@FaheemMitha don't you use luatex?

@Plergux LOL

@Plergux and the hooooome of the fries brave :)

@barbarabeeton speaking of concerts, How a team of musicologists and computer scientists butchered completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony: theconversation.com/…

@DavidCarlisle I do. But it's not always the easiest thing to use. Then again, neither is TeX, I suppose.

@FaheemMitha the point is that write18 is not special in luatex, it is the same as \write 99 or \write 160 or any other unopened write stream

@DavidCarlisle If using Lua, I'd call the command from Lua. Which would be different.

@FaheemMitha fine I just meant: "if you are using luatex, why do you want to make \immediate\write18 an error?)

@DavidCarlisle I'm not sure what you mean. I want it to return an error if the command being called by \immediate\write18 errors out. And I want it to return the specific error message too.

@FaheemMitha but \write18 doesn't execute any commands in luatex in the default setup

@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I again don't follow. I know that \immediate\write18{cmd} executes cmd, hopefully. But beyond that I don't know what it does. And AFAIK it does the same thing in LuaTeX and PDFTeX. Specifically, Lua is not involved.

@FaheemMitha \immediate\write18{cmd} executes cmd, No. By default it will just write the text to the file associated with stream 18 or to the terminal if there is no such file.

@FaheemMitha in pdftex there are only 16 write streams and 18 is a magic number that triggers executing a command in the shell. In luatex there are 256 write streams and stream 18 is just a normal one of them.

@FaheemMitha if you use the shellesc package then in luatex \write is redefined to be If 18 ignore \immedidiate` and do \directlua{os.execute(..)}` else do the primitive \write` so \immediate\write18 is partially supported but only as a shim to call Lua os.execute

@DavidCarlisle Oh. Thanks. I didn't know any of that.

I want to save the error or output to a variable and print it in a format of my choosing.

Otherwise it's easy to miss, I find, even if it is output.

@FaheemMitha you can do that in the command you call out to, redirect stderr to a temporary file and return that instead of as well as stdout in the case of error.

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I'm doing something like that, I think.

@PauloCereda LOL

@CarLaTeX Do you feel a meta discussion on the number of mods would be useful?

@JosephWright Why the number has to be a nonzero integer?

@PauloCereda :)

@PauloCereda why an integer? :)

@samcarter are you suggesting we slice the ducks?

^^ ^ more mod options

@DavidCarlisle oh no :)

@UlrikeFischer I would have assumed the book case for divorced celebrities to be much larger then the other ones :)

@samcarter they have less time to write books.

@UlrikeFischer but they have more money for ghost writers

@samcarter that book case has a room for itself

@UlrikeFischer ah, makes sense :)

Woo - got down to no flags to handle

@JosephWright "we don't need no more mods" :-)

@JosephWright How about the open flags on meta so we don't have to hack around the advertisement bug by duplicating random other ads?

@samcarter As I understand it, the way ads are done this year, deleting from meta won't help: they took a snapshot of the answers and those are now a fixed set of ads for the year

@JosephWright The problem seems to be that previous years ads are shown as well as this years ads. Staff on main meta advised to flag outdated ads for the local mods to delete.

@samcarter could you give me a TikZ hint? :)

@PauloCereda I can try

@samcarter OK, I've given it a try!

@JosephWright Thanks! (cc @barbarabeeton)

@samcarter ooh managed to find the answer, thanks :)

@PauloCereda :D That's the best kind of question!

@JosephWright is this one of your journal classes:-)

\begin{figure}[th]
\begin{flushright}
\bf{Table 1}\vspace{-2mm}

@DavidCarlisle ??

@PauloCereda -- Interesting indeed, thanks. The bit of the result that was linked sounds plausible, but doesn't quite have the "presence" of the 5th or 9th. More like the 2nd -- pleasing, but not great. On the other hand, maybe it's a bit out of the middle. Have to wait for October 9.

@samcarter -- Thanks. (Some nice person had already replaced the TUG 2021 ad in the 2020 ads by the TUG logo.. That was after a temporary(?) disappearance of that lot during which it was impossible to check.) I think the new diktat makes this "feature" much less useful for us. I'd be happy if they simply did away with all ads.

@barbarabeeton "I'd be happy if they simply did away with all ads." a good adblocker can make your wish come true :)

^^^ My newspaper seems to try to be funny again or did you know that Würzburg is this big harbour town up in the far north?

@samcarter -- Rather reminds me of a misguided ad campaign for Rhode Island that featured a picture of a city in Iceland.

@barbarabeeton :)

I got a flat tire :( haven't had that happen in my whole life...

@yo' do you have a round one in the boot?

@JosephWright Let's see how many are the candidates, we have only one till now

@DavidCarlisle yes, but it's the emergency one, and it's a bank holiday here tomorrow...

Btw, completely my mistake, I bumped a rear wheel into the sideroad (how do you call the thing on the edge of the sidewalk?) in a sharp turn

@yo' "kerb" at edge of "pavement" in English, although I believe they speak differently over the pond.

@DavidCarlisle "kerb" might do, and "pavement" is a nice word :)

@yo' -- In U.S. spelling it's "curb", but pronounced the same. The way you use "sidewalk" here makes sense to me -- sometimes there isn't any separation (other than a curb) between where pedestrians are supposed to walk and the roadway (where they aren't supposed to walk). "Pavement" in the U.S. can mean either the road surface or a paved sidewalk; usage is regional.

@barbarabeeton Well of course outside the US, people are allowed to walk on the road (public highway) in the main, even if there is an area reserved for their convenience :)

@JosephWright Americans don't walk anyway so the name of the bit of ground they don't use doesn't matter:-)

@yo' -- The last time I got a flat tire, the real problem was prying off the hubcap. Tells you how long ago that was.

@UlrikeFischer 3 years later ...

@JosephWright -- Walking in the roadway is permitted where there is no sidewalk, but it's pretty dangerous, and if something happens, I'm inclined to believe that more sympathy will be given to the motorist these days. (But about 40-50 years ago, when a 3-year-old ran out between two parked cars and bashed into the side of my sister's car, she got a ticket and the child's parent didn't even get a scolding.)

@barbarabeeton no pavements here so walking in the road is pretty mandatory (but no parked cars either, since that would block the road completely)

@DavidCarlisle -- Just please wear something light colored or reflective. When we're driving in the evening, it gets really hard to identify stationary objects, including people. Have to watch carefully for movement. And in the university neighborhood, where streets are narrow and parked cars leave barely enough room to get through, it's especially bad, now that the quarantine is lifted.

@barbarabeeton just as likely to meet a horse as a car, it's a side road of the village and the village itself has no through road, so "busy" means "a car passed"

@DavidCarlisle -- I haven't seen a horse in Providence for months. There *is" a mounted police command, but there hasn't been much call for their presence lately.

weeeeeeeeeee twitter.com/shouldhaveaduck/status/1442519817794166791

There is now an official TUG Space on the Matrix network: matrix.to/#/#tug:matrix.org

Currently it only contains the PGF/TikZ room, but there are more to come.

@DavidCarlisle how times fly

@UlrikeFischer I could try to let ctan update (it's lppl 1.0 so allowed in theory) or we could first-aid I guess, or we could just leave it broken)

@HenriMenke someone will have to write a tutorial ;-)

@DavidCarlisle well I'm currently in the "throw away" mood (we will be moving at the end of the year to another town and I'm trying to get rid of all the stuff we don't need ...)

@UlrikeFischer Me too: I don't know how to load that link at all!

@JosephWright well clicking on it works, and then you have to choose the first app (element). But then I think one need an account.

@UlrikeFischer I get secure connection failed, and my AV is not happy if I try an http approach - thinks the site is risky

@JosephWright works for me (the https connection) I chose not to install any of the clients though so can't actually use it (there doesn't seem to be a web interface:(

@DavidCarlisle Sophos not happy: sophos.com/en-us//threat-center/threat-analyses/…

@JosephWright oh it fails "downloads code from the internet" well yes, it does that...

@DavidCarlisle I got a web interface, it said "continue in the browser"

@UlrikeFischer oh is that the element thing? I thought all the offered clients were standalone clients (but I didn't go past the initial menu offerening a lost of clients)

@DavidCarlisle yes. But then you need an account and I'm not sure how to proceed best here.

@barbarabeeton Here you go. :)

@AlanMunn -- Not in Providence, and I can't think of that much open space in Providence, although about 15 minutes in the proper direction, ... Are you riding? That seems to be the perspective.

@barbarabeeton Yes, taken while riding yesterday. :)

@AlanMunn -- That's a great way to spend time in pleasant weather. (My best riding is done on merry-go-rounds. When I've tried it on actual beasts, they've always wanted to stop and eat the local shrubbery.)