo Cereda

2:11 PM

@AlanMunn: you probably know Bowser, the Nintendo character, don't you? :)

@AlanMunn The Nintendo of America president Regis Fils-Aimé retired in March, I guess. The best thing is that his successor is literally named Bowser (Doug Bowser). Of course the internet went bonkers: mashable.com/article/nintendo-president-doug-bowser

Faheem Mitha

2:46 PM

@DavidCarlisle Thank you for the link, but I have no plans to contact Prof. Knuth.

I have too much correspondence as it is.

Personally, I don't think email is that bad, except for the spam. Spam is a big problem. At least for me, because my email host has a totally useless default spam filter. And they have the nerve to charge extra for a spam filter that actually works. Which i don't want to pay.

(Excuse ramblngs.)

LWN on Github

Harald Hanche-Olsen

@FaheemMitha Read it anyway. It's an interesting read.

Faheem Mitha

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Oh, I did. And I've read it before too.

I don't think that page has changed significantly in some time.

Alan Munn

4:04 PM

@PauloCereda I know nothing of computer games.

Alan Munn

4:27 PM

@Mensch Did you see my earlier message about massive retagging? You're flooding the front page again with your retagging. This isn't great for current new questions.

3

David Carlisle

4:42 PM

oops
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

@AlanMunn what front page? :-)

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle :))

@DavidCarlisle Usually they just give the "Under maintenance" page. This is a bit more dire.

And everything I write in chat shows up double with a timeout message. Weird.

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn not here

Ulrike Fischer

@AlanMunn they turned it now into the "under maintainance", but it looks like a real problem.

David Carlisle

twitter.com/Nick_Craver/status/1156243864182804480

Faheem Mitha

4:58 PM

U&L has a similar message.

I just got a double message. But it went away when I refreshed the page.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- It's probably a wonder that the chat is still up.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton I think it runs on different servers.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- Agreed. Smart planning.

barbara beeton

5:19 PM

Hmmm. This chat was affected -- for several minutes, my identity was "unknown" and I was told that I needed to login before I could post. It seems that is now corrected. We'll see.

egreg

It seems a big deal: twitter.com/Nick_Craver/status/1156252755415175168

Alan Munn

7:42 PM

@Mensch This is my third message about your retagging blitz. Can you at least drop into the chat to respond? Thanks.

3

StrongBad

7:52 PM

@AlanMunn I thought the edit tags feature meant things no longer got bumped. It totally should prevent bumping.

Alan Munn

@StrongBad It appears not. Unless this retagging is being done by using the edit link... ?

egreg

@@mensch ^^^^^

Alan Munn

@StrongBad I think that any edit bumps the question, including just tag edits. The addition of the separate tag edit link was to allow retagging without bumping up against the 6 character change limit for regular edits.

texdr.aft

It would be cool if whether it bumps the question was a choice. Then if the person asking the question makes a significant edit they could bump it, but if someone just fixes a typo it doesn't.

StrongBad

@AlanMunn that is an improvement, but this whole flooding the front page nonsense is a problem in a lot of places.

Alan Munn

8:03 PM

@texdr.aft I think the basis of the site philosophy is that no content should be changed without other users being aware of it. Imagine if someone created a really offensive tag and then started retagging things. Or even a completely useless tag. So that's the idea anyway.

texdr.aft

@AlanMunn That makes sense. I hadn't considered that.

StrongBad

@AlanMunn they could show up in a review queue and need high rep (silver/gold tag badge holder) approval

Alan Munn

@StrongBad I think that would get old fast. :)

StrongBad

We actually have taken the opposite approach at academia.se. We like tag edits to be done in one push so there is only a single disruption. Bumping 5 questions, 3 times a day is also really disruptive in my mind.

Alan Munn

@StrongBad I guess it depends on how many are being done in total, I suspect. Also, to some extent code oriented sites have more time sensitive questions relatively speaking than sites like academia or the science related sites. So having your question seen is perhaps slightly more important on a code related site.

StrongBad

8:14 PM

@egreg is that really a super ping? It doesn't look right. @AlanMunn it doesn't look like you are a mod anywhere so it is unlikely Mensch is getting the ping.

@Mensch I think you are being called into this room because people want to talk about your retagging.

Alan Munn

@StrongBad His name shows up in the list of names, which usually means he'll get it, I think. And @egreg is a mod on italian.se

egreg

@AlanMunn Right. I saw you were asking for this user to show in. I rarely use the privilege.

StrongBad

@AlanMunn I missed him on the side. I know @egreg is a mod and can superping (call anyone into any chat room) and the way we do that is with @@ but I think he screwed up how to type it since the output is usually only one @ and the capitalized name (which is what I got)

egreg

@Mensch Can you please join the chat?

@StrongBad Now it should be OK

StrongBad

@egreg I think so. I also rarely use it and screw it up most of the time. I have pinged the wrong person before.

egreg

8:21 PM

@StrongBad I'm not alone, then. :-D

Faheem Mitha

Actually, Mensch shows as idling here.

So you should not need a superping.

He's in the second row.

StrongBad

@FaheemMitha you are correct, but your monitor is too narrow, he is in the first row.

Faheem Mitha

I use large fonts.

Joseph Wright

@Mensch Did you see @AlanMunn's requests?

StrongBad

@JosephWright showing both @egreg and I up getting the mod ping right the first time.

Joseph Wright

8:33 PM

@StrongBad Experience ...

Stefan Kottwitz

The barkeeper in Venice told me: here is your beer, and you need to look into the TeX.SE chat. (That's a super ping)

Mensch

10:33 PM

@AlanMunn Well, I think there are ca 150 post left to be retagged to divide class resume.cls or res.cls and cv's in generally and add missing tags for currvita, awesome-cv and the other existing tags for cv's. Doing that in small batches would take weeks and brings users to tag wrong because seeing wrong tagged questions. In this case I would ask you to use unanswered instead home to see the new and therefore unanswered questions ...

Alan Munn

11:30 PM

@Mensch Sorry, but this is not about me it's about users who are asking new questions. They expect their questions to show up on the main page, and when you tag dozens and dozens of questions at one time, their questions get swamped by the retagging. Please don't do large batches at one go. Break them up into smaller batches please. See tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/425/2693 for some discussion.

@Mensch It's questionable how much people use tags to begin with to find questions to begin with, but even if they do I don't think the fact that things are missing tags is as big a problem as the flooding of the main page.

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends