@barbarabeeton I also type 'b' with my left hand, but it seems equidistant from the 'f' and 'j' home keys, so I can image that some type 'b' with the right hand.

@dedded -- It's not impossible, but it's certainly not "ordinary" touch typing. It implies to me that in typing "subfigure", the second finger of the right hand is typing the "u" to allow the first figure to type the "b". (I've seen a perfectly typed document by an excellent touch typist in which every character was shifted one position to the right on the keyboard. Not a single error -- except for the shift, and the fact that the typist failed to look at it before distributing.)

I'm not a perfect touch typist, but good enough to usually recognize quickly that I've typed something wrong. At least @yo' had the sense to read what he typed.

I'm a touch typist (B left hand, but I use a split keyboard which means I have to). My main issue is laptop keyboards that mess around with left shift. I'll get several seances in then realize put a ? before everything that should be a capital letter.

@Plergux Dysgwr ydw i, hefyd. (Wel, mewn theori dw i wedi 'maestroli''r iaith ond, wrth gwrs, dw i'n mynd yn pellach a phellach o fod yn rhygul. 'Gwysio' yn gair newydd i mi. Beth yw Duolingo?

@PauloCereda <3

fdsadfasd

stares at this trying to figure out what I've done wrong now

OK, bypassed that for now. WHAT. How on EARTH can LaTeX not handle double subscripts?!

Ok, same problem but now I've locallized it to one input file

FOUND IT

Saved the updated input file to the wrong directory, and didn't notice, so all my changes were being made to the wrong input file

@barbarabeeton Yes, you're right, I believe @yo' was saying that they were trying to type 'in', but had the hand too far left, getting 'ub' instead. I need to shut up now, before I start complaining about the lack of a unique feel for the 'f' and 'j' on newer Mac keyboards.

@dedded -- I think it was just the opposite. He was trying to type "sub", and his hand slipped to the right and he got "sin" instead. But I should shut up too since by now I'm just causing trouble.

@cfr Ap dysgu iaith yw Duolingo, sy'n gweithredu ar ailadrodd. I think I must have written "Dw i'n hoffi gwysgo trowsus" about a hundred times by now :p And I don't think you really "master" any language. All you can do is learn to wrangle it really well so people don't notice the stuff you don't know. :p I've had people start speaking French to me because my pronunciation of "je ne parle pas francais" was too flawless they didn't believe me XD

@Plergux ooh vive là resistance

@PauloCereda Listen very carefully, I shall say ziz only once...

@Plergux I would like to buy a hamburger? :)

@PauloCereda You mean "Good mouning" :p

@Plergux ooh bonjour

@PauloCereda :) Bonjour, ca va?

@Plergux oh no... er... je suis un canard

@PauloCereda Aah! trés bien, trés bien, plein du confit, oui? :p

I NEED ASSISTANCE PLEASE

@barbarabeeton not, I'm not a touch typist, that's right. I actually don't like the idea of touch typing as it's taught. (After having been taught the organ baroque technique )

@PauloCereda you do, you have just been separated into confits, magrets and the rest.

@PauloCereda Nous pouvons vous aider avec le petit déjeuner

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle do you remember about the status of the backtick syntax for graphics rules? tex.stackexchange.com/questions/574562/…

@UlrikeFischer I have a feeling dvips restricted it to one or two known commands I'd have to check

@UlrikeFischer oh xetex..

@DavidCarlisle that is what I remember. But what is about xetex?

@UlrikeFischer did that ever work? I'll look at xdvipdfm ...

@DavidCarlisle wouldn't that be xetex directly in this case who had to call the converter?

@UlrikeFischer *tex doesn't normally look inside the special, certainly with tex/dvips it is dvips that does the shell lookup not tex

@DavidCarlisle ah right.

@UlrikeFischer xetex on \special{`ls abc.tex} just puts it literally in the special ` xxx: '`ls abc.tex'` then xdvipdfmx says xdvipdfmx:warning: Unparsed material at end of special ignored.

@UlrikeFischer specials.c has a list known_specials and gives that warning if the special doesn't start with something in the list....

@DavidCarlisle and what is with the gunzip mentioned in xetex.def?

@UlrikeFischer cut and paste from dvips I guess, the ones with .Z could never have worked as they are files compressed with compress not gzip

@JosephWright does this look right: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/574562/…

@DavidCarlisle I don;t think it ever worked

@JosephWright yes that's what it looks like, and we removed the original backtick rules from dvips.def now as well

@DavidCarlisle what happens now with dvips with the new rules and e.g. eps.gz? latex compiles and dvips then complains that the eps is not there?

@UlrikeFischer know they just work. dvips uncompresses them (I think, let me check)

@UlrikeFischer:

@cindex uncompressing PostScript

PostScript is an excellent page description language---but it does tend
to be rather verbose.  Compressing PostScript graphics files can reduce
them by factor of five or more.  For this reason, if the name of an
included PostScript file ends with @file{.Z} or @file{.gz}, Dvips
automatically runs @samp{gzip -d}.  For example:

@example
\epsffile[72 72 540 720]@{foo.ps.gz@}
@end example

@DavidCarlisle one shouldn't try things. What do you think happen with \includegraphics[bb=0 0 10 10]{testepsgz.eps.gz} ?

@UlrikeFischer last time I tried it, it worked:-)

@DavidCarlisle I just got this:

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000].
\Gin@ext ->\Gin@ext
                    .gz
l.31 ...degraphics[bb=0 0 10 10]{testepsgz.eps.gz}

@UlrikeFischer we could blame @PhelypeOleinik

@UlrikeFischer it works tl 2016,17,18 works less well tl2019,2020

@DavidCarlisle it works without the extensions: \includegraphics[bb=0 0 10 10]{testepsgz}. But then I get from dvips the message gzip: stdout: Broken pipe which doesn't sound reassuring ...

tl2018 I get dvips: Could not find figure file fig".eps.gz"; continuing.

@UlrikeFischer works for me in tl2020 if I omit the extension

@DavidCarlisle but probably in a faked windows ;-)

@UlrikeFischer cygwin of course

quack

@DavidCarlisle ;-). Hm, the graphics code has a special branch for gz (\ifx\filename@ext\Gin@gzext) (which loops) but not for Z which gives File testepsZ.eps.Z' not found`. Looks a bit like a choice between Scylla and Charybdis.

@UlrikeFischer I see that we were right about the stacks

@DavidCarlisle You misspelled @UlrikeFischer

:)

@JosephWright yes, basically I think it means one should better not use the colorstack for colors but only for other stuff. They really should better be named "graphicstatestack" ;-)

@JosephWright I was just caught by the error message that \sys_if_output_pdf:T is not defined. One should probably document that it is only defined after the backend files has been loaded.

@UlrikeFischer Hmm, OK, I'll redo the abstraction

@UlrikeFischer But don't we need it for footnote colour?

@UlrikeFischer texdoc pdfcolfoot: we should be extending that, no?

@UlrikeFischer I guess

@JosephWright yes, sorry I meant "not for page color stacks", I think the footnote color will probably be fine (but I will have to test).

@UlrikeFischer OK, so don't use for 'general' colour is what you mean?

@UlrikeFischer Can I take a look at pdfcolfoot first and get a feel for how that works? We might run into some issues here if we get the approach worng

@UlrikeFischer I haven't seen a .Z file for decades but we should fix gz

@DavidCarlisle ooh Zorro

@PauloCereda hiding behind that mask patent

@DavidCarlisle oh

@JosephWright yes, I think there is only a problem at the begin of the page after a page break. We have with xdvipdfmx two systems of stacks which add code there but we can't control the order, and so they shouldn't have content that overwrite each other.

@JosephWright sure.

@UlrikeFischer I'm going to do some experiments: I want to get the ideas solid in my mind

How to respond to this without profanity: "• TITLE PAGE: The spacing you are using here between your title, the word “by” and your name is too big, this should only be 1 double space. "

@barbarabeeton Sorry I was too busy for chat the past few days. I have no answer for you unfortunately.

@JosephWright you got mail.

@AlanMunn -- No problem with delay; thanks for the ack. Now, how to figure out how (and where) to ask questions that might result in an intelligible answer ... Good luck holding your temper regarding over-stylized title pages.

@AlanMunn Have you considered malicious compliance?

@Canageek This is the thesis office. Complaining about a title page that has been the same for years, and which they've not complained about before. The problem here is I have no idea what "1 double space" means.

@Canageek I think it's because of the font the student is using which makes it look like the spacing is too big even though it's not.

@AlanMunn Exactly, so you set it to font size 72, insert two blank line at that font size, then complain that you have technically obeyed the guidelines and it isn't their fault they've written them badly

@Canageek Ah, I see. Yeah, that probably won't fly. :)

@AlanMunn Then you complain up the chain, since, technically, you have obeyed all written rules

Remember, in organizations the ONLY thing that matters is written policy.

@Canageek You seem to be blissfully unaware of how bureaucracies work... :)

@AlanMunn Just VERY cynical.

@AlanMunn And aware of a lot of organizations where written policy must be followed even if it makes no damn sense

@Canageek Yes, this is exactly the case when you create a formatting description that assumes everyone uses Word.

@Canageek Hopefully SFU's office is not so awful when you submit yours.

@AlanMunn Right, so you carefully inform them that you have followed written policy, and they must also follow it, with a very formal, very technically written letter, possibly some diagrams, that shows you ARE following the written policy, quoting it in detail.

@AlanMunn I'm using their LaTeX template so there shouldn't be a problem

@Canageek That's good. Our office refuses to endorse any template, hence my constant battles with idiocy.

@AlanMunn -- I'm not at all a Word user, but it might be possible in Word to reset the font to something very large, and obtain the equivalent overly large vertical spacing. Showing them such an example might help them to rethink how their specs are written. (I've been able to get some guidelines changed just by providing really deleterious, but rule-following, counterexamples.)

@barbarabeeton I've given up fighting with them. Each person who checks the submitted thesis applies the rules inconsistently. For some things I fix the class, for others, I help the specific student and then the next student who uses exactly the same class has no problems. It's really frustrating.

@barbarabeeton The most surreal fight I had was the requirement that you couldn't have a copyright page if you didn't pay to register the copyright. I pointed out that this was both wrong and bad for the students.

@barbarabeeton They then tried to claim that it was a ProQuest requirement, until I pointed them to ProQuest's own page that explicitly says "You should have a copyright page even if you don't register the copyright". At which point, instead of caving in, they just doubled down and said, "well that's our requirement".

@barbarabeeton And this was the associate dean, not a staff person.

@AlanMunn -- That is surreal! Is there no sympathetic and knowledgeable person in that office, who has influence on the rest of its occupants? (My own experience with deans is much more copacetic. When I was changing majors from applied math to German lit after two and a half years, the "rules" claimed that I needed three more classes in science. What? Fortunately, the assistant dean agreed that math and engineering should indeed be considered "science", and absolved me of that absurdity.)

@barbarabeeton Well this particular associate dean didn't want to be shown to be wrong I guess. But it's really ridiculous.

@yo' A major feature request for Overleaf: A .bib file editor that enforces obligatory fields for .bib entries... I hadn't realized how bad a .bib file can get when edited as a plain text file by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

@UlrikeFischer I'll look at that too: I think I need a few days to work stuff out here

@JosephWright sure, think about it. I think somewhere in the koma bundle a color stack is used too, and tcolorbox has been experimenting with it too (but in both case imho no page bound stacks.

@UlrikeFischer I'm looking at fundementals