@mickep ll is the letter between l and m :-)

@mickep what @DavidCarlisle said. not exactly a trick. the sound doesn't exist in English and is apparently harder to learn than e.g. ch or ng(h). so we decided to call England Lloegr and its capital Llundain. ;)

@cfr ohh

The French thread on the texlive list is a bit saddening.

@mickep ??

@mickep Tout le monde ne maîtrise pas toutes les langues

@mickep Seems a good policy on this site to request questions being asked in English ... at least you can always blame those who decided this =)

... or is there actually?

reading the help pages

@JosephWright didn't you find it?

@JasperHabicht must seem less good to non-English speakers, though.

I recently read a comment by @UlrikeFischer that gs can be used to post-process a PDF to prevent leaking data. can gs be used to post-process a PDF without stripping data so that e.g. the text remains searchable? or is the stripping just an inherent part of how gs does things (which maybe involves conversion to and from ps)?

@mickep o.

@cfr Well, at least you reach a larger audience. But yes, if you don't speak any English, that's a problem then. I thought this site has some rules about the language used, but I could not find it ... seems more like a non-written rule

@JasperHabicht they should stick to Welsh.

@JasperHabicht I thought so, too.

@cfr Oh my! Dw i'n meddwl, mae cwrs Cymraeg gan Duolingo. Dylwn i roi cynnig arni.

@JasperHabicht see e.g. tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/687/non-english-questions

Yes, and this: stackoverflow.blog/2009/07/23/non-english-question-policy

So, it is meta-meta so to say

@JasperHabicht Gofynnwch i @DavidCarlisle os oes angen cymorth arnoch chi.

@cfr =D

@JasperHabicht the mailing list discussion seemed odd. surely this comes up not so infrequently?

@cfr I think, having a policy is one thing. But one should still adhere to netiquette. I am unsure how to evaluate the first remark about this list being international. At least some help was provided ... some people phrase things in a blunt way without meaning it. I'd always assume that the relevant person who posted in French did not do this on purpose.

But it is the same here. And maybe I also sometimes react to quickly ... it is different when seeing such things from "within" knowing about the rules, or when being new to the site knowing not that much about it ...

@cfr wrth gwrs gallwn i helpu, ond efallai fy mod yn teimlo'n sarrug ac yn dewis peidio â helpu

@cfr not odd at all if you know the people involved

@DavidCarlisle Yes, there's a regular cast of predictable characters, sadly.

@DavidCarlisle I think you should send that to the list.

@CarLaTeX @egreg important research: arxiv.org/pdf/2501.00536

@UlrikeFischer This is doing research! I admit I'm envious...

@UlrikeFischer I got hungry

Hi guys, I hope you'll indulge the following question, which is maybe more suited for the academia chat, but theirs is completely dead and I don't think a full question is really justified. It has to do with citing so I hope there is some cross-pollination with this community

How would you refer in text to multiple publications with a shared first author (and clear "leader" on the topic), and different combinations of co-authors?

@UlrikeFischer It should be a candidate for the IG Nobel prize!

I am writing the following sentence: "This introduction is based on the seminal papers of Devaney et al. \cite{paper1, paper2, paper3}"

Any suggestion of another formulation that makes it clear that it's not the same et al. in all 3 papers, while keeping it elegant and fluid? Or ultimately the reader does not really care?

Like "This is based on the seminal papers of Devaney and his different sets of co-authors~\cite{blabla]" But this is absolutely clunky

I know this is not exactly a latex question, but if anyone has a suggestion, I am all ears

@nathdwek Are you using an authoryear citation style or numeric?

numeric

@nathdwek Maybe instead of et al. use "and collaborators" or "and colleagues"?

I think I am going to settle for "This introduction is based on seminal work lead by Devaney~\cite{blabla}"

@AlanMunn yeah I was thinking about the same thing as well

@nathdwek Then it should be 'led' not 'lead'.

Right now I feel like using "led by" indicates clearly that he was a central contributor to all publications but not working alone, without having to explicitly refer to "the other people" which is where I am struggling to formulate it in a non-clunky way

@AlanMunn absolutely, thanks a lot for the correction. Long writing hours

"This introduction is based on the seminal papers [1,2,3]" is also OK.

@mickep absolutely agree. This is a more "superficial ice-breaking session between the reader and the topic" though, so I like to explicitly mention authors in this type of content

@mickep @nathdwek I think that I would prefer "by Devaney and colleagues" (but I'm not used to writing with numeric styles)

@nathdwek OK, but as soon as you mention one, you are also not mentioning others.

@mickep IME, researchers reading dense papers in transactions type of publications will absolutely scour through the references and can be trusted to recognize authorship "patterns" by themselves, as well as name that come back over and over, basically forming a mental map of the field and the people

but students reading an intro need a bit of a nudge to remember "hey that devaney guy might be a good name to keep in mind"

@mickep I'll gladly concede that my current choice is not perfect, after all that is why I brought it up here. But I'll also contend that "led by" is not that much more insulting to "the colleagues" than "and colleagues"

I can't convince my fingers to write "led by" correctly the first go-round now can I

@nathdwek It's not helped by the fact that lead the element is pronounced the same way and not spelt 'led'.

I appreciate that you're offering me an out

@UlrikeFischer I need such a study for the real carbonara made only from egg and pecorino ... sometimes, if the pasta is too dry, the sauce might also become a bit clumpy ...

(but today went well)

@mickep perhaps with a helpful translation? Gŵgl: Nid yw pawb yn rhugl ym mhob iaith. I don't know if that's what the French says, though.

@DavidCarlisle I see. and, well, I don't know them, but I have read parts of the mailing list before. (I am subscribed, but I don't usually look.)

@DavidCarlisle Cwestiwn o gymeriad, wrth gwrs.

@DavidCarlisle just, I would have expected they've all had this argument before.

does anybody know why using a unicode font with luatex makes such a mess of letterspacing? it isn't just the spacing which is wrong, it doesn't even start paragraphs in the same place each time.

if I force type1, it is OK:

@cfr some people never miss an opportunity to argue, having had the same one before is no obstacle

I got a new typewriter

@DavidCarlisle fyddwn i ddim yn dadl am hynny.

@DavidCarlisle are you sure you didn't design the alignment for letterspaced Unicode above?

why does github keep wanting me to try the new 'merge experience'? even when it is just comments, where it makes no sense?