Fellow team members enjoying prototype spam this morning? ;) (@DavidCarlisle, @UlrikeFischer, @MarcelKrüger, @egreg, @PhelypeOleinik)

@DavidCarlisle, @PhelypeOleinik We should probably look at tex.stackexchange.com/questions/644790/…

@JosephWright you could ping Frank too ;-)

@UlrikeFischer OK :)

@JosephWright every time we touch the rollback code, it gets more complicated :(

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@JosephWright The answer to the first sentence is of course “aren't we all?” ;-)

@PhelypeOleinik :)

@PhelypeOleinik I'm with @DavidCarlisle, more-or-less: I think rollback is a fine academic exercise with ~0 usefulness in the real world

@JosephWright that's three of us

@PhelypeOleinik :)

@PhelypeOleinik The bit where you can load an older version of a package is I think not such a bad plan

@JosephWright Yes, and the code isn't neraly as contrived as the kernel rollback

@JosephWright Kernel rollback would be much easier and more efficient if we could load a frozen version of latex.ltx (and other files that go along with it) in the middle of a TeX run

@JosephWright But that's likely even harder to make work

@PhelypeOleinik or just use one of @PauloCereda's docker images and use an old texlive

@DavidCarlisle Quick, come here everyone, David is making a comment about Paulo without the imminent intent to eat him!

@yo' it may just be a trap

@DavidCarlisle ooh a trap!

^^^ this is what @DavidCarlisle looks like waiting for the bird

@StefanKottwitz I wonder if tikz.net/about could have something in about where the 'online compilation' comes from

@PhelypeOleinik Really hard, more likely to break stuff than make it more fluid, and I still think almost anyone needing a fixed kernel will use a Docker image or similar

I posted my first latex3 answer! ;-) with just a 1-year delay from my decision to learn expl3...

...somebody could add it to sillypages for the section headings...

@Rmano I would be happy if I would be able to learn expl3 in a year. :)

@mickep uff, "learned" is such a big word...

@Rmano Yes, let us modify learn to "understand epsilon of".

Bionic reading, never heard of it before.

@mickep Nor I. But I had a bit of spare time and liked the idea to start understanding sequences and strings in expl3... I fought a lot with the :N/:n things, but at the end it seems to work.

@Rmano Well done!

...and a problem that I can't even start to think how could be solvable without expl3... ;-)

(lunch time!)

@Rmano Link?

@Rmano I did start an essentially plain tex answer for that this morning, but had to put it aside, may finish it off later:-)

twitter.com/v1nceNyc/status/1527053833402294273 @PauloCereda

Can anyone refer me to a question on the website, or to a couple of commands, that can create something like this yellow box in the picture?

@tush see e.g. stackoverflow.com/a/67000482/2777074

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\usepackage{tikz}
\fancyhead{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay, outer sep=0pt, inner sep=0pt]
  \fill[blue] (current page.north west) rectangle ++(\paperwidth,-4cm);
  \node[green,font=\large\sffamily\bfseries] at (-14,5) {some text};
  \end{tikzpicture}
}
\fancypagestyle{plain}[fancy]{}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\setlength{\headheight}{4cm}

\begin{document}
fff
\end{document}

@samcarter Thanks a lot! I want to write my cv in LaTeX, and produce something like the following:

(Taken from enhancv.com)

I am afraid that writing each and every part of the cv template by myself would be tedious..

@tush how many of those do you have to prepare? I mean, sometimes LaTeX is not the right tool. For a short, visual-oriented thing like that, I would opt for other tools. Now, if you want a template because you need that 100 people have the same look, that's another story.

@Rmano No, just for me

@tush There are a ton of cv templates out there -- have a look at them

@samcarter All right

...and I would also check Scribus scribus.net for things like that.

@Rmano I do use LaTeX, but that's because I don't aim for visual 'fireworks' and what I do want is being able to remove lines but not delete them

@Rmano This seems to work:

@JosephWright I also use LaTeX for my CV, but that's a completely different thing --- I want a list of last 5 years papers and so on to come out automatically, and the format is basically \usepackage{report} ;-)

  echo "Stop asking for pointless details, if you are lucky I'll work for you.\\bye" | pdftex \\relax

@DavidCarlisle Yes, nice CV format ;-). To the point

@Rmano Mine is much the same, yes

@Rmano I need 'all the papers'

@tush Did you set \@ptsize?

@JosephWright Hmm no

@JosephWright I inserted \newcommand\@ptsize{}

@JosephWright But adding \renewcommand\@ptsize{0} solves it.

Thanks for pointing it out!

@tush -- This is explained by the name of the file shown in \input{size1\@ptsize.clo}. Sizes of 10, 11 and 12 are supported by basic LaTeX. Setting the value of \@ptsize to 0 gives the name of the file that defines 10pt; This is reset as needed to access 11 or 12pt. (Not all document classes use this mechanism, but the basic book, article and report do depend on it.)

@barbarabeeton Now it is clear. Thanks!

@barbarabeeton Could you explain briefly what the @ in latex does?

@tush -- I'm not sure about where it's explained for LaTeX; But in TeX (and most everything based on TeX) it's used in a control sequence name to define a "private" command, one that can't be "accidentally" used by an end user. It's used heavily in most document classes and style packages to define and name things that the typical user shouldn't tinker with or change, but use the "public" command directly as defined.

@DavidCarlisle Ah, the good old days. :)

@yo' LOL

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@yo' ooh

@samcarter ooh

@PauloCereda : dinner

@yo' ^

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@AlanMunn The good old days? As opposed to?

@FaheemMitha days when you could get 830 votes for an answer not mentioning tikz or ducks

@DavidCarlisle quack

@PauloCereda more dinner

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle, @PauloCereda Ah, some things never change.

@DavidCarlisle I didn't realise TikZ had become so central to the TeX experience.

@FaheemMitha on this site it has always seemed that way.

@DavidCarlisle I thought you did fight that by giving picture answers. :)

@mickep naturally