@JosephWright odd that I should be working on iftex, I am apparently the only one here who knows about xetex:-)

@DavidCarlisle Nah, @egreg and @UlrikeFischer also do ;)

@DavidCarlisle I see @WillRobertson is notable by absence there

Hello everyone. Sorry to ask this here, but I posted a question on the site two days ago. It received little attention, though I believe someone here may have an idea. I by any chance you have some time, please have a look at it, any help is welcome. Link : tex.stackexchange.com/q/513373/141947

@JosephWright and you:-)

@JosephWright meanwhile I'm accepted by gh sponsors:-)

@DavidCarlisle YAY

@JosephWright but I have enough sponsorship to get some of the free taocp supplements, I assume it's likely to stay that way unless I spam my millions of facebook followers and suggest they contribute?

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle I suspect so: to be honest, I've only signed up to see how it all works. Perhaps for people writing some software that's used for 'business' it might work, but let's be honest, if I get one coffee out of it I'll be doing well

@JosephWright if we stopped answering questions here, and only answered tex support question on gh issues and only gave full answers if people were on a support tier, it might work, that's consistent with open source "pay for support" model, but not really the tex way...

@DavidCarlisle Yes, that's all reasonable, but the places 'pay for support' really works is when there is corporate buy-in: RedHat and the like didn't make much money selling end-user support, it was when they started getting server farms needing help that they got real cash

@JosephWright there are server farms using tex... (although probably not enough, or needing enough help, to really make that work, I admit)

@JosephWright I assume it's against the eula to sponsor each other so github buys us each a coffee.

@DavidCarlisle Very true, but they'd likely be OK if the TeX world was entirely frozen, provided some binaries can be built

@DavidCarlisle Probably: there's been discussion about the obvious 'what if I sponsor myself' ideas

ooh iftex

@PauloCereda Yup

@PauloCereda Part of wider 'clean up' we are doing, like the whole 'can we split up oberdiek business'

@JosephWright game of thrones for TeX, got it :)

@PauloCereda More Highlander, really (@UlrikeFischer)

@JosephWright ooh :)

> Researchers Train Rats To Drive Tiny Cars

@JosephWright does that mean that if I would sponsor you github is adding something on top?

@UlrikeFischer ooh

Am I the only one who is raising an eyebrow at this "quantum supremacy" thingy?

is it feasible to write an incomplete if to the toc file given that it is a two step process of first writing it to the aux and then the toc?

Ending up with something like

of course with a different if

@UlrikeFischer Yes: they will match funding up to (I think) $5000 for the first year

@PauloCereda Yup :)

@JosephWright now we need to teach cats to ride bikes, then we can have a low-cost live action Tom and Jerry movie. :)

@PauloCereda Ducks have eyebrows?

@DavidCarlisle add a $100 tier: I would use vim for one day/week.

@JosephWright ^^

@PauloCereda github.com/davidcarlisle/iftex

@PauloCereda my eyebrows are raised and not raised at the same time.

@DavidCarlisle ooh I see what you did there. :)

@daleif answer must be yes...

@DavidCarlisle it's a q-eyebrow :)

@PauloCereda he will need more than that to pay the rescue team.

@UlrikeFischer ooh a rescue

@JosephWright @DavidCarlisle @UlrikeFischer @egreg ^^^

Not that unbalanced conditionals are a terribly great idea, but wouldn't it be better to protect against them in the kernel?

@PhelypeOleinik I already suspected that I would get the blame ;-)

@UlrikeFischer Completely unintentional ;-)

@PhelypeOleinik you see after you have been in the team a while it becomes natural: you don't need to do it intentionally, you just subconsciously do the right thing.

@PhelypeOleinik yes similar to the IfFileExists one that came up the other day (@UlrikeFischer's fault again) there are probably several such things lurking...

:-)

@DavidCarlisle Should I file an issue?

@PhelypeOleinik no:

@PhelypeOleinik yes, probably best

@PhelypeOleinik well the good news is that I made the bug report on the behalf of @daleif so he shouldn't complain about the side effect ;-)

@UlrikeFischer Fair enough :-)

@DavidCarlisle Okay

@DavidCarlisle I think I can close this one latex-project.org/cgi-bin/ltxbugs2html?pr=latex/2555 with "you can use \a'a, \aa and \a=a`, this works in and outside tabbing".

@UlrikeFischer or of course just use the utf-8 directly

@DavidCarlisle well the main concern is about code in packages. polish.ldf does something like \declare@shorthand{polish}{"n}{\textormath{\'n}{\acute n}} and this breaks in a tabbing. But \declare@shorthand{polish}{"n}{\textormath{\a'n}{\acute n}} would work fine. I will close it - when I found the link in all the mails ;-)

@UlrikeFischer I'm trying to recall why we used \@tabacckludge in the .def files not \a Perhaps just for fear someone would redefine \a

@DavidCarlisle probably, \a sounds quite unsafe, but anyway: a user can use \a' (or utf8) and a package \@tabacckludge so I don't see a nead for more. And after 20 years ...

@UlrikeFischer personally I'd close it with "don't use tabbing" :-)

@UlrikeFischer in Italy now?

@DavidCarlisle yes, we landed more or less when you started the meeting (we had to flight earlier as the next flight was canceled because of a strike).

@DavidCarlisle pineapple opportunities? :)

@DavidCarlisle When I opened it for editing I saw lots of "Audit" mails from you and Frank. You seem to have considered to implement longer names ... I better leave it to you.

@UlrikeFischer ooh bosses

@UlrikeFischer interesting final comment from Chris saying it needed more thought so not for June 98

@DavidCarlisle ;-) some final decision would be good: either closing completely or closing and a new issue in the github.

@UlrikeFischer yes just need to sort out github.com/davidcarlisle/iftex/commit/… Then maybe get to quotes in filenames...

@DavidCarlisle iftutex sounds nice ;-). Should ifpdf be included too?

@UlrikeFischer Im not sure, I'm tempted to say yes but see the last paragraph of the readme the ifvtex wrapper package does add a test for vtex output (dvi,pdf,ps or html) (@JosephWright)

@JosephWright so a luatex bug then:-)

@DavidCarlisle Yup