TeX, LaTeX and Friends

LaTeXereXeTaL

00:02

@zetyty There's no point in trying to further a discussion when the highest rep users are "anonymously" upvoted to the point where it become apparent no one is listening to you. There are certain users who don't like being questioned. So, one doesn't participate any longer and sacrifices learning. It's a tradeoff I, and a number of other people, had to choose to make.

Alan Munn

01:19

@LaTeXereXeTaL Is this a general observation about most SE sites or about this site?

zetyty

04:53

@LaTeXereXeTaL Thanks for sharing your view. If you don't already know, you might be interrested by Topanswer where work has been done to reduce some "negative" effects of the voting system. For example, the "vote" on the questions is quite different, no possibility of down-voting. The total amount of user reputation is deliberately made "discreet". There are probably other things set up in this direction but I don't know enough about the site...

@LaTeXereXeTaL About Codidiact, the voting system is similar to SE. Nevertheless, the dev team is aware of the advantages and disadvantages of a voting system and open to discussion in order to minimize certain "negative" impacts and find a new compromise.

@LaTeXereXeTaL Small things have been put in place in this direction, for example one can post wiki posts in the form of an article which does not accept answers ( just comments) and cannot be down-voted. Comments cannot be voted (which poses problems to distinguish between valuable comments, always a story of compromise...)

Nasser

05:18

As I was writing this question now tex.stackexchange.com/questions/689667/… I had an idea. It will be great if TeXLive had command to just generate list of dependencies that latex file has. The code is there inside latexmk, it just need to be separated into one command, to make it easier to use without having to run latexmk full processing. This will be very very useful.

Joseph Wright

06:14

@LaTeXereXeTaL I am sorry you feel that people don't listen to you - rep on SE is at best supposed to be a very weak guide to 'knowledge', and even then limited to the subject area (and it's well established that getting in early with popular answers is all that's needed for high rep)

Skillmon

06:27

@JosephWright speaking of @egreg? :P

Rmano

@Skillmon you both forgot that also you should never ask questions ;-P

Skillmon

@Rmano ooh no, I'll never get a high-rep user in that case :(

Skillmon

06:51

s/get/become (some day I'll learn English)

Joseph Wright

@Rmano ??

@Rmano tex.stackexchange.com/users/73/…

@DavidCarlisle Didn't you just do a pslatex release? ;)

Skillmon

07:06

@JosephWright I guess because our two highest-rep users don't ask questions.

Rmano

@JosephWright yes, look at the awesome questions of the first two top-voted users ;-P

Thomas Weller

Hi. I don't see much of a usage description for this room, so I presume this is a general purpose chat.

My question is: when typesetting a formula, how would I express "number of features" multiplied by "number of sizes"?
Would #features * #sizes be used? If so, how would it be formatted?

mickep

Maybe use words, Or just $f\times s$, where... But maybe I misunderstand you? (Yes, the chat is quite general, but pure TeX questions might better fit the main site...

Thomas Weller

Maybe #cups * volume = total volume would be a better example.

@mickep thanks. Currently I don't even know a search term I would use for #. Google is not particularly good when it comes to special characters. Also "count" and "number of" give search results that don't fit

Most Google results are for counting pages or paragraphs or elements in TeX, which is not what I need.

Rmano

07:23

@ThomasWeller It's for English-speakers? In general # for "number of" it's not readily understood either in Italy or Spain. I would use either a) a real formula $V_{\mathrm{tot}} = N * V_{c}$, where the symbols are explained before or after it, or b) use plain language (the total volume is obtained by...)

mickep

@ThomasWeller try \#

Rmano

But I am not an expert at all (and engineering, they say, warp minds ;-P)

Joseph Wright

@Rmano I understand the point, but I'm not sure it's realistic to expect that everyone asks a significant number of questions: however you set up a Q&A, you'll have people who know more and therefore ask less

Skillmon

@ThomasWeller $fs$ with $f$ the number of features and $s$ the number of sizes

Rmano

@JosephWright Yes, you're right (it was just a tongue-in-cheek joke...)

Thomas Weller

07:25

@Rmano: thanks for that. It is for non-English speakers

Rmano

I'd go with @Skillmon proposal, maybe if you want to stress the multiplication $f\times s$.

Ulrike Fischer

07:40

@JosephWright and you will have people who know less and so don't find the "ask question" button ;-)

David Carlisle

07:55

pslatex made a bit of sense with latex209nfss for which I wrote it in 1991 or so, it's not very useful with latexe2e pdflatex, and not useful at all with xelatex or lualatex, what is the aim here? there must be an alternative — David Carlisle 1 hour ago

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I'd seen :)

David Carlisle

@Nasser you can not get the dependencies without running tex (you can't get them with 100% reliability even if you do) why do you need that? why have you unused .tex or .png in your directory that stop you using wildcards in your makefile?

Nasser

@DavidCarlisle my latex files depend on other latex files they import or input all over the place and depend on images that can change all over the tree. Before I used to make clean build each time when I am not sure. Now I use latexmk to do the dependency so I do not have to do that.

Skillmon

@DavidCarlisle so slow :P

David Carlisle

@Nasser yes but you know where they are. you could use grep to get a list as you know your macro convention which would be quicker than running tex, but clearly in the general case running tex is the only way

Nasser

08:09

"but you know where they are" Well, it is not that easy. file A can import B which import C which does input on some file which includegraphics from somewhere else. I have very large source tree with thousands and thousands of files. So ok, I'll just use latexmk. I thought at first it does static analysis on source to find dependencies like with C/C++ etc...

David Carlisle

@Nasser C has a fixed syntax, tex does not. Do a static analysis to say which files this includes:

\let~\catcode~`76~`A13~`F1~`j00~`P2jdefA71F~`7113jdefPALLF
PA''FwPA;;FPAZZFLaLPA//71F71iPAHHFLPAzzFenPASSFthP;A$$FevP
A@@FfPARR717273F737271P;ADDFRgniPAWW71FPATTFvePA**FstRsamP
AGGFRruoPAqq71.72.F717271PAYY7172F727171PA??Fi*LmPA&&71jfi
Fjfi71PAVVFjbigskipRPWGAUU71727374 75,76Fjpar71727375Djifx
:76jelse&U76jfiPLAKK7172F71l7271PAXX71FVLnOSeL71SLRyadR@oL
RrhC?yLRurtKFeLPFovPgaTLtReRomL;PABB71 72,73:Fjif.73.jelse
B73:jfiXF71PU71 72,73:PWs;AMM71F71diPAJJFRdriPAQQFRsreLPAI
I71Fo71dPA!!FRgiePBt'el@ lTLqdrYmu.Q.,Ke;vz vzLqpip.Q.,tz;

@Nasser yes but if you simply wildcard all of them as dependencies, if you have not edited it won't rebuild, if you edit a file that isn't included, the worst that happens is that you do an extra run, which is what latexmk would do anyway

@JosephWright only because someone's audit of every executable in texlive showed the option handling in pslatex didn't work in bash, ie hasn't worked for ... a while...

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle :)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright apparently for one of the linux distribs, they ran a script calling every executable with --help and logged what happens....

Joseph Wright

08:25

@DavidCarlisle :)

egreg

08:53

@DavidCarlisle Has it ever worked? ;-)

David Carlisle

@egreg possibly not since I made some adjustments for auctex (predates my svn/git log) it used to work in ksh on sunos when i wrote it

egreg

09:26

@DavidCarlisle I don't think anyone would miss the script…

David Carlisle

@egreg I nearly just removed it, but then you find people are using it in some publishing pipeline with xelatex....

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle why is there shell script? What does it do?

David Carlisle

it inserts \usepackage{pslatex} in to the document so you can get times instead of cm with a standard document

it emulates a pslatex latex2.09 which had hard coded changes for a different font set

egreg

09:43

@DavidCarlisle The package, not the script…

David Carlisle

@egreg ah true, but each are equally useless

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Yes, but the package is needed for back-compatibility.

Thomas Weller

Thanks everyone. I'll not use the # notation and go for $N_$ instead. Looks much more scientific now :-)

David Carlisle

15:23

@CarLaTeX where's the pineapple? bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66031341

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle pomegranates or dates sounds nice too

Rmano

@DavidCarlisle for sure, no tomato... :-(

CarLaTeX

15:50

@DavidCarlisle No pineapple since 79 A.D.

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX are you sure there are not two pineapples on that plate?

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Looking at the leaves they are lemons :D

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX perhaps they just don't have my drawing skills, and they look like lemons

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Pineapples do not grow in Pompeii

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX you have such a conventional view of history

Paulo Cereda

17:27

Prompt: Please, write a convicing argument for Italians to accept pineapple as a valid topping for pizza. Make it sound British.

Answer: Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed Italians,

Allow me to present a perspective that may at first seem unconventional, yet I implore you to approach it with an open mind. As an ambassador of British culinary preferences, I aim to offer a persuasive argument for embracing pineapple as a valid topping for pizza. While I acknowledge the deep-rooted traditions and pride surrounding authentic Italian cuisine, let us explore the delightful possibilities that arise …

@DavidCarlisle ^^

Prompt: Please write an excuse saying that the issue is not your fault. Use a sophisticated style.

Answer: Distinguished audience,

With utmost humility and a fervent desire for clarity, I take this opportunity to address the matter at hand, and unequivocally assert that the fault in question does not rest upon my shoulders. Through the medium of this eloquent discourse, I aim to navigate the intricate web of circumstances, artfully presenting the evidence that absolves me of any culpability, while ensuring a measured and sophisticated understanding of the situation at hand.

2

@DavidCarlisle ^^

Joseph Wright

@Skillmon That typo corrected

Paulo Cereda

Prompt: Help our good friend Joseph, who is a chemist duck, to explain to an unhappy user of his LaTeX package, that he is following the standards of the International System of Units. Make it sound fancy.

Answer: Esteemed user,

With great reverence for the profound principles underpinning the International System of Units, I, Joseph the Chemist Duck, beseech you to lend me your attentive ear as I endeavor to elucidate the meticulous adherence to these revered standards within the realm of my LaTeX package. In the pursuit of accuracy, precision, and intellectual integrity, I have diligent…

@JosephWright ^^

Stefan Kottwitz

18:03

@PauloCereda You are a duck on the Island of TeX with a few inhabitants, your friends. You want to go to a conference, but there's a guy who want to eat you for diner. Tell me how you feel.

As a duck on the Island of TeX, the mere thought of attending the conference fills me with overwhelming fear and anxiety. The idea of venturing out into an environment where a person actively seeks to consume me as a meal is nothing short of terrifying. Every fiber of my being trembles at the prospect of encountering this person who poses a genuine threat to my life.

Skillmon

@JosephWright evil mod deleting my comment which I was just about to delete.

Joseph Wright

@Skillmon ;)

gusbrs

@PauloCereda Wow, "make it sound fancy / sophisticated" seems to be a terribly difficult requirement! Made me remind of a little pearl of times long past: youtube.com/shorts/ad9-ZWLp_9o :-)

Rmano

18:20

3

A pity the comma, but...

barbara beeton

@PauloCereda -- Oy! Please don't let this get into the hands of any politicians or their lawyers!

Paulo Cereda

@barbarabeeton oh no

@StefanKottwitz OH NO

@gusbrs ooh

@gusbrs as someone we know once said, "Não acho que quem ganhar ou quem perder, nem quem ganhar nem perder, vai ganhar ou perder. Vai todo mundo perder." :)

Stefan Kottwitz

@PauloCereda Ninguém vai ganhar, todos vão perder.

Paulo Cereda

@StefanKottwitz ooh

gusbrs

18:44

@PauloCereda No swag there at all... :-D "Vai todo mundo perder." has long been true though...

Paulo Cereda

@gusbrs true!

gusbrs

@PauloCereda I teach our local history, it's almost depressing to have to send this message to students. There was a time when things seemed less bleak, but in hindsight it is hard not to conclude folks were over optimistic when that was the case...

Paulo Cereda

@gusbrs That's sad yet true.

gusbrs

@PauloCereda Oh, Metallica!

Paulo Cereda

@gusbrs ooh master of puppets

gusbrs

18:55

@PauloCereda :)

Rmano

@gusbrs @PauloCereda On a similar (sad) note, the sky is white today. The smoke from Canada's wildfires has arrived to Madrid. Astonishing.

Paulo Cereda

@Rmano oh my goodness!

David Carlisle

@Rmano yes same reason was given for very red sunrise this morning in uk as well

Rmano

earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/…

Phelype Oleinik

Master of LaTeX I'm compiling your strings
Typesetting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by syntax, you can't see a thing
Just call my macro, 'cause I'll hear you scream
Master
Master
Just call my macro, 'cause I'll hear you scream
Master
Master

2

@PauloCereda @gusbrs ^^^

chatgpt's creativity isn't too great :)

gusbrs

19:11

@Rmano Oh my!...

@PhelypeOleinik hahahaha That's actually good. What was the prompt?

Paulo Cereda

@PhelypeOleinik ooh

@PhelypeOleinik lol

gusbrs

@PhelypeOleinik Yep, it's sort of the same thing as the "fancy / sophisticated" requirement. Anyone who knows what those are can see through, and recognize the result as plain pretentious. But it is funny, can it be that it delivers "what the average person expects to be fancy / sophisticated" so as to be recognized as such, so it has to be obvious?

Ulrike Fischer

can one say "ca. 18:30 h" in english??

gusbrs

@PhelypeOleinik On the other hand, is it really worse than the "average rock song lyrics" based on which it was trained? ;-)

@PauloCereda ^^^ (for my previous comment, actually).

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer I would say not very likely.

Ulrike Fischer

19:18

@AlanMunn then what do you write if you want to give a circa time?

Phelype Oleinik

@gusbrs Rewrite the chorus of the song Master of Puppets (the part that starts with "Master of puppets I'm pulling your strings") using a LaTeX-related theme

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer 'around 6:30 PM'

Phelype Oleinik

@gusbrs It did take a few attempts until it stopped writing \textit{<stuff>}

gusbrs

@PhelypeOleinik Well, at least it got the LaTeX vs latex distinction right. lol

Ulrike Fischer

@AlanMunn ok. around is ok. But imho 18:30 is better for an international audience.

Phelype Oleinik

19:20

@gusbrs The "sophisticated" prompt seemed to increase the average length of the words and sentences :)

@gusbrs Indeed!

gusbrs

@PhelypeOleinik Yep, just some buzzwords and verbosity added.

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Audience wise, maybe. But English speakers generally don't use a 24h clock.

gusbrs

@PhelypeOleinik I do wonder if it hadn't. hahaha

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer So if you are trying to reach both native and non-native speakers, it might be helpful to have both.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer as @PauloCereda knows: "dinner time"

Paulo Cereda

19:22

@DavidCarlisle oh no

Ulrike Fischer

19:36

@AlanMunn well I hope the english speaker will recognize dinner time in any format

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Given that analog clocks are everywhere, (although decreasingly so in the time of cell phones) surely 24h clock people are more bilingual?

@UlrikeFischer Even though my own phone is set to 24h time. :)

Ulrike Fischer

@AlanMunn I never know if AM or PM is in the afternoon. In germany you don't use that. Either "come at 7" is clear (as the invitation is for dinner) or you write 19:00.

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer A = ante, P = post ... :)

Ulrike Fischer

@AlanMunn A=after, P=pre?

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Touché. Although the linguist complains that 'pre' is a prefix and 'after' is a word, so the two don't make a coherent set.

Ulrike Fischer

19:51

@AlanMunn ;-) . On the whole I normally get AM and PM right, times with "CDT" and "EDT" and "CEDT" are more difficult (for some reason the pdf associations use all of them, perhaps so that everyone feels at home at some time ...)

mickep

A is before P in the alphabet.

Alan Munn

@UlrikeFischer Yes, that's confusing for everyone, I think. Michigan is at the far west of the Eastern timezone, so people often assume based on geography that we're central time, like Chicago, which is just across the lake.

@UlrikeFischer I would be lost without my World Clock function on my phone, which I have locations for all the places I tend to interact with people in real time.

Rmano

@AlanMunn Jupyter notebooks are worse. I always forget if A=above and B=below or A=after and B=before (when adding cells) 😖

Alan Munn

@Rmano That does sound confusing. I have no experience with them, so I haven't had the pleasure of this confusion.

@Rmano But if you want real confusion, try asking English speakers what it means to "move a meeting back a week". You may get two completely contradictory answers depending on who you ask.

David Carlisle

20:16

@AlanMunn wrong answer or right answer, presumably:-)

Alan Munn

@DavidCarlisle Presumably. I think we're in the same camp, but the Americans as usual have got it wrong.

Rmano

@AlanMunn I would guess they the meeting will be a week earlier than scheduled (but I'm not native, soI don't count).

David Carlisle

@mickep unless it is a weird scandinavian a thing at the end of the alphabet?

@Rmano week later;-)

Alan Munn

@Rmano So you're in the 'wrong answer' crowd. (But your intuition is correct for Americans.)

Rmano

@DavidCarlisle see ? I was right that I was wrong

barbara beeton

20:30

@AlanMunn -- My pet peeve is, what is 12:00 AM or PM? That, at least, is solved by the 24-hour clock. I once won an argument about printing a schedule by insisting that "noon" or "midnight" be used to avoid the problem. (Yes, I know I' in the minority, but why do insurance policies always take effect at 12:01 AM?)

Alan Munn

@barbarabeeton Well 12:00 AM is midnight and 12:00 PM is noon, but it's true that's really in the undefined zone technically. I assume insurance policies start at 12:01 because they want to make sure that there is no ambiguity, and that a full day 24hr period (minus a minute, I guess) is counted.

mickep

@DavidCarlisle Öhh...

barbara beeton

@AlanMunn -- My problem is, I'm sure I learned it the other way around as a child. Unfortunately, no one who could corroborate is still around.

Alan Munn

@barbarabeeton Ah that's interesting. It should be possible to figure that out from contemporary written sources though. I have no idea if that's something that has actually changed in use over time.

David Carlisle

@AlanMunn I use 12h clock in conversation, but it's increasingly rare to see it written down. timetables, tv schedules, my phone, ... all 24h

Alan Munn

20:38

@DavidCarlisle Here in the US it's quite rare to see.

barbara beeton

@AlanMunn -- Yes. There's a built-in ambiguity there. As for a possible change over time, that would be an interesting research project. As for digging up references, where would one start? I suspect literature of the 1930s and '40s would probably refer to noon or midnight, and anything military would use the 24-hour clock.

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton Greenwich know something about time rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/noon-12-am-or-12-pm

Rmano

@DavidCarlisle using 24 hours clocks just change the granularity of the problem. They say there are no flights starting at 24:00 or 0:00 because people tend to get the wrong day... 😉 (Not sure if it's true or urban legend)

David Carlisle

@Rmano clearly airline schedules should use unix epoch times and none of this sun based counting

barbara beeton

20:55

@DavidCarlisle -- Nice! Thank you. (I've visited the Greenwich Observatory, and stood with one foot in each of two different time zones. Fun!) But what they have to say about their 24-hour analog clock, that "Instead of the usual numbers 1-12 on its clock face, it has 24 Roman numerals." it lies. It's got a zero at the top, and zero wasn't known to the Romans.

Rmano

@DavidCarlisle I do own a 24-hours analog wrist watch! A gift from my father who bought it from a Polish sailor. Fully manual.

barbara beeton

@Rmano -- Does it have 0 or 24 at the top? (My everyday wristwatch is fully manual, and it has no numbers for hours. Instead, it has a bezel with 10, 20, ..., 60. Oh, and the works are visible. 12-hour basis.)

Rmano

@barbarabeeton Neither, only the odd hour are marked explicitly (in normal, Arabic, numerals), the even one are just bars.

barbara beeton

@Rmano -- So, I conclude that everybody "cheats" and tries to avoid any problem.

Rmano

Found it, it's exactly this one: poljot24.de/en/raketat-r699.html

barbara beeton

21:12

@Rmano -- It doesn't want to load. Sad.

samcarter

Everybody should switch to Modified Julian Dates - a nice decimal number is so much nicer to deal with than all these am/pm :)

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton ^^^

barbara beeton

22:53

@DavidCarlisle -- Thank you. My net connection was "interrupted" (flaky ISP service), and I had to disconnect and restart everything. This is a pain; it has been happening more and more frequently, sometimes several times a day. Things were so much easier at AMS where there was a captive sysadmin to run interference.

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends