TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2012-12-13

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egreg

00:00

@DavidCarlisle Enlightened requires one to be fast in answering. ;-)

ricmarques

OK. "Got to go"... It's already past midnight here. Take care everyone! Thanks for the info and congrats for the work @PauloCereda :)

Paulo Cereda

@ricmarques Good night, buddy! :)

ricmarques

@PauloCereda Thanks! :) Bye (out!)

Speravir

00:47

@MarcoDaniel I would not link to Google groups, because it’s broken by design, but to the archive of the mailing list: ctan-ann, in this case to mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg05271.html (RSS-feed included).

Gnintendo

01:42

user image

because why not?

1 hour later…

percusse

02:47

From the reflection I can see that the satellites are not charging themselves. So it's probably a Cylon spy.

user image

2 hours later…

Faheem Mitha

04:42

@DavidCarlisle Thanks, David. The posted solution works for me. I'll try your version too.

3 hours later…

hpesoj626

07:59

This looks like a non-answer to me but OP accepted it. tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86838/…

Well, OP just edited and posted code and figure.

Faheem Mitha

@PauloCereda Was this drawn using TeX?

Paulo Cereda

09:02

@FaheemMitha No. :(

topskip

09:13

@Gnintendo Is that Kim Jong-un or PSY? :)

Faheem Mitha

09:33

@PauloCereda I figured as much. Now that would be a challenging TikZ question.

Paulo Cereda

@FaheemMitha @percusse has ported a few drawings of mine to pure TikZ. :)

Henning Klevjer

09:46

I have a short question. I've got a program variable name enclosed in \texttt, making it overflow the page. Is there a way to suggest linebreaks to latex, such as \- suggests hyphenation?

JLDiaz

@HenningKlevjer try using url package, which contains algorithms for breaking a url among lines at strategic points, and perhaps it can be used with variables too

url{my_long_named_variable}

Henning Klevjer

@JLDiaz good idea, thanks.

If I use hyperref and url, will these variable name-urls be clickable as valid urls?

JLDiaz

@HenningKlevjer not sure, but you can prevent it if that is the case, because url package allows you to define url-like commands

Henning Klevjer

@JLDiaz All right, I'll have a look. Thanks again!

JLDiaz

:7255535 If you want to do it manually, `\linebreak[0]` is an option. For example: `\fbox{\parbox{1.5cm}{
\texttt{this\linebreak[0]is\linebreak[0]a\linebreak[0]very\linebreak[0]long\linebreak[0]name}
}}`

Henning Klevjer

09:56

Yeah, but it will linebreak anyway, won't it?

Or only if it overflows?

JLDiaz

@HenningKlevjer no, the [0] option makes it a weak suggestion

if you try the above example you can see it yourself

Henning Klevjer

@JLDiaz ah, perfect! I'll go with that! However ugly ;)

or \def\sb{\linebreak[0]}

Thanks again!

ℝaphink

10:11

Hello guys

Stephan Lehmke

Hi!

@HenningKlevjer Please come back! That chicken looks so cool in the sleigh! ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke LOL

@ℝaphink Hi! :)

ℝaphink

hi @PauloCereda

tohecz

10:28

Hello! @DavidCarlisle you wanna tell me that I can mess up any improperly-nested-html-tag-made-webpage by putting the RTL utf8 code in some text?

Faheem Mitha

@HenningKlevjer hyperref makes all

\url{} clickable by default, but I expect it can be suppressed.

Maybe selectively, I dunno.

tohecz

@HenningKlevjer the two packages like each other ;)

David Carlisle

@tohecz No I want to tell you that typically (although as seen on the right not always) browsers are much better at handling bidi text than TeX:-) Well not necessarily actually, arguably that is the correct display if you think of "14h ago" as being added at the end of the comment paragraph rather than as a following separate paragraph

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle yes, as seen on the right, there's some HTML tag missing in the code ;)

JLDiaz

@FaheemMitha \DeclareUrlCommand{\variable}{\urlstyle{tt}} and then \variable{foo_bar} ?

tohecz

10:32

@DavidCarlisle but wouldn't enclosing the post text in the <span> tag be sufficient?

David Carlisle

@tohecz inline tags don't (normally) form bidi boundaries, you need paragraph level tags for that. aaa bbb ccc and aaa <<span>bbb</span> ccc should render in the same order the spab doesn't make it three bidi contexts (a p would)

@tohecz no

tohecz

ok, didn't know

soon, we and with webpages containing more LTR chars than anything else, to prevent Davids Carlisles from doing nasty things.

David Carlisle

@tohecz Otherwise every time you were writing a bit of arabic and used <span> or <tt> or something to change the font the word would ping over to the other side of the page

@tohecz Probably more people know how to do that because of xkcd than because of me, so how come I get the blame?

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle but an Arabic webpage code could simply start by RTL just after the <body> couldn't they?

David Carlisle

@tohecz But it's same thing some unicode characters (including most arabic ones) just automatically switch direction. I used a bidi override character which is essentially a zero width space but with a strong RTL property which also overrides the strong LTR property of the following latin characters, but you get essentially the same behaviour just using sensible characters from RTL scripts

tohecz

10:38

@DavidCarlisle it is always good to have someone to get all the blame, and you were .... democratically elected :p

2

David Carlisle

@tohecz Oh democracy? Can't argue with that.

Paulo Cereda

Guys, don't forget the interview with Ulrike today. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda it's in 1 1/4 hours, right?

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz I believe it's 1PM UTC (11AM my time)

tohecz

@PauloCereda ok, and it seems to be 10:50 UTC just now

Paulo Cereda

10:49

@tohecz Oh. I always get lost with timezones.

Henning Klevjer

@StephanLehmke ha, say when

tohecz

so if it's on 13:00 UTC, it's in 2 hours

hpesoj626

11:06

avatar now rides the sleigh! who's next, santa claus?

Stephan Lehmke

@HenningKlevjer Yay! Go chicken go! Anybody got a duck as avatar? We could make a poulrty sledge race :-)

2

hpesoj626

@StephanLehmke I would find a duck avatar but my avatar gets changed every time I delete my email.

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke OMG YES.

Faheem Mitha

@JLDiaz I thought hyperref would have an option of something.

To not make the url clickable.

@PauloCereda The interview is in this channel?

Paulo Cereda

@FaheemMitha No, we have a special room for them: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1728/textalk-interviews :)

David Carlisle

11:29

@FaheemMitha You mean other than the option of putting a % in front of \usepackage{hyperref} ?

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle I seem to recall looking for something like that in the hyperref documentation, but not finding anything. So maybe it is not there.

user19161

@Gnintendo HAHAHAHAHAHA

Faheem Mitha

@PauloCereda Thanks

Stephan Lehmke

@FaheemMitha The draft option should disable links. AFAICS it is equivalent with the option nolinks. Then there is a NoHyper environment which should disable links within.

Faheem Mitha

@StephanLehmke Ah, so there is an option. Great, thanks. I suck at reading documentation.

Stephan Lehmke

11:44

@FaheemMitha I always only read the sources ;-)

egreg

@StephanLehmke Heiko's too? :P

Faheem Mitha

@StephanLehmke heh

Stephan Lehmke

@egreg Why not? I'm maybe not a top-level programmer, but I'm really good at reading sources ;-)

Also I had a couple of intimate hours with hyperref when making TeXPower ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke I once tried to read xii.tex. I got traumatized.

egreg

12:03

@PauloCereda beers.tex is far less traumatic. ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@egreg Indeed. :)

Stephan Lehmke

@PauloCereda Uh. I forgot that @JosephWright has a duck as avatar! We just need a more sledge-friendly version...

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda ah but can you sing the result?

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke :)

Stephan Lehmke

user image

Paulo Cereda

12:13

@DavidCarlisle here:

tohecz

!!/eightball Is Psmith here?

Stephan Lehmke

@PauloCereda xii.tex was surely not programmed the usual way, but is the result of several iterative "compression steps". So trying to read it from start to end you're not really following its genesis. So better trace than read ;-)

Paulo Cereda

@StephanLehmke ooh! :)

Paulo Cereda

13:00

TO THE INTERVIEW ROOM!

$TeX - LaTeX$ TeXtalk - Interviews

Interviews for our community blog.

3 hours later…

JLDiaz

16:10

If the original question is not about tikz, but one of the answers uses tikz, should a tikz-pgf tag be added to the question?

Paulo Cereda

in TeXtalk - Interviews, 1 min ago, by Ulrike Fischer

@PauloCereda: Yes ;-) I actually have a mostly finished update of chessfss written with expl3. There are quite a lot goodies in LaTeX3 (like e.g. the list handling) and the documentation is really good. One only has to get used to all the : and _ and the naming convention.

Torbjørn T.

22

Q: What's the policy on retagging questions based on answers?

I was wondering if a policy exists (and if so, what it is) for retagging questions once they have been answered. To illustrate what I mean, I recently answered Draw small cross at the center of the page. It is currently tagged as technical-drawing, perhaps the positioning tag would have been bet...

discussion tagging

@JLDiaz In short: No.

JLDiaz

@TorbjørnT. Thank you

Werner

16:54

Can you believe it, they have a Wikipedia page dedicated to a number:

36 (thirty-six) is the natural number following 35 and preceding 37. In mathematics 36 is both the square of 6 and a triangular number, making it a square triangular number. It is the smallest square triangular number other than 1, and it is also the only triangular number other than 1 whose square root is also a triangular number. It is also a 13-gonal number. It is the smallest number n with exactly 8 solutions to the equation φ(x) = n. Being the smallest number with exactly 9 divisors, 36 is a highly composite number. Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 6, 12 ...

Joseph Wright

@Werner 36 is an odd choice: I'd expect three (what with it being the magic number)

Paulo Cereda

news.sky.com/story/1024979/…

WHAT THE DUCK...

egreg

__NOTOC__ 1729 is the natural number following 1728 and preceding 1730. 1729 is known as the Hardy–Ramanujan number after a famous anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy regarding a visit to the hospital to see the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. In Hardy's words: The two different ways are these: : 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103 The quotation is sometimes expressed using the term "positive cubes", since allowing negative perfect cubes (the cube of a negative integer) gives the smallest solution as 91 (which is a divisor of 1729): :91 = 63 + (−5)3 = 43 + 33 Of cours...

1 hour later…

Stephan Lehmke

18:06

If I have a construct like \box23, can I find out if and what macro name it is assigned to?

egreg

18:41

Rep is palindrome in basis 1000. :)

@StephanLehmke You don't, unless you find latex.log (or pdflatex.log) on your system, which tells you \@outputbox=\box23

David Carlisle

19:03

any miktex users recognise "pdflatex.exe: the GUI framework cannot be initialized; " ?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I've seen it somewhere; maybe a TeXnicCenter problem

David Carlisle

@egreg accurate guess:-) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86936/…

egreg

5

Q: How can I fix the error "GUI framework cannot be initialized" with TeXnicCenter and MiKTeX?

I don't know what I've done, but all of a sudden I am unable to compile any document which uses the geometry package. Minimal (non)-working example: \documentclass[11pt]{article} \usepackage{geometry} \begin{document} test \end{document} doesn't produce any output, and this is what I ...

errors compiling miktex geometry texniccenter

David Carlisle

ah do you want to post that or should I?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I've added a comment

David Carlisle

19:08

thanks (good job I have your depth of windows experience to call on)

Werner

@DavidCarlisle: You're quite the sed wizz, right?

David Carlisle

@Werner go on then I fear a regexp question coming

egreg

@DavidCarlisle My Windoze experience is next to zero. And I'm so happy about it! :)

6

David Carlisle

@egreg You don't fool me.

@Werner ?

egreg

@DavidCarlisle From the log it appears that the OP is using MiKTeX 2.9.

Gnintendo

19:16

oh wow where have I been? the CTAN package site updated O.O

David Carlisle

@egreg is that bad (I have no idea of miktex numbers, not being a windows expert like yourself)

Paulo Cereda

4

Q: Who Wants to Win a LaTeX Book?

I am organising a lottery and Springer have kindly agreed to donate a copy of LaTeX and Friends. Joseph Wright has kindly agreed to act a an independent witness/judge and he knows the winning number. <LEGAL STUFF> The lottery closes when the judges announce the winner. The judges decision...

discussion publicity

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda ooh I'm sure I'll win

2

Werner

@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I was sucked in somewhere else...

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle C'mon David, add a valid entry. :)

Werner

19:29

@DavidCarlisle: ...I'm trying to find a command-line driven way that I can extract something from one file and update it in another

I know I can use sed to find stuff in a file and replace it.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda Nah I'd only feel bad if I won the book and deprived some starving student of a freebie

Werner

@DavidCarlisle: But I'm not sure whether I can find something in a file, store it in a variable, and use that as the replacement contents for another file... all using sed.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle pleeease.

David Carlisle

@Werner well you could use perl or for two files normally I'd do sed on first file to extract the replacement text and pipe it into a sed on the second to do the updates, depends a bit what kind of updates you need (and whether you need to do lots at one time)

Werner

@DavidCarlisle If sed can do it, I'll be interested in it... I'll give you my use case.

I create a large number of figures using LaTeX (mostly [`pstricks`](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/pstricks)), some of which show the progression of some modifications to an object. This progression adds/removed content from
the object, causing it's shape and size to change (from one image to the next). Including these images side-by-side causes them to shift horizontally/vertically since their bounding boxes are not similar.

If I can extract the bounding box from one file and insert it in another, that would be awesome.

So, for FileA.eps I have (say)

    Here is some text
    BoundingBox: 123 456 789 012
    HiresBoundingBox: 123.4567 456.7890 789.0123 012.3456
    Here is some more text

and for FileB.eps I have (say)

    Here is some text
    BoundingBox: 128 450 782 020
    HiresBoundingBox: 128.4567 450.7890 782.0123 020.3456
    Here is some more text

Faheem Mitha

19:37

@Werner Why do you need to use sed?

Werner

I want to extract the BoundingBox and HiresBoundingBox in FileB.eps and insert that in the correct spot in FileA.eps (say).

Faheem Mitha

What's wrong with a regular scripting language, for example?

Werner

@FaheemMitha Since sed is the thing I've used for file editing from the command line before.

Sure, throw me something else if you can.

I was going to ask a question on Stack Overflow about this, if anyone's interested in gathering an answer...

The main requirement is that it should function from the command line; I'm using it in batch form under Windows 7, so I'm running a script.bat file that does (or should include) this.

...yah, batch files. Super awesome.

Faheem Mitha

@Werner Well, I'd use python, because that's what i know

Pretty trivial to do, I'd say. Just do a match in the first file, and just rewrite the second file in place. Something like that.

You could pass the filenames as command line args. If they have spaces, it gets more annoying

David Carlisle

$ new=grep "%%BoundingBox" file1.eps ;for i in *eps; do sed -i -e "s/^%%BoundingBox:.*/$new/" $i; done

@Werner The above replaced BoundingBox from file1.eps into every eps file in the directoory when I troed it (bash grep and sed) but could replace grep by sed if you really want sed

Werner

19:46

@DavidCarlisle Ooo, grep and sed could work. What OS are you running on? Windows?

ℝaphink

0

Q: Minimal distance in dotfill

I'm generating an index with dotfills, such that my idx looks like this (extract): \item\raggedright l\IeC {`e}pre\dotfill \transform{21} \item\raggedright libre arbitre\dotfill \transform{1} \item\raggedright louange\dotfill \transform{245}, \transform{253} In this case, \transform{245} ...

indexing imakeidx

I'm sure one of you has an idea :-)

Surely @egreg :-)

David Carlisle

@Werner yes (cygwin though, I never use the windows command line)

Paulo Cereda

@ℝaphink Meanwhile, I humbly fixed the inline code (you forgot one more space). :)

Werner

@DavidCarlisle Okay...

ℝaphink

thanks @PauloCereda

Werner

19:47

I'll try it and get back to you. May only be tomorrow, when I'll refresh your memory. :)

ℝaphink

and I fixed the question (I wrote idx instead of ind)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle: you better fix your entry in the book contest, or we will add a number for you. :)

ℝaphink

thanks @lockstep

David Carlisle

:7263120 dotfill is \def\dotfill{%
  \leavevmode
  \cleaders \hb@xt@ .44em{\hss.\hss}\hfill
  \kern\z@}

@ℝaphink just replace \hfill by \hskip 1cm plus \fill and it will be at least 1cm long

ℝaphink

ah

in the index preamble?

David Carlisle

19:53

@ℝaphink yes or define a command with a different name globally and use that in the index (or I put a third version in an answer)

ℝaphink

thanks

ℝaphink

20:14

hmm

long ago, I remember seeing a question about adding the letter of the alphabet in front of every change of letter in an index

as in

before words beginning with a, typeset a big A

before word beginning with b, typeset a big B

etc.

I can't find that question anymore

Werner

4

Q: package makeidx: print first letter for each group of keys

I've created index with makeidx package. It works. What really need is to print the first letter above every group of keys (i.e. referring to the image I want to print the red letter, that I have manually inserted).

ℝaphink

ah, thank you @Werner

Werner

@ℝaphink I searched using [indexing] letter (click here).

ℝaphink

ah :)

Werner

Then it's more manageable.

ℝaphink

20:18

indeed

Stephan Lehmke

20:31

@egreg Great idea, thank you.

ℝaphink

20:49

user image

What's your opinion?

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink TBH, I think it looks a bit too ragged with the long month names. Is it possible to abbreviate? Otherwise, maybe three columns are even better so that two dates never appear in one line.

ℝaphink

interesting

two dates never appearing on one line, I could increase the minimal distance in dotfills (thanks again @DavidCarlisle)

as far as abbreviating, it's possible, too

I'm using datetime to display the dates

not sure if it knows about shorten dates in French

ah, there's \shortmonthname :)

Stephan Lehmke

Also, it seems when there is a line break between the item and the first date, the item is dragged to the right. So there should be some sort of \hfil before the \dotfill. @DavidCarlisle can surely figure out the correct sequence of glue and penalties.

And the voir items should not break.

I think you could reduce the indent of the second item level.

Why is the agneau de dieu not listed under dieu?

Sorry I'm nitpicking, but you asked for it ;-)

ℝaphink

sure :)

trying to see how I can use short months

:)

David Carlisle

21:06

@StephanLehmke just got back am i supposed to look at something:)

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle Look at the omniscience de dieu, it is not in its proper place.

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke shouldn't it just all be set flush right (with the dotfill ensuring the first bit is flush left?)

Stephan Lehmke

@DavidCarlisle Yes, but if the \dotfill breaks, the flush left doesn't work. A penalty and some fil seems to belong there, or maybe a plus 1fil in the \rightskip?

David Carlisle

@StephanLehmke oh do we have the code? I was just looking at the image

ℝaphink

@DavidCarlisle the code is what was in my last question that you answered

all entries are like that

David Carlisle

21:16

@ℝaphink yes will look back, I'm trying to see from the image what the intention is though, on the left the continuation dates are flush left but indent, but the second level list under D, are the continuation dates flush right? or do they just look that way ?

mbork

Hi all,

I have a small question.

ℝaphink

@DavidCarlisle the code in my .ist is

item_0 "\n \\item\\raggedright "
item_1 "\n \\subitem\\raggedleft "

mbork

Someone asked me today about running LaTeX from a Java application.

I know very little about Java, but I thought about NTS.

Might that help?

Is NTS downloadable anywhere?

David Carlisle

@mbork Unlikely:-)

mbork

I know it is more or less dead, but last time I heard about it,

I heard it's TeX-the-engine-compatible

Stephan Lehmke

21:18

@mbork Just issue a shell command.

David Carlisle

@ℝaphink I'd be tempted to make them all raggedleft (I think)

ℝaphink

ok

mbork

Well, I would think so, but he told something I did not understand;),

Stephan Lehmke

@mbork Don't even think about it.

mbork

the result was that he can't due to some security concerns (the application will run on a server).

@StephanLehmke about what?

David Carlisle

21:21

@mbork hard to say given that info, but there basically isn't a native Java TeX, so you either need to access TeX via a system call, or in some setups it might be easier to issue a http web request to TeX running on that or a different server.

mbork

So this basically means that there is no "native" way, right? (Except for pure formulae, for which I hear there are some solutions.) OK, it's a pity, but thanks anyway.

And I find it quite strange that I couldn't find NTS anywhere. After all, it worked, so someone might need it...

Joseph Wright

@mbork Perhaps extex.org

mbork

Thanks, I'll email him that!

Stephan Lehmke

@mbork Using NTS.

mbork

@StephanLehmke: why? I heard that it did work - slowly, but correctly. And the application here would be compiling short (1-2 pages) documents, and not too many of them, so the burden shouldn't be too much.

ℝaphink

21:33

@DavidCarlisle: that doesn't work when items have no page, only subitems

they get pushed to the right, which is wrong

Stephan Lehmke

@mbork Yes Java can be picky because of certification concerns or whatever. I think @PauloCereda is your man, he built ARARA which is Java AFAIK and can call TeX.

Maybe ARARA is the native Java tool you're looking for?

Here's an excerpt of a Java application calling TeX. I don't know Java at all, so I might be quoting the wrong part.

    public void run() throws PublishingException
    {
        try
        {
        	// Aufruf vorbereiten
        	counter = defaultCounterValue;
            String[] command = texCommandBuilder.buildCommand(configuration);
            ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder(command);
            builder.directory(temporaryDirectory);
            configureEnvironment(builder.environment());
            builder.redirectErrorStream(true);

            do
            {
            	int run = (defaultCounterValue - counter) + 1;

It seems like an incredible amount of work for calling an external process, but we've been discussing Java here before...

@mbork It's like trying to call ATARI TeX. Of course it will work, but I doubt anything productive will result in the end.

ℝaphink

@StephanLehmke, is this better?

user image

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink Looks more like an index to me. I'd still try three columns for style.

ℝaphink

three columns makes them too narrow, I tried

doesn't work because I have two levels in my keys

this will actually mean a patch for Nicola, since datetime didn't have short month names in French yet :-)

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink As I said, I would reduce the indent.

ℝaphink

21:41

ah right

how do I do that? :-)

Stephan Lehmke

The remark about voir still applies. And direction still looks too ragged to me.

ℝaphink

what about voir?

that it shouldn't wrap?

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink I don't know. I'm just giving destructive criticism here ;-)

ℝaphink

haha

no that's nice

the thing is, if voir doesn't go to the next line, it's too close to each other

now for specific entries, the index is not finished yet

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink Yep. See bataille spirituelle.

ℝaphink

21:44

I'm just setting up a bit before finishing tagging everything

so it will certainly look different once I have tagged everything :-)

Stephan Lehmke

@ℝaphink The whole voir entry can go to the next line, there just shouldn't be a line wrap inside.

ℝaphink

right

I kind of agree, but I don't see how I would do that

maybe with a ~ in my \see{} entry

Vivi

I just came here to vent about questions being closed, and the elitist feeling growing on the site. tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86943/…

ℝaphink

let's try that

@Vivi: nobody's elitist, you're just a newbie

Vivi

Is it necessary to say "this is basic knowledge" or "go read an introductory LaTeX book"? That was the guy's first question!!

ℝaphink

21:47

/me -> []

:-Ð

Stephan Lehmke

The definition of see seems to be \newcommand*\see[2]{\emph{\seename} #1}. Maybe an \mbox here would help.

ℝaphink

right

Vivi

Sure, but is this site not for newbies? Is it only for experts?

ℝaphink

@Vivi: I'm kidding :-)

Vivi

@Raphink I know :)

ℝaphink

21:48

but I agree

Vivi

But I am pissed off with this. Why does someone feel that it is necessary to say to a newbie asking his first question on the site that "this is basic knowledge"? Geez, we all had to learn LaTeX one day, we all have different backgrounds.

ℝaphink

user image

@StephanLehmke: done

\renewcommand*\see[2]{\mbox{\emph{\seename} #1}}

Joseph Wright

@Vivi True, but at the same time there is a need to recognise that some very basic questions are best answered with 'start with a LaTeX tutorial'. Needs to be put in the correct way, of course.

Stephan Lehmke

@Vivi I agree with everything you say, I just don't see the connection with the question? The OP's problem was solved, the question is still there and can be found by other newbies with the same problem.

Vivi

My problem is with how people are treating newbies. The guy knows he is a newbie. He is having difficulty. He got help, great, but why the need to tell him that this is a basic question? "Come here when you have learned enough not to ask stupid questions"??

Stephan Lehmke

21:52

@ℝaphink Looks better to me. Don't write too long see entries now ;-) But that's be bad style anyway ;-)

@Vivi Why are you reading that into the comments?

Vivi

Maybe the guy read the book and missed this. Maybe the book didn't have it. Maybe when you are first learning LaTeX everything seems like too much and you don't remember every single thing. The guy might have spent hours trying to figure out what's wrong, and he doesn't need anyone to tell him that this is a stupid question.

Stephan Lehmke

@Vivi We're also telling when something is a complicated question. For newbies, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.

Joseph Wright

@Vivi They didn't, at least as I read the comments

Vivi

I think some people are getting elitist. I think the newbie deserved better treatment. I don't think we need to tell anyone that their question is basic, nor to go read an introductory book.

I think the first two statements are mean and unnecessary. I think we need to be nicer with newbies.

*nicer to

ℝaphink

@StephanLehmke: thanks for your help :)

Stephan Lehmke

21:55

@Vivi The comment says it's a basic question. I'm not a native speaker, but I don't see a similarity with "stupid" at all. What would be a politically correct way of saying "basic knowledge"?

Vivi

There is no need to say it! No need to rub in his face that the thing he couldn't figure out is basic knowledge.

David Carlisle

@ℝaphink got to go...

ℝaphink

thanks to you @DavidCarlisle, too

Vivi

Anyway, I just wanted to vent. I need to do some work now :(

Stephan Lehmke

@Vivi Sorry, I can't continue this discussion without saying something rash...

1 hour later…

Paulo Cereda

23:14

@mbork: If you don't need something too complicated, I think ProcessBuilder will help (take a look at the code @StephanLehmke posted, it's a nice intro). The security restrictions Java imposes might be annoying if you try to trigger subshells, but overall it's quite doable. Just remember that it's advisable to use non-interactive commands. :)

@Vivi: I can vouch for Clemens, he's very friendly and kind in helping people here. I think we just got some noise in the signal when translating sentences from our mother tongue to English (it happens to me all the time). I can understand your reasoning and agree that we need to be 100% newbie-friendly, but I'm sure that in this case it was some divergent interpretations. :)

@percusse: sorting algorithm? Ducksort! :)

mbork

23:41

@PauloCereda: thanks a lot. As I said, I know next to nothing about Java, but I emailed the link to this discussion to the guy who asked me the question.

Alan Munn

@JosephWright @Vivi I agree with Vivi here on this particular question. If the question is "How do I make an unnumbered chapter?" then maybe a gentle pointer to a LaTeX introduction is an appropriate response, but in this case the person has done something wrong and doesn't understand what. The introduction isn't going to solve that problem. I honestly think that the question should be reopened and @ArTourter's comment turned into an answer. I don't see how this is too localized at all.

Paulo Cereda

@mbork Cool. :) I wrote arara in Java and I opted for a nice library from the Apache Commons project named Exec. It might also be worth a try. :)

Alan Munn

..continued And since there's been no actual duplicate proposed, having a question like this (which included a nice minimal example) seems quite useful and far from localized. We have plenty of questions in which people made simple errors that they might have caught by reading the documentation, and these aren't closed as too localized.

Paulo Cereda

@AlanMunn: Place your bet here, please: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/… :)

Alan Munn

@PauloCereda I'm with @DavidCarlisle I don't really need the book, so I'll let others add their bets.

Paulo Cereda

23:49

@AlanMunn C'mon, it will be fun. :) There's a lot numbers yet to pick. :)

And don't forget:

user image

:P

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda There's even more numbers if you ignore the petty restriction to a finite range.

Stephan Lehmke

@AlanMunn It is interesting of you to say that. Am I interpreting correctly that you find it overly harsh on a newbie to say that the function of \chapter* is basic knowledge, but find it quite OK to tell the people spending their private time here to help that you're "pissed off with this"? No need to relativize at all?

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle I think we should use some sort of Russian roulette:

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "Click"

Alan Munn

@StephanLehmke I'm agreeing with the "I don't think this should be closed" not the "I'm pissed off part." Vivi might not be approaching the issue in the most delicate manner, but the issue about what criteria we use to close questions is real.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda is that one of the standard arara rules?

Paulo Cereda

23:55

@DavidCarlisle Not yet. I could add it to the official rule set. :)

Ice Box

@PauloCereda Hi can you just give me some advice?

Paulo Cereda

@IceBox 'ello! Me? I'm here for the ducks. :)

Fire away, buddy. :)

Ice Box

@PauloCereda Can i?

Stephan Lehmke

@AlanMunn It's only a bit demotivating that 100% expert-friendliness seems to be quite optional.

Paulo Cereda

@IceBox Sure! :)

David Carlisle

23:58

@IceBox If he gives you the advice he gave me that involves the letters r m - r f and /, don't follow it.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Hey!

Alan Munn

@StephanLehmke I think there's a difference between "How do I do <something simple>?" and "Why does <something simple> not behave the way I expect?". The former might be ok to respond with a gentle RTFM, but the latter less so.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle: don't complain, you use Windows. :P

Ice Box

@PauloCereda I am at the starting of my career and currently workinbg as an android developer in a company but a bigger company is offerring me a Quality engineer job (Testing) with a larger package.So I am in a big confusion. What should i do?

Stephan Lehmke

@AlanMunn Maybe you could go back to the question for once and reread all the comments and try to pick the most unfriendly one.

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