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12:28 AM
What is the command \vector, defined in latex.ltx, used for?
 
12:49 AM
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{picture}(10,10)
  \put(0,0){\vector(0,1){10}}
  \put(0,0){\vector(1,0){10}}
  \put(0,0){\vector(1,1){10}}
\end{picture}
\end{document}
@LaTeXereXeTaL ^^^
 
1:09 AM
Aha okay. Thank you.
 
1:45 AM
@LaTeXereXeTaL It's part of @DavidCarlisle 's personal version of TikZ.
 
 
4 hours later…
6:11 AM
69
A: Welcoming 2019 Lunar New Year: How to draw a (lovely) pig?

David CarlisleYou really don't need any packages for this \documentclass{article} \begin{document} \begin{picture}(100,100) \put(43,56){\circle{6}} \put(43,56){\circle*{1}} \put(57,56){\circle{6}} \put(57,56){\circle*{1}} \put(50,45){\circle{12}} \put(48,45){\oval(3,5)} \put(52,45){\oval(3,5)} \put(50,50...

 
 
3 hours later…
9:08 AM
The European office of stackoverflow looks very professional:
2
 
 
2 hours later…
11:32 AM
@JosephWright If you want to directly open it in the Element web client you can use this link: app.element.io/#/room/#tug:matrix.org
Matrix also supports single sign-on, so you can sign in with your GitHub or Facebook credentials. The only thing you have to do is choose a user name.
But you and Ulrike are right, there should be a tutorial. I'll see what I can put together on the weekend.
 
11:54 AM
@HenriMenke Thanks
 
 
1 hour later…
1:19 PM
@AlanMunn Oh yeah, I remember experimenting with that a long time ago.
@DavidCarlisle Is that what started the fascination around here with various animals?
 
@LaTeXereXeTaL the duck frenzy is older than that.
 
@LaTeXereXeTaL No @PauloCereda is to blame for that
Speaking of blame, who can we blame for rhubarb Chemistry Journal classes?
 
1:49 PM
@LaTeXereXeTaL Read Section 2 here: tug.org/tugboat/tb39-1/tb121duck-tikz.pdf
 
@DavidCarlisle ???
 
@JosephWright Journal of Applied Crystallography,
1
A: Missing \begin{document} - LaTeX Error

David CarlisleThe full message is ! LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}. See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation. Type H <return> for immediate help. ... l.7364 \RHUBARB % %...

 
@DavidCarlisle Ah
 
@JosephWright interesting effect of adding \leavevmode to \smash ....
 
@DavidCarlisle Ah ha!
 
2:04 PM
@JosephWright so previously they would have a zero height box on the first page messing up \topskip (but probably masked by the title layout)
 
@DavidCarlisle but it starts to error in texlive 2018. Why didn't they repair it in the last three years? Or did they and this is an outdated version of the class?
 
@UlrikeFischer they are probably using tetex 1999 in production so never noticed
 
2:31 PM
@DavidCarlisle it is a bit worrying that all their authors seem to use such a tetex too ...
 
@UlrikeFischer you can't expect authors to worry about error messages
@UlrikeFischer perhaps not many people are interested in Crystallography
 
@DavidCarlisle Naff off
@UlrikeFischer The major crystallography tool I use was first released before TeX, so it's quite possible
 
@UlrikeFischer a lot of IEEE journals provide a class called IEEEtrans.cls with a \ProvideClass{ieeecolor} in the first line since... since... boh, forever. Nobody corrects it (not citing that they have a bug in the color stack too).
 
3:25 PM
@DavidCarlisle -- That's the ultimate cause of the problem, but the way the intended "correction" to the document class was the cause of the particular error message, and you didn't mention that, which would have been instructive for the OP. I left )probably impertinent) comments.
 
@barbarabeeton I'm not sure it's instructive to use AtBeginDocument, which also shouldn't be used for typesetting and as I commented under egreg's answer the actual definition with a smashed \_ seems to be nonsense, they want an empty hbox (which they shouldn't want either) but it's a journal class the end user doesn't need to fix it the journal will do whatever it needs to do, so just making the error go so the document can be processed seems to be enough
 
3:41 PM
All this talk about \RHUBARB reminds me of vimeo.com/396083071
 
@DavidCarlisle -- I think it's helpful to say why a particular error is reported -- it's instructive to a newbie to learn that the error Missing \begin{document} has to be something that happened in the preamble or document class, so it cuts down the list of things that need to be looked at. Granted the OP didn't provide the full error message, so you had to find it yourself. And I agree that \AtBeginDocument isn't the right thing to do here. As I said, "impertinent".
 
@barbarabeeton well it is reported because we changed latex, and some nonsensical command that previously silently did something nonsensical generates an error. But I'm not sure that's useful information to a beginner.
 
@DavidCarlisle -- You'll not change my belief that the more a (La)TeX user knows about debugging, the better off they are in coping with the inevitable.
 
@barbarabeeton in a normal case I'd have gone on to say what the error meant and how to fix the input but here the input was nonsensical and the error message essentially arbitrary and it's a document class supported by a commercial publisher, so I bailed out.
 
4:00 PM
@DavidCarlisle -- Fair enough. But it still seems to me that in that case, knowing that the error wasn't in his part would be an indication to the OP that the supplier had caused the problem. (Too many "that"s, but I'm sure you can figure out what I'm trying to say.)
 
@barbarabeeton sure but I did that didn't I explaining the error was in the class file?
 
@DavidCarlisle -- You didn't say how you knew that. That's my only quibble.
 
@barbarabeeton I could add "I knew this because I'm omnipotent" if that would help?
3
 
4:16 PM
@DavidCarlisle -- Hmmmmph.
 
@barbarabeeton I knew you'd be pleased
 
4:31 PM
@CarLaTeX What a heartwarming story! That it so touching!
I'm very partial to opossums and platypuses and wonder if that would be accepted here.
Yesterday I discovered that an iOS app called a-shell contains the TeX engine from TeX Live 2019. I don't think LaTeX is included (but I may be wrong since I only spent about five minutes experimenting). I wasn't able to do anything useful. I think it only works with plain TeX, which I've never used. Anyway, I wasn't aware that a-shell included TeX.
 
5:34 PM
@DavidCarlisle oh no
@samcarter oh my yes
 
6:32 PM
@PauloCereda :)
 
7:01 PM
@LaTeXereXeTaL Yes, it is! <3
 
7:31 PM
Is a command defined with \NewDocumentCommand expandable?
 
@Noldorin No
 
okay, thanks
 
 
2 hours later…
9:14 PM
@Noldorin \NewExpandableDocumentCommand is there for that reason
 

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