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7:12 PM
@percusse what a terrible thing to say :(
2
 
@percusse Maths might be lots of things, but boring it is not.
 
@DavidCarlisle @FaheemMitha You have to see it from non-mathematicians side. Strict formalism is not mathematics. It's futile to go into the discussion but that's not only my opinion.
(since I'm not a professional mathematician).
 
@percusse I'm not a professional mathematician either. And it is not really about formalism.
 
@FaheemMitha Actually it is. Without intuition there is nothing. Actually that's what cognitive scientists are emphasizing more and more. Calling conventions and other ways doing things the right way is not math at all.
 
@FaheemMitha I am a researcher in maths, if you are interested in my opinion
 
7:21 PM
@percusse Not really following you. Are we still talking about measure theory and probability?
@tohecz Sure.
 
@FaheemMitha I'm backing up my comment above to Will.
 
@percusse Measure theory in probability really has nothing to do with formalism. It is about having a proper theory to use to get work done.
 
Mathematics is interesting. A formalism is only one way to express things. I would say doing maths is like constructing a building. At the beginning you don't say "Let at the position (396,184,13) be a piece of concrete of the size (41,25,12)", you say "This part of building will have a concrete ceiling". But sooner or later, you have to change "concrete ceiling" to the technical values. Mathematics is (should be) the same.
 
@FaheemMitha I replied to the following:
1 hour ago, by Will Hunting
The latter is motivated by the former, but then becomes an independent entity.
maybe we picked up different parts of the discussion.
 
@percusse probably this isn't a very useful discussion without a more concrete basis e.g. examples.
 
7:30 PM
I'm just saying that formal mathematical definitions are the end products of a thinking process not the start of it. But modern mathematics defend itself that it's the way to go. In my humble and ignorant opinion it's the remnants of the axiomatic holiness. And that kills the possibility of discussing ideas because you often do not formulate the problem perfectly. Very often it's an XY problem because the solution depends on what you have defined already.
 
it just works: I get a marginpar of 119 words for \begin{assignment}
\lipsum[1]
\end{assignment}
 
@FaheemMitha I find this book very thought provoking
Proofs and Refutations is a book by the philosopher Imre Lakatos expounding his view of the progress of mathematics. The book is written as a series of Socratic dialogues involving a group of students who debate the proof of the Euler characteristic defined for the polyhedron. A central theme is that definitions are not carved in stone, but often have to be patched up in the light of later insights, in particular failed proofs. This gives mathematics a somewhat experimental flavour. At the end of the Introduction, Lakatos explains that his purpose is to challenge formalism in mathematics,...
 
@DavidCarlisle Really? What are you compiling with?
 
well the answer that you linked to said it only worked with xelatex, so I used that.
 
@percusse What is "the way to go"?
 
7:32 PM
@DavidCarlisle I'm talking about the one that uses the spaces, not the xelatex one
 
What would an easy way to scale up the picture here?
1
Q: Odd behaviour with arrows and multipart rectangles

Faheem MithaI recently posted a question Display issues drawing DNA sequences with TikZ. The issues I described were for the most part resolved, but one remains. I managed to simplify my example down to show the issue more clearly. Consider the following code. In this code, the line drawn between the two mu...

 
sorry for the confusion
 
@Gnintendo well, use the xelatex one then:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle I would, but xelatex doesn't play nice with microtype
I didn't know if there was an easy way to make the other one work with expanded text
 
@Gnintendo well luatex then
 
7:34 PM
@DavidCarlisle the xelatex one doesn't work with luatex
 
@percusse Sounds interesting.
 
>.<
 
@Gnintendo I've never understood why word counting is interesting. It always just returns a fairly arbitrary number.
 
@FaheemMitha I guess Lakatos would be better in explaining that I can ever do.
 
shrug, but you see my point
 
7:36 PM
@Gnintendo probably not but you could no doubt do something similar in luatex, counting words in classic tex is a waste of time: it's hard to do and you'll get th ewrong answer most of the time
 
@percusse There's sort of "axiomatic holiness", but if you asked me, I've never needed axioms of numbers or set theory, and I'm a happy mathematician ;)
 
if I knew enough about lualatex, I would :P
 
But some things don't work without good axioms, that is mathematics, and I don't think it can be really different
 
@tohecz Yes but I'm only an engineer. I don't have the skills to give counterexamples or different ways to achieve Lebesguesque results.
 
pfft, applied math. lame.
Gnintendo gives @tohecz a high five
 
7:38 PM
@tohecz I'm not discarding the axioms I'm just saying that the mechanism itself doesn't have any axiomatic nature in it.
 
I see your point. But on the other hand, before Lebesgue, doind integration over a sphere was a true hell.
 
@tohecz But it wasn't the axioms that made it possible.
 
You don't need it because you know that dxdydz = r^2 cos theta dphi dtheta dr
@percusse That's a very complicated statement by you ;)
 
heehee, spherical coordinates, heehee
 
@Gnintendo coming from an engineering school, I have no problems with applied maths ;)
 
7:41 PM
noooo
 
@tohecz The infamous Fourier transform or any kernel for that matter are also counterexamples. I can guarantee you that 90% of all engineering students are lost with them.
 
@percusse It was the good definition of integration, and it's up to you whether you consider this to be "axioms"
 
@tohecz Again, I'm saying that wrapping up the result in a macro doesn't hide the process behind it. You only do it in the end. If you know which macros you will need then it's not mathematics only convenience.
 
@percusse I lost you
 
Yep, TeX analogy didn't work that good :)
How about this? Formal mathematics is missing \show and \meaning commands.
 
7:46 PM
@percusse I see it from a different point of view: Integration is like a high-level LaTeX macro: you don't need to know it's \def inition to be able to use it. But there're people who are too keen on it's definition.
(btw, have you noticed the similarity of our avatars? :D )
 
@tohecz Precisely. But it's only a defintion in the end. I think I'm no match to explain to a mathematician what I mean. So let's forget what I said here.
 
@percusse damn I hate these discussion endings...
 
@tohecz Me too but we are at the end of my practical knowledge so the rest would be a burden on your side :)
 
@percusse well, if you think so
 
8:16 PM
@percusse I'm sorry to put it like this, but from scanning through the above then my response would be that whatever it is that you think is mathematics isn't what I think is mathematics. My mathematics is fluid, it is experimental, definitions can be modified. But the purpose of mathematics is such that at any specific point we know exactly what it is we are talking about and for that you really do need formal structures. "It just seems to work" isn't good enough in mathematics.
 
@AndrewStacey No problem. It is fluid and experimental etc. in your own circle. Not to the rest of the people that do not make a living out of it. That's what I meant. For me what you do is not mathematics either. I don't understand why mathematicians should own it. As I said I can't be bothered how you drive your car or CD-Drive if you do something wrong it breaks down and that's it.
 
Hmm, scalebox doesn't scale text. Crap.
 
For higher math even the wording makes me go, yeah right.... but that's me I'm happy with my own ignorance.
 
@percusse I'm not sure I get your point. "I don't understand why mathematicians should own it". We don't own mathematics. We discover it or invent it (depending on your philosophy) and then release it into the wild for others to use if they want to (or abuse if they happen to be physicists).
 
@AndrewStacey Yes you (not personally) claim to do so. Even in your own sentence you are entitled to discover and/or invent and release it in the wild. But my point is not what mathematicians do. I've only stated that formalism is like a CE certificate or a patent form. You only need it in the end. To fix the scope and the applicability. I'm not understanding why it is needed throughout the teaching/discussing/learning etc. but again I'm not eligible to discuss the issue at a higher level.
so don't take it too seriously.
 
8:41 PM
@percusse You can use some mathematical tool just as you'd use your toaster, without needing to know how it works. But when you want to toast something bigger than sliced bread and want to build a giant toaster, you need to know the internal workings of a toaster. It's the same in math. Plus, it helps knowing that math is not a set of revealed rules.
 
@egreg I think your last sentence is precisely what I was struggling to express. Thanks for that. My objection I think is better explained in Lockhart's Lament. So maybe you, @AndrewStacey , @tohecz , and others can also see where my mistake is. Here is a link
 
@percusse the only problem is that currently, I'm not able to digest 25 pages of anything.
 
@tohecz No rush :) But that's what regular people like me feel about the theorems :)
 
@percusse I don't agree with all of Devlin's words, but one of my goals in the courses I give to future teachers is to convey the idea that math can be fun to learn and to teach. I use the image of a tennis player, who must do drills against the wall, but who eventually goes to the court to play, have fun and, possibly, win.
But if math reduces to drills, everybody will run away from it. Exactly as young tennis players would throw away their equipment if always set in front of a wall.
You can win a tennis match only if you know how the play works.
 
@egreg Even though I need to know minimal amount of functional analysis, convex optimization, algebra etc. for my daily job, I really want to run away from it :) I never get to play the game because I'm never good enough until I'm good enough to go out in the Wimbledon finals.
And it has to be Wimbledon quality everywhere even though there is only one Wimbledon final.
So either I'm a practicing mathematician or I'm an uneducated fool who doesn't know the basics of court length and referee uniform colors.
This doesn't mean that I discard the need to become more and more specialized in a certain field. But that can not define the attitude towards every possible abstract object.
 
9:01 PM
@egerg: Sure the listings works with a tab before the closing bracket, but try adding tabs to the lines above, and things no longer align. I think he needs to play with tabsize= and columns=.
@percusse Damm.. Looks like I missed a interesting discussion, and sadly have to go now....
 
@DavidCarlisle: You had an answer a while back that used some timing to see how fast (La)TeX compiles. Where is it?
 
@Werner where, you mean other than "on the internet" ?
2
 
@PeterGrill No worries. I'm not doing a great job anyway.
 
It's the z@ one I'll find it
 
@DavidCarlisle :) No I mean on the internet. Yes, I think it's that one dealing with \z@ and such.
 
9:05 PM
34
A: What does \z@ do?

David Carlislelatex.ltx says \newdimen\z@ \z@=0pt % can be used both for 0pt and 0 so as it says it is short (and efficient) way of getting 0. You should always have a copy of the latex source file latex.ltx in a text editor window while reading package code:-), or perhaps, if you prefer, the typeset versi...

 
@DavidCarlisle Thanks - you're a machine...
...yet living and breathing.
 
@egreg, you're slipping, you're not even on the top row of this weeks rep page:-)
@Werner Are you sure?
 
@PeterGrill I get good alignment
 
@DavidCarlisle 99.314159265358979323846264338% sure.
 
@DavidCarlisle Still short to rep cap. :(
 
9:07 PM
@Werner Well the week just started :-)
@egreg Hmmm.. I think that is a slight problem with TeX.SE: tabs are not maintained as tabs when posting here.
 
@PeterGrill I guess they aren't.
 
@PeterGrill Awesome, thanks!
 
9:22 PM
Gotta run. See you later...
 
9:34 PM
@werner, oh it's for that question:-) I just posted an answer to that one as well:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Nice answer... even without 10 upvotes.
 
Hey Frank's back, not seen him on site for a while
 
9:54 PM
@DavidCarlisle I guess I'll just use xelatex; it's a shame it doesn't play nice with microtype, though
 
@Gnintendo well microtype doesn't change the number of words so if you want you could use xelatex get it to write the word counts to a file then use them in a pdflatex run
 
that's...interesting
how would that even
 
@percusse It all depends on how you use math. If all you need are tools, then you're served by reading a book and applying the methods it shows. Just take care that you are in the right hypotheses for applying the theorems! However, this is not toasting bread: you're using a very high level tool and some notion about how it works is necessary, at least to avoid it explodes in your hands.
 
@Gnintendo how would that even what?
 
I'm trying to imagine how one would write that
is it safe to run a pdflatex compilation on top of a previous xelatex compilation without cleaning up files?
 
10:03 PM
@Gnintendo probably but even not, it's definitely safe if you write to your own file that neither know about Just take the xelatex answer and where it does \marginpar{..} just use \immediate\write\mycountfile{...} then you end up with a text file with all your word counts
 
ohh, this looks promising: gist.github.com/2622252
@DavidCarlisle That one works nice, but for some reason \setwordthreshold{1} will make it count way more words than expected. Oh well, this is still the best solution yet
 
@Gnintendo I know nothing about lua:-)
 
@DavidCarlisle Hmm, it sometimes overcounts words when the threshhold is set to 2 as well
headscratch
 
@Gnintendo You can presumably (in theory) get it to tell you exactly what it is counting, presumably its guess as to what constitutes a word doesn't match ypur intuition. If you have any hyphenated words or mathematics it's all a bit arbitrary really.
 
10:23 PM
@DavidCarlisle Are you happier now? You are not in the first row for the week any more. :)
 
@DavidCarlisle I'm not sure how to do \immediate\write\mycountfile{...}?
 
@egreg why is your 230 more than my 230, it's not fair, I demand a recount!
 
@DavidCarlisle Because yours is really a 210: you have a -20, don't you remember? :)
 
@Gnintendo in the preamble \newrite\mycountfile \immediate\openout\mycountfile=\jobname.count then literally the command you posted.
 
@DavidCarlisle Are you supposed to somehow define it?
@DavidCarlisle Do we need to close the writing?
 
10:29 PM
@egreg oh yes negatiive numbers too much math for me.
@Gnintendo only if you need to open the file for reading during the same run, and probably not needed then but it saves worrying about exactly what the flush semantics are
 
10:40 PM
@DavidCarlisle Can I do something like this?:
\begin{spacing}{2}

\ifXeTeX
\begin{counted}
\fi

I love the \citetitle{narmer}.

\ifXeTeX
\end{counted}
\fi

\ifXeTeX
\vspace{0.5\baselineskip}

\immediate\write\mycountfile{\thewords\}
\immediate\closeout\mycountfile

\noindent Word Count: \thewords\
\fi

\ifLuaTeX
\vspace{0.5\baselineskip}

\noindent Word Count: \input{\jobname.count}
\fi

\end{spacing}
and have arara run some xelatex, clean up the files, then run some lualatex?
oh hey, it works
^.^
 
Yes I guess so, you don't want to close the file there though (unless you only have one count per file)
 
There would only be the one count for the whole document?
 
@Gnintendo Oh OK that makes it easier then yes
 
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: biber
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
%somecleanup here?
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: biber
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
need to read into arara to figure out how to do that cleanup command
 
@Gnintendo You can do \immediate\write\mycountile{\thewords}\setcounter{words}{0}
 
10:44 PM
@tohecz Why would I need to?
 
@Gnintendo I would say that you can ask this on the main site since that might be an iteresting question for others too ;)
@Gnintendo if you wanted to count multiple times
 
@tohecz great idea then I can post the above as an answer, Gnintendo gives me a green tick and @egreg gets pushed back to the second row!
 
@DavidCarlisle I meant the arara cleanup :p
 
@tohecz shame:(
 
@DavidCarlisle Well, I just found I'm not even on the first monthly page, we occupy the beginning of the second one together with @Paulo ...
 
10:50 PM
ahh, where's @paulo when I need him :s
@tohecz I mean, I think the cleanup is already in the documentation somewhere
I just need to find it
 
@Gnintendo Yes, I need to discuss some soccer news with him. :)
 
For the record, is there any of this that can be made unnecessary by not cleaning up certain files that won't screw up any cases:
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: biber
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: xelatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
%somecleanup here?
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: biber
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
% arara: lualatex: { synctex: true, shell: yes }
could I not delete something and get an equivalent file generated by biber and not have to re-run it?
 
@Gnintendo yeah, but "Ask a Question" is simpler than "RTFM" and you give rep to someone ;)
 
(just looking for a way to streamline this enormous compilation time)
>.<
 
@Gnintendo yes, you don't want to delete .bbl
 
10:53 PM
There wouldn't be any difference between the lualatex biber and xelatex biber run? coolio.
 
@Gnintendo remove synctex in all but the last compilation
 
mmmk
 
@DavidCarlisle You need two green ticks now. :P
 
@Gnintendo Most likely you don't need to do any cleanup and can just run lualatex once at the end to re-typeset. (It's easy enough to check just look at the aux files and see if they are the same) Only of you have some back-end specific data such as (I think) stored by tikzmark etc the numbers can be engine dependent but even then runnijng luatex twice should get you back in sync
 
oh, I'll try that.
 
10:55 PM
@egreg you've vanished into the distance and been forgotten, I'll return to the aim of staying ahead of @PeterGrill
 
J G
Hi, does anybody know if there is an easy way to add a video to beamer? Like a .wmv file?
 
hmm, that's actually working
 
J G
Like if I were to click on something the sound could play in the background?
 
thanks all ^>^
^.^*
 
J G
Does anybody know of an example I could look at for the syntax?
 
10:58 PM
@JG look for questions tagged
anyways, have a nice time and good bye, I gotta go
 
J G
@tohecz Suppose I make the beamer on my computer with the video. If I then email the .pdf to someone, would they automatically get the song with it?
 
@JG I don't think it's embedded
 
J G
@egreg How would I get the video to then play?
Conceptually, how does it work?
Does something appear on the screen like a button?
And then I click on it?
 
@JG The packages create a link in the PDF file; if the PDF viewer can, it opens the linked file
 
@JG I think it's "soft-linked", but I have never done such a crime as embedding videos ;)
2
 
J G
11:02 PM
@tohecz crime!
3
Q: latex beamer: \includemedia won't play video

timonthe code seems to be correct, with compilation no error appears. The code is \documentclass{beamer} \usetheme{Singapore} \usepackage{media9} \usepackage{hyperref} \begin{frame}\frametitle{Title} \includemedia[ width=\paperwidth,height=0.7\linewidth, activate=pageopen, flashvars={movie.mp4 &...

Is that a good example?
Sorry, I"m just totally confused.
 
@JG the example in the first answer there seems to be a good one. But why don't you try it yourself?
 
J G
@tohecz Because I'm really confused. I don't even know what to try? I put the file in the same folder? And then I follow the code in the solution? And then it will work?
 
if you follow the answer, you should put the files player_flv_maxi.swf and movie.mp4 into the same folder as where your document is
 
J G
what is .swf? Can I use .wmv?
 
@JG swf is the player, movie.mp4 is the video. I assume that wmv won't work, but you can try it.
 
J G
11:16 PM
@tohecz I just want to add a music file, not a movie per se.
 
and sorry, but it's quarter past mignight and I go to work tomorrow, so good night.
 
11:39 PM
@egreg, @tohecz, @DavidCarlisle, @Gnintendo: hello! :)
 
hi :P
@DavidCarlisle So is there anything that I would want to clean between the xelatex and lualatex compilation?
 
Apparently, my random talks were displeasing some users here today, specially about 3DS. :(
@Gnintendo: Open your heart, my friend. :) What can I help you with? :)
 
@PauloCereda Hi!
 
@Gnintendo get your question in quick before they start yattering about football.
 
@PauloCereda I was going to use arara to clean up some files as part of a compilation, but I didn't know if this had changed from 2.X>3.X
 
11:43 PM
@Gnintendo You mean the clean directive? :) We already ported it to the 3.x series, so feel free to use it. :) Just don't use it without arguments, e.g, % arara: clean, or bad things will happen. Go with % arara: clean: [ files: myfile.txt, mysecondfile.txt ] and everything is gonna be alright. :)
 
arara: clean deletes everything, doesn't it?
@PauloCereda Is there a way to make it delete everything in the working directory (but not subdirectories) except a small list of files?
 
Actually, it's worse than that. :) It deletes your .tex file! :)
@Gnintendo I'm afraid not. You need to specify which ones you want to remove.
 
@Gnintendo dunno I never use either (or pdftex for that matter) other than running little examples for here so I'm not sure what packages write engine-dependent code to the aux file. Obviously if microtype changes the line breaking in principle page refs can change but that's just normal changes that multiple luatex runs would clean up
you only need remove the aux file for something like hyperref or babel where adding/removing it changes the syntax of the aux file so an aux file from one run might kill a later one if the package has been added/removed
 
@PauloCereda I hope that clean without arguments does nothing.
 
@egreg On the contrary. :( I'll try to add a safety lock.
 
11:49 PM
@PauloCereda Hmm, quite dangerous indeed!
 
@egreg It is. :(
 
@DavidCarlisle So if I'm not adding or removing hyperref or babel, I'm good with two lualatex runs as far as you know?
 
@Gnintendo as I mentioned at the beginning I think coordinates saved by tikzmark or equivalent are (or can be) engine dependent, have a look through some of your documents see if the aux file changes (the toc would change if you swiched betwen pdflatex/inputenc and xetex but that's inputenc package change rather than the engine change itself so I don't think that would change between luatex and xetex.
 
@DavidCarlisle Usually, adding hyperref is not a big deal: it sees normal files and adjusts to it. Removing it requires clearing aux, toc, lof and lot files. Also adding babel is safe; the problem is when a language is removed from it.
 
@DavidCarlisle I'm not going to be using tikz for anything
 
11:53 PM
@PauloCereda Did you see the final scores? :)
 
@egreg Oh my! Inter and Milan lost! :)
 
@PauloCereda I'm really sorry. :)
 
@egreg yes in both cases removing a package causes more problems than adding it, the package can make itself safe for "old" aux files, but the standard code has more problem with package specific code in the aux file if the package is no longer loaded.
 
@egreg Oh! :)
@egreg: Sadly I have bad news. I'm afraid Palmeiras is very close to serie B. :(
 
@PauloCereda Really bad news.
 
11:58 PM
@egreg The team had a lot of problems, unfortunately.
@egreg: Lazio won against Roma? Wow.
 
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