@barbarabeeton In in the interview tug.org/interviews/beeton.html is the following:

> TeX is also very suitable for batch processing and other applications (such as preparing custom documents from a database) where it can be used “under the covers”. The latter approach is used by the German railroads to generate custom timetables, as reported in my column in TUGboat 24:3.

Is TUGboat 24:3 the same as tug.org/tugboat/Contents/contents24-3.html ?

Because I don't see that article there.

@FaheemMitha 24:2 (tug.org/TUGboat/tb24-2/tb77beet.pdf)

@TeXnician OK. Thank you.

@LaTeXereXeTaL hi! Regarding your texdef tweet, that's actually the TeX definition. :) To get the LaTeX counterpart (which makes it robust), go with texdef -t latex \vec. :)

@barbarabeeton Assuming this is a typo (and it seems to be), can you fix it in the interview?

And both those train-related links are dead. Since this article is from 2003, that's not surprising, I suppose.

@JairoA.delRio Hola! Long time no see!

@Skillmon hi Mr. Rabbit! <3

@PauloCereda Hi, Mr. Duck! Thanks for the carrot, here have one as well: <3

@JosephWright comment in github.com/latex3/latex3/issues/984 was just because you suggested the \bool_lazy_or:nn, but I misunderstood what you meant with that (first thought you were suggesting that because of some speed gains, not because that would mean you test both directions of strange catcodes...)

@Skillmon :)

@PauloCereda Napaykullayki! Since the current government in my country is making Quechua and other indigenous languages relevant again (the last time was kinda half a century ago), I'm practicing my parents' native language... again (I'm not fluent, but I can understand songs and speeches). ¿Cómo estás?

@PauloCereda :)

@JairoA.delRio ooh culture :) Estoy bien, cuac :)

@PauloCereda Culture and instability, Our political parties are very radicalized and the political right is doing its best for burning the country (economically and socially) and then blame on the government, from the left wing.

@PauloCereda For our media, left equals either Venezuela and Cuba or terrorism (because of Shining Path, a radical movement from the 80s and 90s). However, in the real life, and especially outside Lima, things are fine

@JairoA.delRio oh my, don't mention politics. Brazil is a huge mess right now.

@PauloCereda I was to ask about it. I've heard Lula da Silva could win your elections next year. But well, I'm fine if you don't want to talk about it

@JairoA.delRio truth to be told, they all eat from the same plate. :(

Is there a TeX/LaTeX/TUG chat on the Matrix network? There is app.element.io/#/room/#latex:matrix.org but there are no familiar names in the participants list. If anyone is interested I can bring it up with TUG/Dante to host an own Matrix homeserver.

@HenriMenke What's 'Matrix' in this regard?

can someone tell me if pstricks with xelatex still works? For example tex.stackexchange.com/q/596636/2388. I get no output, regardless if I use the unsafe.cfg or not.

@HenriMenke ooh <3 IoT is on Matrix too. :)

@JosephWright a movie trilogy starring Keanu Reeves? a thingy for chat

@samcarter twitter.com/universal_sci/status/1432439884728487936

@UlrikeFischer Seems not to on Overleaf: overleaf.com/read/qypbjkmbhcxh (TL2020) vs overleaf.com/read/qdkvjncspsmw (TL2021 testing setup)

@PauloCereda ooh :)

@DavidCarlisle We need to find a Greek speaker for learnlatex: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/612607/…

@HenriMenke So like IRC?

@yo' hm. I wonder what broke there. But it must be rather new imho, we would have seen a question.

@UlrikeFischer we deployed TL2021 internally late June I think, so it was there already

@yo' Oooh

@PauloCereda in other words, another tool to learn to work with :-) @HenriMenke

@JosephWright unless we did some incremental update for something else that influenced it, but I doubt this.

@HenriMenke looks a lot like discord. Who copied from whom? :)

@yo' I meant 'oooh, you have TL'21 in testing'

@JosephWright :)

@yo' Looking forward to all of the siunitx queries? ;)

@yo' well it is not quite clear. Do you use the dvipdfmx-unsafe.cfg on overleaf?

@JosephWright I'm sure siunitx will be in bold letters in the final deploy blog post. (In the caveats section of course)

@yo' I suspect so ...

@yo' pretty much :)

@yo' Of course, by then I should have zapped most of the transitory issues

@JosephWright ooh

@samcarter I know :(

@yo' ooh

@UlrikeFischer I have no idea...

@JosephWright so neither deleting nor negative score safes the site the ad being displayed?

@samcarter poor daltonic people :(

@samcarter lovely!

@samcarter Nope - they have gone with a manual, fixed, list this year: we did say it was not a good plan

@yo' let's build a time machine and attend the conference again - it was so much fun :)

@JosephWright :(

@samcarter yeah, and your brief yet nice interaction with John is still somewhat a source of joy within Overleaf :)

@UlrikeFischer how can I know? I mean, how would you find this information on your machine? I can probably do the same in OL...

@yo' :) oh, nice to hear to bring some joy!

@samcarter you're always bringing joy :)

@yo' Quack!

@yo' <3

(note to myself: fix the corner node at the temple to not overlap the mask)

@DavidCarlisle I've put out a Twitter 'advert' for a Greek translation ;)

@JosephWright we might be able to give it an OL retweet if it made sense to both you and @PauloCereda ?

@PauloCereda Lovely. I'll correct it ASAP. Thank you.

@yo' Sure: would be great

@yo' twitter.com/texdevnet/status/1432683960702746630

@JosephWright @PauloCereda ^^ WDYT pal?

@JosephWright I had wondered about suggesting to the OP that translating that might make a good learning exercise

@yo' I don't know, I don't see anything in the log that shows if the cfg is loaded or not.

@UlrikeFischer you need

@DavidCarlisle Interesting idea :)

@DavidCarlisle He wants polytonic Greek so I'd really strongly go for a Unicode engine

@JosephWright yes I think that is the first thing to tell him.

@DavidCarlisle ? what do I need?

@yo' looks great!

@JosephWright yes I noticed his complaint that the greek author was only describing xelatex these days

@yo' you need to run nopdf then use a non standard option to xdvipdfmx (or pass that option through teh xelatex commandline), looking for the details

@DavidCarlisle oh goodness! If you find it, we would be so grateful! (And we would probably add it into the TL2021 blog post or make a help page on it or both!)

@DavidCarlisle I wasn't sure if it was that it only covers XeTeX or if it's Greek-plus-XeTeX

@yo', @PauloCereda Thanks :)

@JosephWright no worries :)

@JosephWright I see you answered the question using proper SI units like BTU and feet.

@DavidCarlisle ??

@JosephWright the guy with the \unit question. Look at the example: \DeclareSIUnit\feet{ft}\DeclareSIUnit\pound{lb}\DeclareSIUnit\btu{BTU}

@UlrikeFischer Ah: I didn't even read the units he was after

@UlrikeFischer I had a very interesting talk at the ACS to people about units :)

@UlrikeFischer en español

@UlrikeFischer @yo' on pstricks I think I was just thinking of -output-driver="xdvipdfmx -i dvipdfmx-unsafe.cfg but you already tried that.

@DavidCarlisle yes. Does it fail for you too?

Alternative is now use lualatex and blame @MarcelKrüger if it doesn't work.

@UlrikeFischer didn't try once I saw it was what you had already mentioned (I could do..)

@DavidCarlisle well my question was if it fails only for me (I don't really trust my system not to have something odd somewhere).

@UlrikeFischer terrminal shows xdvipdfmx:warning: Interpreting PS code failed!!! Output might be broken!!! which doesn't look promising

and my plan b gives:

`PSTricks' v3.06  <2021/08/27> (tvz,hv)
--- We are running lualatex with luapstricks ---
[\directlua]:1: module 'luapstricks' not found:
        no field package.preload['luapstricks']
        [kpse lua searcher] file not found: 'luapstricks'
stack traceback:
        [C]: in function 'require'
        [\directlua]:1: in main chunk.
l.456   \directlua{require'luapstricks'}
                                      %
?

@JosephWright @samcarter Matrix is essentially a modern alternative to IRC. The big difference to Discord is that it is free and open-source and you can host your own server.

@PauloCereda Can you share a link?

@DavidCarlisle plan b worked for me without problems.

@HenriMenke sounds nice!

@UlrikeFischer I had luapstricks in git but that was just using the public texlive tree pstricks seems to expect it to be there but....

@DavidCarlisle I ran l3build install on the git and it put the lua into the right place.

@UlrikeFischer cheating

@DavidCarlisle that is in the usage documentation ;-)

@UlrikeFischer documentation, what's that? anyway I was going by this

@DavidCarlisle I think that is mainly for the pstricks.pro and some pstricks patches etc. You still need the lua.

@HenriMenke you were quicker than me :)

@UlrikeFischer given that pstricks now tries to load this without any check if it is there, I guess @MarcelKrüger should push it out even if it is in beta.

@DavidCarlisle yes, the error message when it is not there is a bit disturbing ;-)

@DavidCarlisle pstricks loads luapstricks by default, noone claimed that it helps distributing or installing it...

@DavidCarlisle Well, it only loads it in documents which would previously have failed with an "Unsupported engine" error, so at least it's not breaking anything existing. But I'll do so soon.

@MarcelKrüger no, but it could catch the error a bit better.

@samcarter As you are German you might be interested that many universities are actually already using Matrix (sometimes only hosted by their students, sometimes official support): doc.matrix.tu-dresden.de/images/federation_map.svg. Furthermore, Matrix is the underlying technology powering the Bundeswehr's Messenger as well as NRW's school messenger logineo.

@TeXnician Oh, that's interesting to know. At my institute we use Rocket Chat

@samcarter Ah, I've used that before but I'm rather impressed by how Matrix changes how one might think about chatting. You can even “bridge” your other messengers into Matrix when hosting your own homeserver which is very valuable if you don't want to drown in accounts (cf. matrix.org/bridges). The ecosystem has received quite some support recently. Iirc, the French government uses Matrix as well and the German gematik (health care services) will use it in their future tech stack.

@TeXnician The bridge feature sounds cool. I find it highly annoying to have so many different chats at the moment. ... back in the good old days when you had just one chat application and could use it for bonjour/jabber/whatever and everything was in one place ...

@PauloCereda Fixed now.

@samcarter Yes, the good old times. It was easier with just email and some kind of single chat application. And probably that's what people thought when creating Beeper (beeper.com) and making a business out of managing chat accounts in one application ;)

@samcarter I forwarded you an email that you might find interesting.

@TeXnician Matrix also has some deficiencies. Primarily the fact that bugs/features that are not interesting for matrix.org are just not fixed/implemented.

Return of the death community ads reported on main meta - at least it got a status-review meta.stackexchange.com/q/369259/237989

@samcarter Good stuff

@HenriMenke Er, it was ever thus

@HenriMenke Thanks! So chances seem pretty low. Rather have each institute invest their own time for their own solution....

@HenriMenke Well, yes. But that's primarily for the synapse homeserver. Most clients are quite open to user contributions and other homeservers are emerging. Some people I know won't make the switch because Matrix won't encrypt metadata (in contrast to Signal) because of the way it's federation works.

@TeXnician Nice business idea! I hope they can use some stable API, otherwise they must get crazy whenever one of the providers change something.

@samcarter Well, they make use of Matrix bridges. Many of them are open source. So actually they rely on community efforts which they support if necessary ;)

@TeXnician effective :)

@TeXnician Lacking support for Synapse makes self-hosting a real pain, though. I cannot use email notifications for one homeserver I'm administering because of github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/9566. The effects are already visible since most accounts are on matrix.org.

@TeXnician Regarding metadata, I don't think this is a major concern, but rather wrong expectations from users. At least from my point of view, Matrix is not a private messenger but a modern replacement for IRC.

@samcarter There is an existing Jabber chat which you can access with your university account. Just search <university> jabber chat and the first result should take you to the instructions page.

@HenriMenke I've had quite good experience with managing a Synapse instance, even with working e-mail notifications. But in the end I think self-hosting won't be the majority option, most users will simply use matrix.org or some homeserver of their institution. That may change when they implement their plans for Dendrite (shipping the homeserver with clients, i.e. more p2p support). But until this level of decentralization is reached, I really hope for Conduit (conduit.rs) to catch up.

@HenriMenke yes, I have used it in the past when we were still using bonjour chat in the working group and I could have them all in one window. After that the many different clients got a bit too much to manage and I had to drop some of them. There was also an IRC from the computer scientists - not sure if it is still alive.

@HenriMenke Users are always difficult ;) I think using Matrix for private communication is fine (after all the metadata issue is the same as for Wire etc.) if one knows what others can tell from the metadata. And only few will really need encrypted metadata. Of course, Matrix's strength lies elsewhere. A modern replacement for IRC is one of the applications. I also like the flexibility to create projects like cactus.chat (better than Disqus, imo).

I’m officially the first person to rate TeX on CTAN: ctan.org/pkg/tex

I hope others will join me

@TeXnician Conduit looks interesting, but it seems to be essentially a single-person show, so keeping up with the ever changing Matrix specification will be a big challenge. I'm also not happy that it relies so heavily on three external frameworks. If any of those projects dies, Conduit will die with it.

@HenriMenke Well, conduit is (as well as FluffyChat which is quite a good client) developed by famedly (famedly.com). Yes, small company. But definitely an interesting project. I really hope that there will be a competitive, company-backed, alternative homeserver at some point. Let's see whether competition to synapse is something anyone can manage to achieve ;)

@LaTeXereXeTaL oh it was just a friendly remark, no need to fix anything. :) Happy to hear you are having fun with texdef. :)

@TeXnician The problem is really that New Vector controls the spec and the major implementations of homeserver and client. And then there are all the extra features that are not part of the spec like Spaces...

LET'S GO BACK TO ICQ

@PauloCereda The only reasonable option.

@HenriMenke :D

@PauloCereda Can we drive there in a DeLorean?

@DavidCarlisle, @UlrikeFischer, @egreg Wow, units package: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/612631/…

@samcarter DuckLorean

Great, now my brain messed with this word and now I am imagining a duck in a L'oréal ad

@PauloCereda Or how about MSN messenger?

@PauloCereda Like this: cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-nf2x4/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/…

@HenriMenke ooh that's even better! I used to annoy people with the shake screen thingy :)

@samcarter Great Scotch!!

@HenriMenke I definitely agree with you on that.

Good old times

@HenriMenke good old times :)

@HenriMenke Ha!

@PauloCereda flickr.com/photos/bonniesducks/4858076665

@samcarter OMG

@samcarter I had no idea @JosephWright was a shampoo model. :)

ooh twitter.com/shouldhaveaduck/status/1432692697328877571

@JosephWright some package have a long life. But if we wait two more years @DavidCarlisle could update it ;-)

@barbarabeeton @samcarter @UlrikeFischer awwww twitter.com/shouldhaveaduck/status/1432545392592252929

@PauloCereda with such nice feathers, the companies probably stand in a long queue in front of his house to get some pics :)

@samcarter ooh :)

@PauloCereda omg, cowboy ducks!

@MarcelKrüger yes but I'd worked hard to get that unsupported error added instead of a random undefined \ps@color@whatever command undefined error which it was for the previous 20 years or something, so having a cant load lua module error instead is a step back:-) (not that users care what error message they get)

@JosephWright The empire strikes back!

@FaheemMitha -- I'll get it fixed. And I'll try to find out whether the facility is still available. Thanks for the report.

@JosephWright By the way, \text{Å} is not actually the best.

@FaheemMitha you can get a snapshot of the webpage from web.archive.org/web/20101129153338/https://www.hacon.de/hafas_e/…

@egreg It's ... tricky

@samcarter Oh, yes, I can. For some reason I frequently forget about the existence of the Internet Archive. Though I use it all the time.

@FaheemMitha In case you are using firefox: I find this addon very nice github.com/dessant/web-archives

@samcarter -- But please arrange for better transcriptions of the interviews! I'm thinking of posting a nastygram on the main meta site with a link to the image you posted. One thing I'm missing is a statement from the management saying the date on which they intend(ed) to reset the ads. It's not in the message to tex.meta or the main message on the main meta. Can you find that info? I'll hold off on my nastygram until I have a solid date to throw at them.

@samcarter I use both Firefox and Chromium. There aren't a lot of other choices.

I used to use Galeon once, and liked it. It died.

@barbarabeeton we'll repeat the conference as often as the transcripts get it right :) I think the ads are intended until the end of this year (but if someone from SO says this, this can mean anything between now and never ...)

> Since we're approaching the middle of the year, we thought running a trial through the end of 2021 might be appropriate.

@FaheemMitha Oh, never heard of this one

@samcarter It's been a while.

@DavidCarlisle Some users care.

@FaheemMitha well yes which is why I suggested an "unsupported engine" message was better than dying loading a missing Lua module message.

@DavidCarlisle Definitely.

@samcarter -- Oh, you've already done it. I've commented (different reason, same effect; probably saves them hous=rs on their "status-review"). Cancel my nastygram. (I can't understand, though, why your posting got a downvote.

@barbarabeeton It is main meta, every post gets one to proof it is a real post :)

@barbarabeeton Did you spot any ads from last year which are not in this year's list?

@samcarter -- Well, that's shoddy, Is this documented in their "welcome" intro?

@samcarter -- I'm pretty sure the 2021 ads are all repeats, but there may be some that were neither carried forward nor deleted. I'll check and let you know.

@barbarabeeton Given the amount of effort the staff members put into their attempts to get the most downvoted post on meta, I think it must be something desirable to get some

@PauloCereda I know, but I don't want to propagate half truths or false information.

@samcarter -- Oh, another of the cars whose demise I regret. (My SAAB may be dead. My husband's is shaky. End of an era.) Whatever might replace my current wheels will violate a promise I once made -- that I would never pay more for a car than we paid for our house. What with inflation, ...

America already has too much of that.

@LaTeXereXeTaL :)

@barbarabeeton I was going to make a joke that you could opt for a toy car to stay beyond your house limit, but they seem kind of expensive as well amazon.com/LEGO-DeLorean-Building-Discontinued-manufacturer/dp/…

@samcarter -- Eek! Well, none of the ones I looked at cost as much as we paid for our house, but several of them cost considerably more than the rent for our apartment before we bought the house.

@samcarter -- Okay, some 2020, not 2021 hits: LaTeXdraw, MaTeX, TopAnswers, TeXdoc online, Dante

@JosephWright Well, you don't want an italic unit if specified in an italic context.

@barbarabeeton Thanks! I'll keep my eyes open if I can see them

ooh Sommer

@PauloCereda -- If I remember correctly, Die Vier Jahreszeiten used to be a famous hotel, but not sure what city.

@barbarabeeton There are several, but I think the most famous one is in Hamburg

@samcarter -- It was an important landmark in one of the novels assigned in a German lit class when I was in college. (When I attended a meeting in Hamburg, I stayed in much more modest, but most agreeable, lodgings. And I had a lovely walk across the park from hostel to the meeting every morning. An excursion around the harbor was most impressive! I'd really like to repeat that.)

@PauloCereda it took me a while to realize this is German... Should I go to bed early today?

@barbarabeeton ooh

@Skillmon <3

@barbarabeeton Yes, a lovely city! And it has the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniatur_Wunderland (they are currently building a South America section (cc @PauloCereda ) )

@samcarter ooh I don't know how to pronounce the hotel name, so I won't be able to make reservations. :)

@PauloCereda :) In this case you won't be able to order the pizza of the same name either

@samcarter oh no

Hallo, eine Nutellapizza bitte

^^ @samcarter

@PauloCereda Understandable :)

@PauloCereda you misspelled Ananas.

@Skillmon ooh

@barbarabeeton Nice! My father has a collection of H0 trains - but did not yet have time to build an actual landscape. As a child, I had some G scale trains - was a lot of fun, although the most fascinating part was not so much running the trains, but connecting all the cables and transformer unit :)

@samcarter -- I've just encountered the LaTeXdraw ad, so that confirms my supposition that the 2020 ads are still active. It might just be better to disable all ads, even when, used correctly, they can be useful.

@JosephWright -- Is there any hope that the management can be persuaded to do something about the outdated ads? Or can you forcibly delete the 2020-generation ad for TUG 2021? (That question says that all activity is disabled.)

@barbarabeeton Thanks for letting me know! I'll delete my meta post. Do you want the screenshot to post about outdated ads?

@samcarter -- No, please don't delete your meta post. It would be better to edit it with a correction. I didn't see any other post reporting the problem, and it's a real problem. Re doing a screenshot, I haven't yet managed to master that on this laptop. (I'll have to try harder, but am not really optimistic in the short term.)

@barbarabeeton Ok, I'll update with a correction

@PauloCereda /kwæk/.

@PauloCereda You can make a reservation in Hagenbecks Tierpark :-)

@samcarter -- Have you managed to resuscitate your deleted question? I don't see it. I'm about to log out and go off to dinner. (Back in maybe 2-3 hours.) I'll check again when I get back. (Haven't really got time to compose my own nastygram; I'm desperately trying to whip the last of the interview transcripts from TUG'21 into something intelligible, and it's s struggle. Would really like to finish tonight.)

@barbarabeeton yes, it should be visible again meta.stackexchange.com/questions/369259/…

@barbarabeeton Bon appétit!