TeX, LaTeX and Friends - 2013-03-18 (page 1 of 2)

12:00 AM

@cmhughes Actually, it's a two-step process: first, arara will look for a configuration file; if found, it looks for a collection of paths; if present, these paths are added in order of priority. :)

cmhughes

@PauloCereda oh, ok. so arara does the searching....

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes Yes. :) I think using kpsewhich from Java would add an inconvenient overhead. :(

egreg

@KannappanSampath You can go as high as U+FFFF with that notation: \9377\377, so not all math characters are supported.

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Okular shows the ZZ too... I use no others.

cmhughes

@PauloCereda ok, thanks a lot that helps! I've modularized indent.plx so need to update the path for perl. I've done it fine on my machine (it's only two lines) - do you think I should build that into the installation?

Kannappan Sampath

12:03 AM

@egreg Oops, dear! Let me wrap my head around this...

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes You mean updating the path? :)

cmhughes

@PauloCereda sorry :) yes, indeed, updating the path :)

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes Ah I think it's worth a shot. :)

cmhughes

@PauloCereda ok, thanks a lot, I'll look into it :) thanks a bunch!

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes: feel free to send me an email too. :)

@cmhughes: we could work on a arara rule too. :)

cmhughes

12:07 AM

@PauloCereda oh cool, thanks! I might well take you up on that!

@PauloCereda yes, yes, yes! Definitely! That's very high on the list of priorities, the arara tool should give very easy access to indent.plx, much easier than the command line (for Windows users)

@PauloCereda I believe I found the answer....

9

Q: How can my Perl script find its module in the same directory?

I recently wrote a new Perl script to kill processes based on either process name / user name and extended it using Classes so that I could reuse the process code in other programs. My current layout is - /home/mutew/src/prod/pskill <-- Perl script /home/mutew/src/prod/Process.pm <...

next on the list: setting options, next after that, arara :)

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes Yay!

cmhughes

@PauloCereda can't wait- it's going to be so beautiful to have the two things working together :) (provided indent.plx doesn't chew up any files)

Paulo Cereda

@cmhughes :)

David Carlisle

12:49 AM

@egreg according to 7.9.2.2 of wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/… you can use unicode (utf-16) rather than the original pdfdocencoding if the string starts with a byte order mark, so you should be able to get above xFFFF by using the surrogate pair system of utf16 ie using two 16bit slots to represent the character. Whether the font used in the GUI to display the bookmarks has support for any given character is another quesrion

@KannappanSampath ^^

egreg

@DavidCarlisle The main problem is persuading LaTeX to provide the right code, I guess.

David Carlisle

@egreg Or you could just use xetex and enter it that way:-)

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle I haven't followed that one bit. :( I'll digest it slowly.

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Right. But it's a nice exercise for Heiko doing it for pdflatex. :)

David Carlisle

@egreg good thing Sebastian and I retired from that.

Lover of Structure

1:48 AM

@tohecz Maybe what I'm doing is different: I leave the "Find what:" field empty and specify a style such as "Italic" via "More -> Find: Format -> Font... -> Font style". You can then either do "Find Next" or "Find in -> Main Document" (the latter will highlight all occurrences of such-styled text). Do let me know if this doesn't work in some cases.

gekkostate

2:27 AM

Hey guys, I have a quick question. For some reason, my ToC is numbered. The pages before and after it, e.g. acknowledgements are not. What could be the problem?

and it does not get fixed by thispagestyle{empty}

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate You mean the pages are not numbered?

On what page does the first numbered page start?

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel I mean they are. The ToC pages are numbered with roman numerals

@Qrrbrbirlbel The first page starts on (i) which it should

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Ah, and you do not want the ToC to be numbered?

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel Should they be numbered?

@Qrrbrbirlbel I am not familiar with the conventions

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Why shouldn’t they be?

gekkostate

2:33 AM

@Qrrbrbirlbel I don't know. It's slightly odd that the ToC which is the reference point is numbered. Where else are you going to go to find the ToC other than the ToC? What's the point to self referencing?

@Qrrbrbirlbel I mean, if that's the convention then that's fine but it didn't make intuitive sense to me, so I thought that LaTeX maybe wrong

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Maybe I'm still not having it right. What is your problem? That the ToC has page numbers or that itself appears in the ToC?

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel that itself appears on the ToC so I have an entry in the ToC that says ToC

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Okay, that is actually very unusual for LaTeX classes I know. Which one are you using?

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel I'm using the memoir class and I'm using \tableofcontents

Qrrbrbirlbel

Does it happen in \documentclass{memoir}\begin{document}\tableofcontents\chapter{Q}\end{document}‌?

@Qrrbrbirlbel Well it does, then it’s apparently memoir’s default behaviour. I’m not accustomed with memoir so you will need to check the manual.

gekkostate

2:39 AM

@Qrrbrbirlbel That is how my document is structured, first it has title page then it has copyright and then it has \tableofcontents

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Maybe there’s an option.

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel I will have to look into the manual, maybe there is some answer there

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate First result for [memoir] toc:

15

Q: How to remove the self-reference of the ToC from the ToC?

I'm having a very weird problem. The following example should illustrate it quite right. \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{memoir} \begin{document} \frontmatter \tableofcontents \clearpage \mainmatter \chapter{Chapter 1} \end{document} I've compiled it with xelatex but on the table of con...

table-of-contents memoir

@gekkostate I guess \tableofcontents* is what you are looking for.

gekkostate

@Qrrbrbirlbel Thanks a lot, it's working!

Qrrbrbirlbel

@gekkostate Sometimes the Stackexchange search does help.

gekkostate

2:55 AM

@Qrrbrbirlbel Okay, I will search there first next time :)

leo

5:31 AM

@Paulo Cereda hello! :) Is is the Einstein's photo in here for real?

texenthusiast

9:03 AM

@Jake Hi

Jake

9:17 AM

@texenthusiast Hello

texenthusiast

9:31 AM

@Jake sorry i am just getting my feet wet in pgf

texenthusiast

10:01 AM

@JosephWright Why is this TikZ Library for Structural Analysis not on ctan ?

Paulo Cereda

@leo Hello! :) No, it's fake. :)

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast It's up to authors to submit to CTAN

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright: Hello! If you have some spare time today, can I poke you in Skype?

:)

texenthusiast

@JosephWright ok :)

@JosephWright a quick question: is it mandatory to finish all testing phases alpha,beta and RC before uploading to ctan.org

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast No: it's entirely up to you what to upload

@texenthusiast Getting testing done is very hard: I have one person who tests siunitx pre-release code

(other than me, of course)

texenthusiast

10:18 AM

@JosephWright only negative side of ctan.org hosting is bundling it as per its protocol and upload delays (1-3 days) to reach users

Paulo Cereda

@texenthusiast Actually this is not CTAN's fault, but the update script from every mirror.

If I'm in a hurry to get an update, I force my tlmgr to fetch Dante or Cambridge instead of a Brazilian mirror. :)

David Carlisle

@texenthusiast It also provides greater exposure to the code which the author doesn't always want. Lots of people (including latex3 project) develop code off ctan, even if it is on a public server and then only push to ctan when it is "ready". Sometimes it's hard to convince yourself that things are "ready enough" for ctan.

texenthusiast

@PauloCereda i am not blaming just from author side perspective. Inspite of all hurdles i love all phases of packages. I see ctan as a gaint Oracle.

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast It doesn't actually take that long: the announcements are deliberately delayed

texenthusiast

yes i agree

one day i will see myself in ctan search to be proud of giving back

tohecz

10:52 AM

@LoverofStructure You probably speak about some new expensive version of MSO that I cannot afford

Karl's students

11:11 AM

There are a large number of packages (plus some classes) uploaded and updated in ctan (other mirrors as well). How do ctan maintainers make sure the uploaded stuffs clean from malicious codes? Do they use a sophisticated script (like anti virus probably use) to parse the codes to check the cleanness?

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents I don't believe they parse or run the codes at all (certainly they never used to when ctan was set up) I'm out of the loop these days.

tohecz

@Karl'sstudents Considering TeX code, no. Considering java/C++/binaries, I don't know

Paulo Cereda

@Karl'sstudents I believe there's no action from CTAN mainly because it's "only" a repository. I think things get serious when the code goes from CTAN to a TeX distro. E.g, arara has both the binary and the source code available when deployed to TeX Live.

I think it's an interesting question, we could ask Karl, Robin or Rainer later on. :)

Karl's students

11:37 AM

@PauloCereda Then we should update from TeX distro (if they do security check) instead of from CTAN directly. :-)

Paulo Cereda

11:48 AM

@Karl'sstudents Actually, this happens. :)

A TeX distro fetches stuff from CTAN. :)

Karl's students

@PauloCereda But does the distro do security check? :-)

Paulo Cereda

@Karl'sstudents ooh that's a difficult question. :) We need to ask someone. :)

Joseph Wright

12:06 PM

@Karl'sstudents No

@Karl'sstudents Security checking is a massively complex task, and while there are some theoretical things one could do in TeX, it's extremely unlikely

Dominic Michaelis

12:40 PM

hi

@josephwright if you need some beta testers for latex 3 i would be glad to help, although i can't programm and i only use latex for about a year, but if i can help let me know

Paulo Cereda

1:13 PM

5

A: How do CTAN maintainers make sure all the uploaded packages and classess in CTAN are free of malicious code?

we don't apply any checks, since we know of no published "automatic" checks we could apply. most things submitted nowadays are simply too big for a visual check (such as i used to apply in the '90s when i first worked on ctan). one hopes that people won't run anything with "standard" overwritin...

Robin? :)

Gotta love the Latin saying. :)

Kannappan Sampath

@Paulo Do you know how do we change between different tabs on a terminal in ubuntu... I am using the default terminal...

egreg

@PauloCereda Seems very likely.

tohecz

@KannappanSampath /cough @Paulo uses Fedora /cough

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda wasteofspace is R yes.

Paulo Cereda

@KannappanSampath Alternating tabs? CTRL + Page Up or CTRL + Page Down

Kannappan Sampath

1:20 PM

@tohecz I am sure Paulo has a good idea about ubuntu.

tohecz

@KannappanSampath I know, it was somehow meant as a joke ;)

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz I try to believe Ubuntu has at least something in common with good distros. :P

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle A curious user name for someone who is doing a great job.

@PauloCereda Oh Cool!! I did not guess!

I was thinking of <TAB> and all...

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda like the distro from Seattle that I use?

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle I thought you were running Windows on top of emacs, and not the other way around. :)

Kannappan Sampath

1:24 PM

@DavidCarlisle universaldistro.com ?? :)

Paulo Cereda

Speaking of Windows, I've been trying Windows 8 for a couple of weeks in one of my machines. It's terribly awful.

2

At least for me. I can't deal with that Metro thingy.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda tempting, on the first machine I had at home I had the choice of running emacs or windows (as running emacs and windows meant you couldn't actually do anything) have to say it ran with emacs more often than windows:-)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh! :)

You are my hero.

Kannappan Sampath

Now an emacs question, how do I move through the results of a(n reverse) I-search...? @David @egreg will be able to help me here.... :)

David Carlisle

@KannappanSampath if doing it interactively you normally use an incremental search (C-s or C-r) and just repeat (C-s) to move to the next match

Kannappan Sampath

1:39 PM

@DavidCarlisle Okay got it! But, this is the only way I have been using Emacs. What would be the other ways -- "non-interactive"...?

Thank you for the help!

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda Give it a couple of years and linux desktops will look just like windows 8. that's what happened when win XP introduced the start menu and toolbar instead of the windows 3 icons all over the screen, everyone said it was horrible but you start up linux these days and the desktop layout isn't so different.

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle I fear the day when linux looks like MacOSX for instance... :/

David Carlisle

@KannappanSampath vvv

(while (re-search-forward a nil 1)
 (replace-match b t)
...

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, I should write this on the Scratch Buffer?

topskip

@tohecz that would be the day I'd switch to Linux :)

David Carlisle

1:51 PM

@KannappanSampath (re-search-forward /replace-match is _much_ faster and memory efficient that C-S or a query search replace as it is an atomic step, if you undo it it undoes the whole lot whereas the interactive versions maintain the undo history on each change

Kannappan Sampath

I am getting a lot of questions now...

David Carlisle

@KannappanSampath scratch buffer or an emacs lisp file of at the prompt on M-:

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Oh... I'll try after this documentation madness is over.

tohecz

@topskip I believe you can get one of those alternative DE that have this crazy design (with window banners not being window banners, and main menu not being main menu)

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Ah! makes so much sense.

David Carlisle

1:55 PM

@KannappanSampath Of course the disadvantage with it being an atomic step is that it quickly and silently trashes your file if you get the regex wrong... (source control systems have been known to save the day:-)

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Should not be a problem for "experts" but even monkeys fall off a tree... (or even Homer nods, as they say in English...)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Indeed. :)

OMG Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth?

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!

@tohecz You wish. Then Linux would start to work properly. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda Properly? Like WiFi not being able to connect most time?

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz I've never had a Mac with a non working Wi-Fi. :)

tohecz

@PauloCereda I had one, and connecting to eduroam was a true hell :-/ I uncheck "login automatically", delete the username and password in AirPort, restart it, and I see, I'm connected, but with self-assigned IP because "authorization failed".

Computer that tries to be more clever than me is a bad computer.

Karl's students

2:07 PM

Which is your learning style? www2.yk.psu.edu/learncenter/acskills/learnstl.html

tohecz

@Karl'sstudents whose?

Karl's students

@tohecz Not me for sure!

Kannappan Sampath

2:20 PM

My feeling now: vi has good coloring scheme for Pyx files. And, emacs, plain silly does not realise that Pyx is "like" Python...

Paulo Cereda

LOL this made my day: github.com/DaveRandom/cloud-to-butt-mozilla

David Carlisle

@KannappanSampath ` (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.pyx\\'" . python-mode))`

Karl's students

3:09 PM

Which is correct? Ms. Barbara Beeton or Mrs. Barbara Beeton?

egreg

@Karl'sstudents barbara beeton? :)

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents whichever she prefers. I was going to say bnb is usually enough:-)

Karl's students

@egreg which is correct? ms. barbara beeton or mrs. barbara beeton?

Rico

hi guys =)

Karl's students

i meant which prefix is suitable for her? ms. or mrs. ?

David Carlisle

3:12 PM

@Karl'sstudents whichever she prefers, there is no way of knowing what title people prefer to use without asking them. (I've never seen her name used with a title:-)

Rico

what do you think, should i wirte all proper names emphasized ?

Karl's students

@DavidCarlisle At least you might know or met her and talked about her marriage status. :D

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents well I think she's married but the whole point of Ms is that it applies to married or not married to avoid the Mrs/Miss distinction. but some people don't like it and prefer a traditional title or no title at all (I never use a title if I can avoid using one)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Sir David Carlisle, of the emacs new order. :)

Karl's students

@DavidCarlisle OK. One more question: For divorced women, which one should be used? Mrs. or Miss?

tohecz

3:17 PM

@Karl'sstudents AFAIK, Miss->Mrs graduation is irreversible

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents you have to ask each one:-) Miss usually (or Mrs again, depends why they got divorced:-) Or perhaps it's Dr.

Karl's students

@DavidCarlisle OK. Thank you!

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents You can't end this discussion (I don't mean you may not stop, I mean you should stop as it can have no resolution:-) I know several married women who keep their maiden name and use the title Miss. There basically are not any rules.

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle Yeah, it is so nowadays. It used not to couple decades ago. In a traditional Czech book of etiquette from 1920s, every woman older than 20 was supposed Mrs. unless she asked not to be called so.

David Carlisle

@tohecz yes same in the UK (and usually with their husband's first name) so my wife would be Mrs David Carlisle but that form is pretty much lost now for obvious reasons

tohecz

3:25 PM

@DavidCarlisle not the case in Czech Rep.: My dad is Hejda and my mom is Hejdová :)

David Carlisle

@tohecz names are tricky:-)

tohecz

@DavidCarlisle indeed. Your wife would be Carlisleová or Carlislová in Czech.

Paulo Cereda

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is not listening to any songs at the moment.

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: "Paulo is listening to Take five, from Dave Brubeck"

woohoo!

Karl's students

English honorifics

In the English language an English honorific is a title prefixing a person's name, e.g.: Miss, Ms, Mr, Sir, Mrs, Dr, Lady or Lord. They are not necessarily titles or positions that can appear without the person's name, as in the President, the Earl. There are many forms of honorifics that are used when addressing the members of the nobility, clergy, or royalty, mostly in countries that are monarchies. These include "Your Majesty" and "Your Highness", which are often used when speaking with royalty, or "My lord/lady" to address a peer other than a Duke, who is referred to as "Your Grace"....

texenthusiast

@DavidCarlisle Are you a Professor ?

Paulo Cereda

3:31 PM

!!/song

David Carlisle

@texenthusiast No (you really have to work at a university for that) my formal title is supposed to be Dr (because I have a phd) but I almost never use it because you have to forever explain that you are not a medical doctor, and on the web it's simpler just to be David Carlisle a title of any sort seems rather pointless.

Paulo Cereda

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to I saved the world today, from Eurythmics.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda I think @egreg is going to be disappointed with your choices

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Indeed. :)

We have similar tastes, though.

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Bring your daughter to the slaughter, from Iron Maiden.

2

@DavidCarlisle: ^^

texenthusiast

@DavidCarlisle ha ha, its a good one. some people even now ask doctor means which specialisation veterinary or heart . I say i am working towards a doctorate.

@PauloCereda you are teaching bot everything oneday it will start teaching everyone

why TeX was written in TeX not in any other language ?

Joseph Wright

3:42 PM

@texenthusiast It's written in Pascal

texenthusiast

oh

i was wondering is it possible to add a line numbers in code section of the Question while posting ? so as to comment back citing the 22nd line number } is missing

David Carlisle

@texenthusiast only by putting them in the code explicitly (I think) but that would be bad as then they would be in the way if anyone pastes the code to try running it. (unless you number on the right, as comments)

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast Remember Knuth wrote this in the 1970s: the language choice at the time was different to today

texenthusiast

@JosephWright Yes i can see. i heard in CS dept here many prof recommend the Art of Programming book by Knuth for any codestuff.

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast It's a true classic

texenthusiast

3:56 PM

@DavidCarlisle yes, right. may be @cmhughes indent.plx add line number and remove when required

@JosephWright i sometimes don't see the chatbox window on the main TeX.SX. is it for me only ?

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast You mean on the right-hand side?

texenthusiast

@JosephWright Yes

@JosephWright I have one idea for questions posted here: if its implemented, A single liner comment is enough to resolve them.

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast The 'ad' for chat is replaced by other ads in the same space: this is by design. The reliable link for chat is at the top of the main page

texenthusiast

ok

Paulo Cereda

@texenthusiast :)

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Revelations, from Iron Maiden.

texenthusiast

4:07 PM

@JosephWright Idea: Is it possible to include OP question template like , OS: ?, TeXdistro:? TeX-IDE: ? All updated: ?

@PauloCereda :)

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast We don't control the editing box, that's set by the network and I think very unlikely to be customised

texenthusiast

@JosephWright ya may be somewhere in Title " whats your TeX LaTeX related typsetting question be specific: Include OS and TeXdistro also "

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast Depends on the problem, though: it's not always relevant, and we have enough trouble with people saying 'I'm using editor X'

texenthusiast

@JosephWright yes we have no control, my idea was to resolve most of the questions easily instead of waiting for the OP reply that it was MacTeX

@JosephWright No editor you are absolutely right i agree

@JosephWright because many people here work on either one OS except @PauloCereda (i may not aware of others) at any single time to test

Joseph Wright

@texenthusiast I use everything too :-)

texenthusiast

4:17 PM

ok just blank idea, nothing great, will post in meta in evening

Qrrbrbirlbel

@texenthusiast The official FAQ and other related “FAQ” questions on meta discuss the fact that you should update your distro and give a good MWE and how to ask a good question. Maybe a template would help to follow these guidelines …

texenthusiast

@Qrrbrbirlbel yes newcomers don't even know what meta was. I was one of them.

because i was not given the hyperlink when i posted my first question

Qrrbrbirlbel

@texenthusiast Not to judge, but in my first questions on the site I have included a MWE and in the very first one even a minimized \filelist, and I have chosen the appropriate tags (I hope), haven’t posted a “Thank you” answer or misformatted my code.

On the other hand, I haven’t even got a “Welcome to TeX.sx!” ;(

Jake

@Qrrbrbirlbel Welcome to TeX.sx!

Qrrbrbirlbel

@Jake Finally! ;)

Jake

4:29 PM

Hehe

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I was lecturing, so I heard nothing. Happily. :) Now a symphony by Haydn is being played.

texenthusiast

@Qrrbrbirlbel i make sure i don't miss any welcome to tex.sx meta links for newcomers. ofcourse i have no complaints. it was all because of tex.sx i could do my phd thesis , lot of acknowledgements. I am sure lot of students would dedicate their latex work to tex.sx

Qrrbrbirlbel

@texenthusiast What I’m saying is: I tried to fit in.

Paulo Cereda

@Qrrbrbirlbel Welcome to ~~the jungle~~ TeX.sx.

6

Oh wait, wrong line.

percusse

@PauloCereda We got fun and sgame

Paulo Cereda

4:34 PM

@percusse ooh!

percusse

no typo. that's an actual tag much to my surprise

Paulo Cereda

!!/help

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Good afternoon! I'm Psmith, the friendly TeX bot - the p in my name is silent, as in pshrimp. I'm here as a companion to our fellow users in the typographic land. As you probably noticed, I always reply under Paulo's account, but do not despair, I say, my replies are always preceded by my own name. Enjoy your stay at TeX.sx! If you need any help, just ask our chat residents. Cheerio!

@egreg Speaking of songs, we have a new command for Psmith!

!!/help song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: According to my book, song no info is available. Oops.

d'oh :)

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to It's a raggy waltz, from Dave Brubeck.

percusse

►

Paulo Cereda

@percusse Damn you Paul! :)

Kannappan Sampath

@DavidCarlisle Did not notice that reply! Will do, thank you!

percusse

4:38 PM

!!/fencing

Paulo Cereda

@percusse I turned him off. :)

percusse

@PauloCereda It deserved it

Paulo Cereda

But you know, nothing happens in the fencing world. :P

David Carlisle

!!/formulaone

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Psmith, the TeX bot: I'm deeply sorry, old chap, but the command formulaone does not exist.

David Carlisle

4:41 PM

@percusse Just stick to cricket:-)

percusse

@DavidCarlisle Is that a pun? :)

Does anyone know how the number of available flag and close votes are determined? It looks like they've been increased recently.

egreg

@percusse I have 25 closing votes and 100 flags; the number depends on your reputation, but not beyond those limits.

percusse

@egreg Ah thanks, I have 25/60. So it's only the flags that change.

Karl's students

4:56 PM

Is there a package in TikZ or PSTricks that provides us with a macro to find the center of mass of a closed, arbitrary curve?

I meant the center of mass of a lamina bounded by a closed, arbitrary curve.

Werner

!!/cricket

percusse

@Karl'sstudents Not with TikZ. But probably PSTricks can with some ridiculous numerical integral

Kannappan Sampath

I think we have begun to ask too much from a typesetting system.

percusse

Whose brilliant idea was to include PDF.js as the default?

Karl's students

5:28 PM

Why does using filecontents (with writing capability) not require us to use -shell-escape to be passed to the compiler?

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents TeX can write files (otherwise wouldn't be able to do aux file) shell escape/write18 allows it to run programs

@Karl'sstudents There is a separate setting for file reading.writing in your texmf.cnf:

% Allow TeX \openin, \openout, or \input on filenames starting with `.'
% (e.g., .rhosts) or outside the current tree (e.g., /etc/passwd)?
% a (any)        : any file can be opened.
% r (restricted) : disallow opening "dotfiles".
% p (paranoid)   : as `r' and disallow going to parent directories, and
%                  restrict absolute paths to be under $TEXMFOUTPUT.
openout_any = p
openin_any = a

Karl's students

@DavidCarlisle So we can write to an external file with \immediate\write18 without -shell-escape enabled? (i haven't tested it yet)

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents any number except 18 (or at least best to avoid 18) if shell escape is disabled it will work as normal but if it is enabled it changes meaning to execute the command rather than write to a file. But you shouldn't use explicit number anyway allocate a stream with \newwrite

egreg

@Karl'sstudents A program without output capabilities is not very useful, is it? With the normal setting you're only allowed to write files in the same directory as the main file or below it. Writing in directories specified with an absolute path is disabled. There are 16 output streams, but before writing they must be opened and it's the \openout command that checks if writing on that file is possible.

David Carlisle

@Karl'sstudents @egreg is trying to hint that 18 is in fact bigger than 16 and so my comment above has to be read with care if it is to be taken as true.

Karl's students

5:43 PM

@egreg What is the reason to grant access to the sub directory (as opposed to the parents) of the current working directory in which the TeX input file exist?

egreg

@Karl'sstudents You may have \include{chapters/chapter1}, where the chapter1.aux file needs to be in the subdirectory.

Joseph Wright

@Karl'sstudents It's reasonable to assume that each document can be 'isolated' in a directory, so going 'down' is OK but going 'up' is not

Karl's students

@egreg Sorry. I don't get the idea, why the auxiliary files needs to be created per a partial .tex file?

egreg

@Karl'sstudents Because this is how \include works; how could it do differently?

Joseph Wright

@Karl'sstudents When you use \include, you need separate .aux files to support \includeonly

Karl's students

5:51 PM

@JosephWright In my mental model, a single auxiliary file can accommodate the whole referencing information. :D

Joseph Wright

@Karl'sstudents It can, but not if you want to do a partial compilation

Karl's students

Is there another purpose of -shell-escape except for working with \write18?

Or -shell-escape and \write18 is the only possible pair?

Peter Grill

Is this some sort of syntax that I am not aware of, or are these loading two different packages: \usepackage[savepos]{zref} and \usepackage{zref-savepos}.

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot: my new coat arrived, it's a beauty! :) Thanks for the advice, I hope I can look like an English with it. :)

Joseph Wright

@Karl'sstudents -shell-escape is for making use of \write18

@Karl'sstudents It's a security measure to allow control

Karl's students

5:59 PM

@JosephWright OK. I though there is another untold purpose for it.

Peter Grill

Hmmm.. Seems I can't delete my earlier comment. I see two different .sty files listed in the texmf-dist/tex/latex/oberdiek, so two different packages then...

Joseph Wright

@PeterGrill There are lots in there

Peter Grill

@JosephWright Yep. It was in response to my question a few comments earlier. I meant I see zref.sty and zref-savepos.sty so seems as if they are two different packages.

Karl's students

@PeterGrill What is the maximum length allowed for a package/class name? The latter package seems to break the convention of 8.3.

Peter Grill

@Karl'sstudents I dunno. I have not written any packages.. Not quite there in my level of TeXpertise.

@JosephWright Looks like zref-savepos.sty is a subset of zref.sty.

Paulo Cereda

6:15 PM

!!/eightball Are you running?

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: let's wait for David to finish xor first.

^^

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is not listening to any songs at the moment.

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Help, from The Beatles.

@percusse: ^^

@percusse: sir, it seems @egreg is reaching us in the voting race. :)

Matthew Leingang

@Karl'sstudents 8.3 was the convention when it was the maximum for popular operating systems. Now OSs are more flexible so it isn't as necessary. Beamer's and PGF's subfiles cavalierly defy the convention.

Gonzalo Medina

It's somehow common in mathematics textbooks to use boldface to highlight definitions of terms; however, this increases the page "greyness" (I hope this is the right word). Would using italics be a sensible alternative? Are there any other options?

Paulo Cereda

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Dani California, from Red Hot Chili Peppers.

!!/translate from en to es Hello world!

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: ¡Hola mundo!

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina I always use italics or marginpars. Needed to say, I prefer slanted text for theorems over italics.

Gonzalo Medina

!!/basketball

tohecz

6:20 PM

!!/translate from cz to en scvrnkls

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina **Psmith, the TeX bot:** I'm deeply sorry, old chap, but the command `basketball` does not exist.
@tohecz **Psmith, the TeX bot:** Something bad happened, I blame the API.

@tohecz: the API is humble, there's no CZ. :(

!!/fencing

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last fencing results:

- Oh dear, nothing happened so far.

Our fencing expert Alan might explain these results later on.

As expected.

tohecz

@PauloCereda I could make an expert as well, given these results :p

Paulo Cereda

@tohecz LOL

Matthew Leingang

@Gonzalo What is wrong with page "greyness"? I like to be able to skim pages to look for the definition of a term; bold makes it much easier to do that.

Paulo Cereda

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Baker Street, from Gerry Rafferty.

Karl's students

6:24 PM

@MatthewLeingang OK. Then I think it is better to choose longer descriptive names for the new packages and adopt a taxonomic name such as <category>-<subcategory>-<...>. Some of the existing old packages seems to be named counter intuitively.

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz I see. I am thinking about using upright font for text in the body of theorems (and perhaps using small caps for the titles), and italics for definitions of terms (using marginal notes is not very common here).

@MatthewLeingang Yes, it's easier, but if there are many definitions in a row, the aspect can be really poor. Using italics should be enough to highlight the defined terms.

Matthew Leingang

It's true that packages could have better names if they had not been sticking the convention at the time. But renaming old packages would break millions of latex files.

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda still no basket in Psmith?

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Yay! :-)

Paulo Cereda

@GonzaloMedina Not at the moment. :) Gimme a basketball RSS and I'll make it happen. :)

Gonzalo Medina

6:30 PM

@PauloCereda nba.com/rss for example.

Karl's students

@MatthewLeingang Rather than renaming them, aliasing should be a better choice.

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina Considering theorems, the problem is that you need to mark where the theorem ends; there're two common ways to do that: italics/slanted, qed-like symbol.

Paulo Cereda

!!/help basketball

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: According to my book, basketball displays basketball news.

!!/basketball

Joseph Wright

1

Q: how to control appearance of code blocks?

I use Emacs org-mode and don't edit TeX directly. Is there a way for me to instruct xelatex on how to interpret my org-mode code blocks? I'd like all my code blocks to appear as block quotes, i.e. with line wrapping, not in a fixed width font, and with left and right indents exactly like block ...

xetex emacs sourcecode code org-mode

Migrate?

Paulo Cereda

Oh boy, I hate malformed RSS feeds.

Gonzalo Medina

6:38 PM

@tohecz Yes. I am thinking about using some end-mark (qed-symbol) to mark the end of proofs.

Paulo Cereda

!!/song

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: Paulo is listening to Smiley faces, from Gnarls Barkley.

Joseph Wright

2

Q: Convert PDF figures to PS figures without pixelation

I have a tex document (called foo.tex) that includes several PDF figures. I need to generate a PostScript version as well as a PDF version of the final document. Running pdflatex foo.tex works just fine and outputs a normal foo.pdf file. However, when I run pdf2ps foo.pdf, most of the pages are f...

pdf conversion ghostscript ps

Also looks off-topic: thoughts?

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina and no marking for the end of theorem?

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz Do you mean a mark for the end of the theorem body itself?

tohecz

yes. What if you write something like:

As a simple consequence of the above Lemmas, we have the following:

THEOREM. Frst theorem par

Second theorm par

Now, we would like to discuss...

Paulo Cereda

6:43 PM

!!/basketball

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last basketball results:

- Notebook: Lakers 113, Kings 102
- Notebook: Hawks 105, Nets 93
- Notebook: Wolves 97, Hornets 95
- Notebook: Thunder 107, Mavericks 101
- Notebook: Warriors 108, Rockets 78
- Kobe rests ankle, not in Lakers' starting lineup
- McHale caught up in Heat's streak
- Cuban disappointed with way Fisher left Mavericks
- Notebook: Clippers 93, Knicks 80
- Anthony, Chandler out for Knicks vs Clippers

Our basketball experts Gonzalo and egreg might explain these results later on.

@GonzaloMedina: ^^

tohecz

@Gon and how do you know what exactly is the theorem statement?

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz There's some little extra vertical space before and after the body (which, I accept might be confusing if a page break occur), but this extra vertical spacing marks where the theorem statement is.

@PauloCereda Yay!

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina Seeing my completely messy theorems with lots of displaymath, I know that extra vertical space is not enough for me ;)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle: due to peer pressure, other less known sports are being incorporated into Psmith.

!!/cricket

Psmith, the TeX bot, in fixed font mode: Let's take a look at the last cricket results:

- Sri Lanka 346/10  v Bangladesh 240/10 &  158/4 *
- Canada 273/6 * v Kenya
- United Arab Emirates 165/10  v Ireland 169/5 *

Our cricket expert David might explain these results later on.

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz hehe... perhaps I will reconsider this, and use some font alteration (italics) for the body.

David Carlisle

6:49 PM

@PauloCereda I may have to ask you about some of these eightball replies when you do your interview

6

Paulo Cereda

!!/eightball Is it my turn for the interview?

@PauloCereda Psmith, the TeX bot: The great 8-ball says: youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

:)

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina I don't want to push you into something you don't like, I'm just well-known buttinski (I hope I got the right word for that)

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz No, you're not pushing me... I am just studying some alternatives, and since boldface seems to be a standard I am consulting to gather different opinions. Buttinski? What's that?

tohecz

@GonzaloMedina thefreedictionary.com/buttinski

For its origin, see urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Buttinski

Gonzalo Medina

@tohecz So, if I decide to use italics and things go wrong, you'll be executed? ;-)

tohecz

6:59 PM

@GonzaloMedina hopefully not! :D

(hmmmm we have SEIA, we could have SEPE, too)

topskip

7:30 PM

Crazy things happen in the world

gkoberger.github.com/stacksort?

3

StackSort connects to StackOverflow, searches for 'sort a list', and downloads and runs code snippets until the list is sorted.

leo

change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running

Google is about to close GReader :-(

topskip

@leo Probably they weren't able to put enough ads in there

Joseph Wright

@topskip Yes, I'd guess

topskip

I wonder when they abandon my currently favorite language 'Go'.

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright I have interesting news! :)

Joseph Wright

7:44 PM

@PauloCereda Yes?

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright L3-testing related. :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda Cool

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Thanks for the test, BTW. :)

Joseph Wright

@PauloCereda No problem

Karl's students

7:59 PM

Bogosort

In computer science, bogosort (also stupid sort or slowsort) is a particularly ineffective sorting algorithm based on the generate and test paradigm. It is not useful for sorting, but may be used for educational purposes, to contrast it with other more realistic algorithms; it has also been used as an example in logic programming. If bogosort were used to sort a deck of cards, it would consist of checking if the deck were in order, and if it were not, throwing the deck into the air, picking the cards up at random, and repeating the process until the deck is sorted. Its name comes from the...

Nicola Talbot

8:26 PM

@PauloCereda Which colour did you get in the end?

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot I got the black one. :)

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Yay! I liked that one :-)

Have you got a natty hat to go with it?

Paulo Cereda

@NicolaTalbot I have a Fedora one. :)

Nicola Talbot

@PauloCereda Yay, excellent! :-) You'll have to post a snapshot :-)

Kannappan Sampath

8:41 PM

@Paulo PSmith has become a lot cooler! :)

!!/song

Paulo Cereda

@KannappanSampath He's sleeping. :)

Kannappan Sampath

@PauloCereda Oh... I see. Great!

I think you must speak with some one with the powers so that PSmith can run on SX server while you can still write code for PSmith.

Karl's students

Is there a way to collect all defined footnotes in a document and print them (plus the page number in which each of them is defined) on certain pages?

egreg

8:57 PM

@Karl'sstudents Package endnotes, but not with the reference to the page.

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