@Joseph you are already my hero. :)

@AlanMunn OH NO

@DavidCarlisle the quiz of the day: What happens in TL16 and what in TL17:

\documentclass{article}
%from bpchem:
\expandafter\DeclareRobustCommand\expandafter\-\expandafter{\-}
\begin{document}
abc\-abc
\end{document}

@PauloCereda consequenceofsound.net/2017/08/…

@UlrikeFischer bpchem should have done \MakeRobust\-

@Johannes_B I am on a travel, just sometimes a bit Internet (that I mostly use against spammers)

@egreg Did it exist in 2004?

@Johannes_B you could respond to the user on golatex that I can take care but probably Wednesday

@egreg Btw: The comment says that this is a "Trick by David Kastrup".

@UlrikeFischer In fixltx2e

@UlrikeFischer It only works if \- is a parameterless standard macro, not if it's defined with \DeclareRobustCommand. Alternatively it should check \@ifundefined{- } and do nothing if the test returns false (defined), so \@ifundefined{- }{\expandafter\DeclareRobustCommand\expandafter\-\expandafter{\-}}{}

@egreg That isn't a very sophisticated command and is badly missing some checks is rather clear (but as plus one can say that it worked for 13 years ...). I looked up older docu of fixltx2e and it sounds (not quite sure if it is true) as if \MakeRobust was added only in 2005.

If I do something like \newcount\foo in a group, is the count register freed after the group?

@Skillmon No, the allocation is global. If you do {\newcount\fooa } \newcount\foob then the log says \fooa=\count87 \foob=\count88.

@StefanKottwitz allright, i'll do that.

@StefanKottwitz spam attack last night. Took me almost an hour to delete all posts. :-/

@UlrikeFischer Thank you for your fast supply.

@Skillmon It is possible to create a local allocator: the LaTeX team tried this in expl3 but in the end we decided global-allocation-local-use fitted with TeX grouping better

@egreg Don't like my signature for \includegraphics? One L. Lamport is pretty keen on the two-opt version ...

@JosephWright my comment was just to clarify why two optional arguments are needed

@percusse LOL

@StefanKottwitz By the way, you should look into that some time in the future. golatex.de/…

@Johannes_B thank you, I answered on golatex.de

@StefanKottwitz Nice, thank you.

@Johannes_B sorry that a spammer comes still through from time to time, even though I hardened the site and block more domains and use an anti spam API

@StefanKottwitz No big deal, i'll delete in the future as well. But a delete all posts by user X would be nice. It was all the same user and all the very very same nonsense gibberish random letters/numbers.

off, connection goes away, sailing at sea...

@Johannes_B I will make you admin access tomorrow when I get stable connection again

@StefanKottwitz Don't get me too much power :-) Have a safe trip :-)

@UlrikeFischer in both cases, people poking into latex internals get what they deserve?

@DavidCarlisle ;-). But I hope that there are not more of this "robustify \-"-trick around which lead to endless loops with a new latex with its already robust \-. It even doesn't give a sensible error message, simply compiles and compiles and compiles ...

@UlrikeFischer really you can't win, it's worrying about that kind of breakage why we didn't fix any bugs add any features for 20 years, but in the end the pressure to fix things rather than have fixltx2e get bigger and bigger was too great.

@DavidCarlisle \protected

@JosephWright oh you're so modern

@DavidCarlisle Oh I don't mind, it's fun to investigate such errors. I only wished it weren't so difficult to get concrete code from people. They are often so vage "something in some document doesn't work now what should I do?".

Unfortunately clouds do a much more efficient job of hiding the sun than the moon, but without the drama. :(

@AlanMunn though the moon doesn't do a efficient job, while it is actually doing its job, it's done much better than by those nasty clouds!

@Skillmon True. :) I've managed to get a few glimpses but there's now a big cloud overhead, so for the rest it's not looking promising.

@AlanMunn Sorry to hear. (Well being in Germany I can only watch a live stream or the like)

@Skillmon I'm not in the path of totality, but at about 80% which is still pretty cool.

Being in Europe, I am missing this one too. But I got to see a good partial eclipse in March 2015. It was in the middle of a calculus lecture, but I dragged the whole class outside for a good look. I'll see if I can upload a picture.

We were luck with the partial cloud cover, which made it (relatively) safe to look without protective glasses.

… lucky …

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Nice! I hope you then asked them a nice calculus question about the eclipse in the exam! :)

we got about a 70% eclipse in rhode island, and intermittently overcast, but even more spectacular to my mind was the sundog observed just before the start of the eclipse by one of the local observatories.

Hmm, seems a bit empty in here. Anybody home?

(Cues the Jeopardy! theme to play in the chat room while he waits.)

Rats, everybody's asleep again, aren't they? (Or at least AFK, anyway.) Once again, blast those accursed time zones!

Well, if nobody's back by the time I'm done eating dinner, then perhaps I'll look elsewhere or ask a question on TeX/LaTeX SE proper.

(Wanders off to chow…)