TeX, LaTeX and Friends

8:05 AM

@PauloCereda The thing is that someone did the editing, and put the answers into order. All of the other ones that were mentioned in the 'wrong' place also got at least one mention 'in order'. Somehow, we got missed :-)

@PauloCereda Great blog post

8:40 AM

@PauloCereda Feature request: I'd like to be able to vote on blog posts. Fantastic.

@JosephWright Hilarious! Someone puts CHAOS into order and the one that gets left out is TeX. But, yes, don't tell anyone. We don't want chaos here. For a start, they probably don't pronounce it correctly.

PDF: Problematic Document Format. Screenshot from a document authored by Adobe itself rendered on the iPad:

(Hmm, bit small to easily see). Here's what it should look like:

(Okay, easy enough to see the difference even at this scale.)

9:10 AM

@PauloCereda @egreg Thanks for the blog post and thanks for a good year:)

9:20 AM

@PauloCereda I don't know what to say.

9:46 AM

@AndrewStacey I think we are pretty safe. CHAOS is about building communities, but we are in the happy position of already having a pretty strong feeling on what our community is. That's in contrast to a lot of the other sites, where it's nothing like as simple.

9:57 AM

@JosephWright I'd just feel so much happier (and relaxed) if I knew that CHAOS, and the SE team, themselves knew this. I've seen signs that they know this in their heads, but I've also seen more worrying signs that show that this doesn't come out in practice. I worry that the fact we've avoided their attention so far has been more because none of them know we exist (as evidenced by that video) than that anyone has taken a serious look at us and realised that we do have a genuine community here ...

... and (most importantly) that it would be seriously stupid to charge in with compilers a-blazing and disrupt that community purely for the sake of conformity.

@AndrewStacey Various staff members certainly know we exist: we've had recent mod interactions with them.

@AndrewStacey I doubt this will happen. I'm pretty sure that in general the focus is on other sites as they need help.

It's been made pretty clear in the mod chat sessions that CHAOS will not 'come looking' for work: it's up to sites to ask for support.

10:25 AM

@JosephWright Let's call them. :P

I'd love to make a video and quote the first chapter of the TeXbook. :) I also believe that if they remembered TeX.sx in the video, they would had pronounced it the wrong way. :P

Again, I'm still incredulous that the stereotypic nerd guy doesn't know about us.

Q: Why does TeX have a lion as mascot?

12:04 PM

Oh my, I'm late on voting!

7

This I have been wondering for years! And where else was I supposed to ask this if not here? Maybe it is not a technical question but it might still interest a great many.

tex-history

Martin's comment is awesome! :)

@PauloCereda but clearly wrong I think as (if wikipedia is to be believed) the lion predates the software beginning with w

ah the lion just flew in, so we can ask it

@DavidCarlisle LOL. :)

I wanna add a link to a video where the hippo sings "The lion sleeps tonight". :P

Q: \prevdepth error with mdframed and listings

12:28 PM

Does anyone know why does it works?

3

I get strange errors with the last versions of mdframed (v 1.4) and listings (v 1.4). Here is a minimal example: \documentclass{minimal} \usepackage{mdframed} \usepackage{listings} \begin{document} \begin{mdframed} \begin{lstlisting} blah \end{lstlisting} bloh \end{mdframed} \end{document} Th...

listings mdframed

@MarcoDaniel I was going to ask if you;d seen that:-) The MWE works for me, but I only had 1.3 of mdframed (from ctan?)

@DavidCarlisle At ctan you can find version 1.4 and at github 1.4b. ;-)

hmm I thought I fetched 1.3 yesterday. Will try later. (so you can reporoduce the error? with 1.4?)

@DavidCarlisle Unfortunately yes ;-(

well don't access prevdepth in horizontal mode, then:-)

12:38 PM

I propose to replace the Lion by a 2D duck.

It's easier to draw.

the duck sleeps tonight

LOL!

@DavidCarlisle ;-)

@Raphink Hi! Miss your posts. How is your book going?

@DavidCarlisle: @egreg found the solution ;-). But it's not clear (for me) whether it's a bug of listings or mdframed ;-)

12:43 PM

{\par\unskip\ifvmode\nointerlineskip\hrule \@height\z@ \@width\hsize\fi%%

Hi @YiannisLazarides. I just changed companies, so I'm getting used to my new job... ;-)

@YiannisLazarides. Just printed a review copy (well, 4 copies) of one of the books to proofread it. It's going somewhere, hopefully soon :-)

@DavidCarlisle Such simple ;-)

@MarcoDaniel that was the only use of \nointerlineskip in mdframed not guarded by \ifvmode

@Raphink That's great. Nice to change have a job change, I wished I could do this. At least we are finishing the current Project.

@YiannisLazarides: what is your current project?

12:45 PM

@DavidCarlisle Of course ;-) I have thought after \par I am always in vmode.

\hbox{\par well not always}

@Raphink We bulding 5 luxury high-rise hotels in Doha, Qatar.

what's your job?

@DavidCarlisle such ideas are evil ;-)

@Raphink Project Director.

12:46 PM

ok

so TeX is a hobby

@Raphink Hobby, private documents and we use it at work.

ok

@MarcoDaniel but presumably occur (given the question on the site) life is like that

@DavidCarlisle I remember a previous chat -- I am to young ;-)

There, the new TeX mascot.

12:50 PM

other times when \par doesn't put you in vmode is after \let\par\@empty (which LaTeX does surprisingly often)

@DavidCarlisle Really. Why do you need this?

so if you put a blank line between table rows you don't get a runaway error (latex tabular mode keeps switching \par definirtions)

@MarcoDaniel Mainly listings, I'd say; but testing for vertical mode as David suggests is surely correct.

@DavidCarlisle Thanks.

@egreg I will add the test.

Q: How to check for equal, greater than, and less than in values in ConTeXt?

0

If I have some numbers stored in values, how can I do simple checks, such as this? IF A = B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A > B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A >= B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A < B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A <= B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A != B, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A + B > C, DO X, ELSE DO Y IF A >...

context

Am I right about ConTeXt in my comments? I'm pretty sure you just use \ifnum, but would welcome any other suggestions before writing that as an answer

1:16 PM

@JosephWright: I would combine \ifnum with the following answer: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/7180/testing-for-number

3:12 PM

@PauloCereda An answer to How do we Draw a Bird in LaTeX?

@PeterGrill I don't think so. :P It's the worst duck drawing ever. :D

@PauloCereda Oppss.. I missed the :-) in my previous comment...

@PeterGrill hehe :)

I need to learn more TikZ-fu. :)

@PauloCereda So do I - feel there is soooo much more to learn. Oh, please remember to avoid learning`\tikzmark`. If too many other people learn that then I am not sure what else I can milk to get more rep on this site. :-) But, its been a few days already and haven't needed \tikzmark so I can sense another question is coming soon that will require it. :-)

@PeterGrill hehe don't worry, I wouldn't be able to provide a TikZ answer. :D

3:34 PM

@PauloCereda no you should do a non tikz non pstricks version, i started to do one just using \parshape (or at least shapepar.sty) using a drawing package is so, like cheating

@DavidCarlisle Ah I tried to use \parshape once, but I failed. :)

@DavidCarlisle It is interesting seeing someone actually using the basic drawing commands in TeX.

Guys, don't laugh. I'm going to attempt to install TeX Live in my Wii.

5

It's a serious project. :P

3:49 PM

and write TeX by doing movement?

@Raphink I heard that the wiimote can be used as a mouse. :)

I don't doubt it

you can probably also tie it to a cat and use the cat as a mouse

or quite a few other things actually ;-)

haha!

4:24 PM

@PauloCereda Wii would you want to do that?

@AlanMunn Wii has no choice. :) I'll see how the hardware will deal with it, though. :)

It's a Linux distro running on top of the Wii hardware. :)

At first I thought of using my PS3, but it's quite difficult to run the Linux distro without downgrading the firmware. Sony blocked the Linux "feature".

Gonzalo Medina

@PauloCereda If you succeed, please let me know. I'd love to see my wife's reaction if she sees me doing LaTeX stuff in the Wii.

@PauloCereda Then you can move on to Android.

@GonzaloMedina Sure! :) If I succeed, there will be blog post about it, with videos and stuff. :) I just ordered a new SD card just to play it safe.

@AlanMunn Indeed! It would be awesome to have tablets and smartphones running TeX. :)

Even if Android doesn't support it natively, I'll see how difficult is to port the TeX executable to Dalvik.

(Dalvik is the Android Virtual Machine)

5:09 PM

2

6:21 PM

Why did I only note tab features in TeXworks a few minutes ago? :)

Q: How to suppress the operation of a luatex-defined macro on a string if the string is part of macro or a label

6:45 PM

@JosephWright: I'm still working in the slides, I'll try to send you a copy in the weekend. :)

Patrick Gundlach

7:05 PM

I am bored. I think I'll give this an attempt:

9

I'm working towards creating a lualatex-based package that lets users automatically suppress the use of ligatures (for now, ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl, and ft -- collectively, f-x) for selected words. (For background see this question.) The package is set to work with both English and German language w...

luatex ligatures

400 bounty, that's impressive :)

7:19 PM

@PatrickGundlach Wow! :)

Patrick Gundlach

don't say that until I am finished :)

Oops. :)

8:15 PM

Anyone here know why I can't do "\mathchardef\mycolonchar=\mathcode`\:"? I'm experimenting with UTF8 input and using Emacs's TeX input scheme which helpfully replaces \colon by :. However, in the output then \colon is correctly spaced and : is not. Since I only use : in things like f : X -> Y I figured I could just let : to \colon. However, this gets me tied in loops as \colon contains :. I thought the mathchar stuff would get round it, but I can't get it off the ground.

8:27 PM

@AndrewStacey Hmm, what about a minimal example?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\show\colon
\def\relcolon{\nobreak \mskip 2mu\mathpunct {}\nonscript \mkern -\thinmuskip {:}\mskip 6mu plus 1mu\relax}
\makeatletter
\mathchardef\realless=\mathcode`:
\mathcode`:="8000
{\catcode`:=\active \global\let:\relcolon}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
$f : X \to Y$
\end{document}

Ooops, forget the \show\colon - that was a cheap way to get what \relcolon ought to be.

Stolen from your code at tex.stackexchange.com/a/31138/86, by the way!

@AndrewStacey Hi, do you know offhand if there are different scaling issues with nodes vs. other things in TikZ? I have some stuff that is drawn and then some nodes added, but the nodes don't seem to scale with the rest of the stuff (using e.g. [scale=.5] on the tikzpicture environment. (The code is complex right now, so I haven't had time to turn it minimal.)

@AlanMunn Yes, nodes don't scale unless told explicitly that they have to. To make a node transform as the rest of the diagram, use transform shape on the node (could be put in every node/.style={transform shape} to affect every node in the picture/scope).

@AndrewStacey Ah, ok. I suspected something like that was going on (and that you might know). So if I pass scale=.5 to the tikzpicture do I pass the same value to the every node ... style?

8:45 PM

@AlanMunn Better to put the transform shape key in the every node style, otherwise you have to remember to change both places if you decide to change the transformation later.

@AndrewStacey Yes, I understand that, but I'm wondering if the values are the same? When I do the regular drawing, I'm using unitless numbers, but I can't specify node sizes in uniteless numbers, so I'm having problems with the scale value doing different things to the drawing and the nodes.

@AlanMunn Ah, I see. You mean things like minimum size? I've never tried specifying such things in unitless numbers so I don't know. If it's really complicated, you could define a scale factor which is used everywhere as a multiplier. Put scale=\scalefactor on the main picture and then minimum size=\scalefactor*3cm on the nodes.

(@egreg did you see I posted some code?)

@AndrewStacey Let me test it.

9:02 PM

hi everybody!

@AndrewStacey Hmm. Still weird. I'll just have to start from scratch on this bit of code; there clearly something I'm missing. But thanks, that helped. Either I'll figure it out or I'll manage to post a real question.

@leo Hi.

And he's gone!

is there a way to translate an image in pdf to TikZ code?

pure TikZ code

@AndrewStacey You're doing things backwards

\mathchardef\relcolon=\mathcode`:
\def\punctcolon{\nobreak\mskip2mu\mathpunct{}\nonscript\mkern-\thinmuskip {\relcolon}\mskip 6mu plus 1mu\relax}
\mathcode`:="8000
{\catcode`:=\active \global\let:\punctcolon}

user19161

To all the PGF experts here, is there an equivalent of pst-solides3d among the PGF packages? It is very good for drawing three-dimensional solids and other things if you look at the manual.

@leo No. There are some GUI drawing programs that output TikZ code, and there's a TikZ device for R, but you can't take a PDF image and turn it into code (just like you can't take a pdf text document and turn it into LaTeX.)

9:08 PM

@AlanMunn I was thinkig in something like "phats" with Inkscape, but the result is not so good

@AndrewStacey More compact:

\usepackage{amsmath,etoolbox}
\mathchardef\relcolon=\mathcode`:
\patchcmd{\colon}{:}{\relcolon}{}{}
\mathcode`:="8000
{\catcode`:=\active \global\let:\colon}

Q: What GUI applications are there to assist in generating graphics for TeX?

@leo Here's a list:

15

I found GeoGebra to be a useful tool to help generate code for graphs. I suppose there must be other tools to help draw diagrams such as Sets/Venn Diagrams or Electrical Circuits (Logic Gates). Which ones would you suggest?

graphics tools

@AlanMunn Thanks

hi @egreg

@WillHunting I don't think there's anything as sophisticated as pst-solides3d. Here's a question that might help (also some linked questions:)

4

Q: 3D diagrams in TikZ

Is there like a library that has default geometric figures like the ones shown below. Am not acquainted yet with 3D diagrams in TikZ.

tikz-pgf 3d

An old generation iPad 2 16Gb is being sold here by R$ 1400. :(

user19161

9:15 PM

@AlanMunn Thanks, I was hoping someone would magically say yes here is the equivalent. That is one reason why I sort of prefer pstricks over pgf!

►

user19161

@PauloCereda What is R$?

@WillHunting Brazil's currency. :) It's called "Real". :)

user19161

@PauloCereda And the other dollars must be imaginary then!

@AlanMunn Santa tábua de carne, Batman. :)

9:17 PM

@leo Hi, how are you?

@egreg I'm fine, thanks

@WillHunting Back in the monarchy days.

@leo What about algebra? :)

I'm on it

@WillHunting Yes, for that, I would agree. There's a fairly simple reason for that given that Postscript has real floating point support and TeX doesn't really (or at least not to the same extent).

9:19 PM

@egreg I have to do a homework in Groups to the next friday

@egreg One of my favorite subjects in school. :)

user19161

@PauloCereda Where did you get this poster from?

@WillHunting I did it. :)

@leo My group theory is rusty, but I remember something. :)

@PauloCereda Do you mean "I did it"? (No null objects in English.)

9:22 PM

@AlanMunn Oh yes, my bad. I always forget these things. :)

@egreg is not so complicated

Woo, less than 5 seconds to fix that and I did it!

not Group Theory, my homework

user19161

@PauloCereda I was wondering about the "it"!

@WillHunting I'm sorry, I usually fail with these English constructs. :)

9:23 PM

@PauloCereda (Of course that one could have been "And I did". :)

user19161

@PauloCereda You speak Spanish over there mainly or what?

@AlanMunn I blame the mate for my mistake. :P

@WillHunting Portuguese. :)

@PauloCereda That's what happens when you drink it cold.

@AlanMunn Indeed, and I forgot to add some lemon drops. :) It's too hot for a chimarrão. :)

@PauloCereda From what I understand, it's never to hot for chimarrão. Tu não és gaúcho de verdade.

9:29 PM

Does someone here used inkscape2tikz?

@leo Well, if you need help … :)

@egreg does it works well?

user19161

@leo I can't even use inkscape!

@leo Only on this one, but I think @PauloCereda has used it a little.

@AlanMunn Bah! :) One of my friends used to drink tereré and I decided to give it a try. My label would be "caipira". :P

@leo I used it. :)

@TorbjørnT Yes. :)

9:33 PM

@leo I was talking about algebra, not TikZ. :)

(Now I'm gonna go ballistic and add it to everything... it)

user19161

@leo It should be "work".

@egreg Indeed, sorry :-)

@PauloCereda Which? Lemon drops? or "Bah"?

@AlanMunn Uh-oh. Now it's getting worse. :P

9:36 PM

@PauloCereda LOL I just got which "it" you meant.

user19161

@AlanMunn So it seems that the only advantage pgf has is direct compilation to pdf.

@PauloCereda, I want to use it for this

user19161

And of course it has more users so questions on pgf are more readily answered here than on pstricks.

Q: What are the advantages of TikZ/PGF over PSTricks?

22

The first time I saw the PSTricks' 3D Galleries, I immediately felt in love with it. I have spent much time to learn and use it. In this forum, I see many people using TikZ. I have not used TikZ yet. But now I am confused why there are so many people discussing TikZ rather than PSTricks. Probabl...

tikz-pgf pstricks

user19161

@TorbjørnT Yup I answered that one too, but I am still always wondering...

9:37 PM

@WillHunting If you already know pstricks well, then I would probably agree. If you're starting from scratch, TikZ is better documented (IMO) and has a very sensible (although fairly verbose) syntax. (And @TorbjørnT has just posted the answer that says more or less the same, I think.)

@egreg Strange, I thought that was what I was doing. Hang on, let me test something ... Ah, maybe this is the problem. I'm using unicode-math and that changes the mathcode of : to 6300214 which is an "Invalid math code".

@WillHunting Ah, sorry, didn't see that.

@leo Cool! What would you like to do? :)

user19161

By the way, haven't seen xport around on SE for a while.

user19161

Her questions are usually very interesting!

9:40 PM

@WillHunting She posted a message in meta not a long time ago.

But then she's gone.

@WillHunting Yes, although one Herbert Voss can match quite a few TikZ experts. (Not that we don't have Herbert equivalents in TikZ). So pstricks questions will get answered pretty authoritatively around here even though it's true there are more of us who use TikZ. I used to use pstricks but now only use TikZ.

@AndrewStacey With XeTeX or LuaTeX?

@PauloCereda I want to translate it, to TikZ code

user19161

@PauloCereda She used to say things in her profile like "I am off to cook dinner", hehe.

@egreg luatex

9:43 PM

@leo Try to import the PDF file in Inkscape, then go to save and choose TikZ. :)

@WillHunting Indeed, her profile was very funny. :) Did you see her profile here in TeX.sx? It's priceless. :P

user19161

@PauloCereda It used to change almost everyday, like my avatar!

@PauloCereda Who?

@leo xport. :) tex.stackexchange.com/users/2099/xport

user19161

@leo xport

@PauloCereda I would like to upvote that :-)

9:49 PM

@WillHunting Are you feeling blue today?

@leo LOL. :)

@AlanMunn (ba dum tss)

2

user19161

@AlanMunn I am blue everyday actually in real life! But I like the simplicity of the blue square.

@AndrewStacey Here it is; unfortunately LuaTeX hasn't \Umathcharnumdef similar to \XeTeXmathcharnumdef.

\def\relcolon{\Umathcharnum`: }
\patchcmd{\colon}{:}{\relcolon}{}{}
\mathcode`:="8000
{\catcode`:=\active \global\let:\colon}

user19161

@PauloCereda What is ba dum tss?

@WillHunting It's the little drum/cymbal sound after a corny joke. (Which I totally deserved.)

9:51 PM

@WillHunting This: youtube.com/watch?v=583zhKnsDjI :)

user19161

@AlanMunn Well, wait till you see the jokes in the ELU room!

@WillHunting I had a little run-in with them, so I won't go back.

@egreg Brilliant! I'll go and vote for loads of your answers to say "thank you".

2

user19161

@AlanMunn Really, that's weird! I know you were there once in the chat room but nothing too serious happened I think.

@WillHunting No, not really serious. But I was a bit annoyed that a mod closed a question and then when I pointed out that it wasn't a duplicate, edited the question to make it so. They did roll it back and reopen it, but the whole episode didn't make me very inclined to go back. (It wasn't my question, but one that I was answering.)

9:54 PM

@AndrewStacey Beware, Big Brother is watching!

@egreg It's alright, I'll use my sock-puppets.

user19161

@AlanMunn Oh well, there are always disagreements on SE. But I can be quite sensitive at times too.

@PauloCereda the output in his code here is his the source code itself, right?

@WillHunting And just today someone posted a question about whether 'the' was a word, which instantly got closed, even though it didn't seem to me to be a bad question (I was even in the midst of writing an answer.) But I see that there's a lot of crap that the site gets, so the mods there are very trigger happy on closing things.

user19161

@AndrewStacey Just don't do more than three at one go.

9:57 PM

@egreg, Oh, and "Gratulerer med dagen".

user19161

I sometimes give users "presents" too in the form of 3 upvotes.

@leo By the looks if the dir /b *.tex command, I guess it lists all tex files which are in the same directory.

I see

@WillHunting I'm a serial voter. :)

@PauloCereda Is there some code in TeX/LaTeX that print itself?

9:58 PM

\def\Rⁿ{\R^n}

just for fun

@leo I used to do that with perl scripts. I even had a script that would take in a perl script and modify it so that when run it would do what it ought to do and also print its own source code.

@leo Oh what's the name this kind of program? There's a nice name for it.

Ah, quine!

@PauloCereda I used to call it a godel program.

@AndrewStacey Are you sure that ⁿ has category code 11?

10:01 PM

@AndrewStacey Good name. :)

@PauloCereda yep, I remember that from a book of computer science

or discrete math, don't remember

@egreg Yes. Emacs was converting my ^ns to ⁿ and then complaining about \Rⁿ not being defined. Since I have \R as a command, I guessed that it was the ⁿ bit. Making that definition fixed the problem. Since \R also still works by itself, I deduce that it isn't one of those \def\a3{} delimiter definitions but a genuine definition. Just call me "Sherlock".

scribd.com/doc/4087611/Typesets-LaTeX-Source-Code-a-LaTeX-Quine

But it's cheating as it reads the document from the disk.

@AndrewStacey Yes, I checked with \showthe\catcode`ⁿ ;-)

This is better: texhacks.blogspot.com/2010/12/quines.html (from TH)

@egreg And that's why you're the better TeXnician. Me, I'm just a Cargo Cult Texist.

Sorry, "TeXist".

@PauloCereda If I remember right, I'd just read Godel, Escher, Bach when I started playing with these programs. Hence the name.

And I've just found a command godel on my system. Wonder what happens if I run it ...

@AndrewStacey :)

@AndrewStacey I guess it's a programming language. Someone once mentioned it to me.

10:17 PM

@PauloCereda Surely it mentioned itself to you.

@AndrewStacey Oh. :P

@AndrewStacey Better definition

\AtBeginDocument{
  \edef\relcolon{\Umathcharnum\the\Umathcodenum`: }
\mathcode`:="8000
\patchcmd{\colon}{:}{\relcolon}{}{}
\begingroup\lccode`~=`:
  \lowercase{\endgroup\global\let~}\colon
}

@egreg Ah, the magic \lowercase{\endgroup combination. I'm not sure I'm sufficiently advanced in TeXja (TeX version of ninja) to wield such deadly macros.

@AndrewStacey It's not so mysterious, after all. And the {\catcode...} bit wouldn't work inside \AtBeginDocument Note that the new mathcodes are established at begin document, so the earlier definition is actually wrong. :)

@PauloCereda Turns out that godel is precisely the script I mentioned above: pass it a perl script and it will churn out the "godelisation" of that script.

@egreg But the earlier definition works. So unicode-math must be doing something at the call time as well as at the beginning of the document.

10:28 PM

@AndrewStacey Look closely: with the older definition the colon is from Computer Modern.

In fact, I tried "\showthe\mathcode\':" before and after \usepackage{unicode-math} and got different answers.

@AndrewStacey If you do \showthe\Umathcodenum`: just after loading unicode-math you get 12346; after \begin{document} you get 6300214.

@egreg Having looked at my colon at extreme magnification, I will admit that it does appear to be Computer Modern. However, I get 6300214 after \setmathfont{xits-math.otf} so it's doing something before the \begin{document}.

@AndrewStacey Ah cool! :)

@AndrewStacey In any case \edef\relcolon{\Umathcharnum\the\Umathcodenum`: } is the way to go.

Or using \colon and forget about everything. :)

10:41 PM

@JosephWright: The slides are ready, I only need to translate them to English (one hour maximum). Unfortunately, they asked me to make an abridged version. Would you like if I send the slides with an audio commentary? I had to cut a lot of content, only 2 L3 were kept. :(

Ah @JosephWright someone who's looked at L3 rather more recently than me! , do we have an L3 version of gdef? (Martin's question here: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/46611/… )

@PauloCereda Fine with me: I'm sure I can manage

@JosephWright Thanks. :)

@DavidCarlisle \cs_gset:Npn?

well I suppose there isn't really that much of a top level at all, so perhaps it's just the wrong question

10:43 PM

@egreg I'm leaning towards that solution! (Well, not actually since you've given me a solution that does actually do what I want; I'm still bemused by what's going on with the previous solution - but not bemused enough, given the time, to want to dig much further into it!).

@DavidCarlisle As @egreg says, at a code level yes (the new functions are also global)

@egreg yes but that's probably more like \gdef than \global\newcommand so I'm not sure it counts, put perhaps it does, who knows:-)

@DavidCarlisle But \cs_new:Npn does, I hope

I'll try that, cheers:-)

@JosephWright And LaTeX3 has no real user interface, yet. :) Are you planning a "global" version of \newcommand?

10:47 PM

@egreg No, I think not. Of course, this is all 'to be decided', but at the user level it really should not be needed (at least if you think in terms of proper separation of user interface design from code)

@egreg It's not even clear to me what happens about \newcommand at all

@JosephWright We have already discussed this: if you cut \newcommand, nobody will use LaTeX3.

@egreg Yes and no. The key structure for me, as I always say, is the \begin{document}\emph{stuff}\end{document} business. The issue with \newcommand, for me, is that I have no idea if we make it expandable or not, or variable, or ???, or how it fits with \NewDocumentCommand (i.e with interface design). Lots to worry about.

@FrankMittelbach doubtless has some thoughts on this, which don't necessarily align with mine

@JosephWright The "normal" documents just have some calls to packages and some personal commands. Rising the entry barrier will stop people using LaTeX. People with a good knowledge of LaTeX won't have big problems with the fact that they'll have to change many of their favorite constructs; the "normal" users will.

11:03 PM

@egreg Yes, I can see that of course. There are various questions that this then leaves open. For example, if we want a more complete kernel then the number of packages needed should drastically reduce. On 'personal commands', there is a tension between access and the idea of a good, well-defined structure (especially when you are talking about documents exchanged with other users).

If we want no change from LaTeX2e, say in terms of what is in Leslie's book, then we have a real issue that we can never escape from decisions of the past. That may be great for existing users, but at some stage it will kill LaTeX because we'll get no new users.

It's all a balance, and it's not easy.

actually I don't think it makes that much difference in practice because it's such an open system. If the kernel doesn't provide something very like \newcommand, then the first package put on ctan will provide it anyway and including that package will just be part of the general boilerplate code that gets copied to new documents. It's hard to be proscriptive in a free world:-)

For example, when LaTeX2e was written we did not have e-TeX. Now we do, it is sensible to define what is expandable and what is not in a clear way. But that means breaking something somewhere.

@DavidCarlisle My feeling is that we might formally deprecate \newcommand in favour of something like xparse's \NewDocumentCommand, in the same way HTML has gone through a use-deprecate-remove path with various tags. So I'm not saying I would not include it in the supported set of commands, but I might well not encourage it's use. (I still need to think about this, so I may change my mind.)

@DavidCarlisle Basically what I want to avoid :-) My aim is to be able to use LaTeX for a general document without needing any additional packages - essentially the situation with ConTeXt

@JosephWright Many things about expansion are already hidden from users: few commands are fragile, with the current kernel. Of course something one's used to won't work the same but this will be in the documentation. Deprecating commands while still keeping them in some usable form may be the right idea.

@JosephWright, yes but html is instructive, w3c tried hard to deprecate html4 and move to the cleaner more logical xml syntax, but basically the world told them to get stuffed and they stick to what they know...

@JosephWright That's one of the weaknesses of ConTeXt: if the team hasn't thought about something, it would be very hard to achieve it.

11:12 PM

@DavidCarlisle True, and the reason that I don't buy the 'write everything in XML' argument. As I say, it's difficult.

@egreg I'm not sure that is entirely true: there are add-on modules for ConTeXt from third parties. What bothers me, and the reason I got involved in LaTeX3 work, is that I need to load packages (i.e. unsupported add ons) to change fonts, to alter captions, to make hyperlinks and so on. That needs addressing.

@DavidCarlisle I never said we should move to a more logical syntax :-) I have perhaps half a dozen things I worry about. Actually the biggest single one is that a lot of LaTeX documents use TeX code that is not part of the LaTeX official interface.

@egreg My worry with expandablity is that as we want 'commands' to be engine robust we need to be more explicit about the difference between a command and a stored value.

At present, none of this has really been worked through properly. We need the design level support to see how interfaces mesh with a more structured lower level.

@JosephWright yes those (and colo[u]r) I think anyone would bundle into a format if doing now, but when you look at the range of packages on ctan, that doesn't really make much of an impression on the list of third party stuff

@JosephWright but I agree really making it harder to switch to random TeX primitives mid-document is a good thing (even if it breaks existing documents)

@DavidCarlisle No, but I'm thinking about what sort of code is reasonable too specialised to load as part of the form. For me, only chemistry-specifics seem to fit.

so you'd load pstricks and tikz and psfrag and ... at format time?

I guess I'm a 'big tent' person: I'd like to imagine lots of people making contributions to the kernel, in the same way as happens say with Firefox. It's not all written by a small team, but there is overall code review and the like.

2

@DavidCarlisle Nope, just TikZ :-)

@DavidCarlisle Or rather part of it: I guess I'd like us to handle the low-level stuff (~ pgf)

Of course, that's just my view

But one of firefox's big selling points its its extension mechanism, more or less anyone can dump an add-on, getting code into th efirefox kernel is really hard (not least because you have to talk to lawyers:-)

11:23 PM

@DavidCarlisle They have a lot more than a dozen names on the commit list over the years, I think :-)

@DavidCarlisle I never really use any extensions, which I guess tells you how I see this approach :-)

@JosephWright I don't use many (chatzilla, useragent switcher and an ebook reader currently) but I like to know they are there:-) (rather similar to situation with 3rd party latex packages on ctan actually:-)

Wow.

@DavidCarlisle There is clearly a lot to think about in terms of what constitutes 'essential', but also how we might handle things like moving material into the kernel over time. That's something you see in other projects (features are developed, used a lot as add ons, then are taken up by the 'core'). I have a few ideas on that, but they need work. Anyway, until we have a workable format which can typeset something then this is all rather academic.

So I guess I should get on with reading the OR

I got distracted for a moment and the counter had 40 unread messages from here. :)

@PauloCereda I'd skip my ones :-)

11:28 PM

@JosephWright he'll skip all ours (no mention of cricket in any of them)

@DavidCarlisle And of soccer either.

@DavidCarlisle "For those of you who've just joined us, the bowler's Holden, the batsman's Willie"

@PauloCereda How's WiiTeX going?

percusse

Is there any way to delete my account on other SE sites? Math.SE is really gettting on my nerves lately, I stopped using it but still they comment on ancient answers for no proper reason.

@egreg Ah it might take a while. :) I already have the Linux distro and the whole setup. I just need a new SD card, since the one I have is only 1Gb. :( I already order a new one, so I hope to get WiiTeX working until the end of next week. :)

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11:34 PM

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percusse

@TorbjørnT thank you :)

@JosephWright: presentation sent. :)

@PauloCereda Received (phew - there are some issues with my e-mail provider at the moment)

@JosephWright Uh-oh. :(

@PauloCereda On tomorrow's 'to do' list. And with that, goodnight all!