i have a quibble about the question Is it possible to make a command that makes “LRA” a shortcut for \Leftrightarrow? which has been closed as a duplicate. the cited "duplicate" does give info on how to define shorthand commands. but nothing about defining a command without a backslash, which i believe is the central point of the question. that is a good question that deserves an explanation. i hope someone else agrees.

Quack!

@PauloCereda Quack!

@JosephWright ooh another duck

@PauloCereda more dinner

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle you are mean

@PauloCereda Qua qua qua 3 ducks @DavidCarlisle you are mean

@CarLaTeX ooh more ducks

@DavidCarlisle oh no

I sense indirect recursion. :)

@DavidCarlisle: someone could talk about tikzducks in our meeting. :)

@PauloCereda Yay!!!

@CarLaTeX Preposterous!

@PauloCereda LOL

Small question, I have a table like this:

How would I make the ins aligned?

@LegionMammal978 Like this?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}
\usepackage{booktabs,array}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{>{\tipaencoding}cr@{ }c@{ }l}
\toprule
\multicolumn{1}{c}{IPA} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{English} \\
\midrule
/\dh/      & th & in & this \\
/s/        & s  & in & this \\
/\textsci/ & i  & in & this \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Ah, with multicolumns?

What's the @{ } mean?

@LegionMammal978 Or like this

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}
\usepackage{booktabs,array}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{>{\tipaencoding}c>{\itshape}c@{ }c@{ }>{\itshape}l}
\toprule
\multicolumn{1}{c}{IPA} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{English} \\
\midrule
/\dh/      & th & in & this \\
/s/        & s  & in & this \\
/\textsci/ & i  & in & this \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

@LegionMammal978 It means “put a normal space between the columns”.

Or \slshape would also work, I presume

@LegionMammal978 If you're in \sffamily, they're equivalent

But yeah, thanks for the help

@LegionMammal978 The main trick is using three columns.

goodness goodness goodness (grading exams)

@yo' I'm reading a (long) thesis ...

@JosephWright Not @PauloCereda's then?

@DavidCarlisle Nope

@DavidCarlisle One I can actually understand!

Pizza Express booked for UK-TUG meeting :)

Big news ;)

@DavidCarlisle ^^^

Has anyone an idea how information like ===== Image 'img/tikz/ex-figure0' is up-to-date. ====== or [Loading MPS to PDF converter (version 2006.09.02).] can get into the .out file?

@JosephWright Of course, @DavidCarlisle has already chosen his (pseudo)pizza.

@egreg We'll have to get you to come one year ...

@egreg I know they are not entirely authentic, but on my last visit to Italy we couldn't find a real pizza either: regrettably tourist expectations make it tricky

@egreg You could talk about spaces ;)

@egreg Gets us out of the dungeon

@JosephWright In touristic places, you often find “tourist pizza“. :-( Even in Naples, I believe. But if you go to “pizzerias for the natives“, it's a very different thing.

@egreg Yes, I know

@egreg I plan to talk about regexes :)

@JosephWright Northern Italy pizza is usually different from Naples pizza: it's thinner and the outer crust is smaller. In Naples pizza, the outer crust is bigger and swollen: they call it the “cornicione” (literally, cornice).

@egreg I only know the north

@JosephWright I remember very well a pizza at Fuorigrotta, one of the boroughs of Naples. Yummy!

@egreg Recently many Neapolitan pizzerias have also opened in Milan, for example Sorbillo

@CarLaTeX according to trip advisor they do an excellent Hawaiian topping, @egreg should try it.

@DavidCarlisle If you order a pineapple pizza at Sorbillo's, they'll look at you as you are swearing

I just noticed, that my ducksay package seems to be incompatible with \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}. Without this inclusion the animals are printed nicely, but if I use T1 (didn't test with other encodings except OT1) the animals are printed with ligatures, destroying many of them.

@Skillmon example?

@Skillmon presumably all the best ducks are english so only need OT1?

@UlrikeFischer Just load \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\usepackage{ducksay} and use \ducksay{foo}, the duck is distorted.

@DavidCarlisle I'm German...

@Skillmon but not a duck:-)

@DavidCarlisle but the author of the package, and my small-rabbit is also affected :(

@Skillmon you presumably want to add \verbatim@font \@noligs (from verbatim) somewhere

@DavidCarlisle from the package verbatim? As of now I use \frenchspacing and \ttfamily.

@Skillmon no from the latex format.

@Skillmon that would make - active do mean you couldn't use ducksay inside another command, if you want to avoid active characters just put each character in an \mbox as you set them out (I haven't looked at the package source)

@DavidCarlisle wouldn't grouping be enough (putting every character during printout in {})?

@Skillmon in classic tex, but not luatex

@DavidCarlisle I hate (edge) cases like luatex :)

@Skillmon welcome to my world

@DavidCarlisle who does use that anyway?

@Skillmon your future you, most likely

@DavidCarlisle why would it? So long I only needed pdflatex for everything I wanted to do, and only played with xetex and luatex to answer questions on TeX.SX.

@Skillmon do you need arrays large enough that you need 64bit pointers?

@DavidCarlisle not until now (and can't think of a case atm)

@Skillmon so do you still use a 32bit operating system?

@DavidCarlisle of course not :) I meant I don't know a reason for which I'd need 64bit pointers in TeX

@Skillmon no I didn't mean in tex I meant anywhere. The point is if you take a global view justifying, this century, a system based on 256-characater fonts is increasingly hard, and at some point people will stop justifying it.

@DavidCarlisle you don't by chance know out of your extraordinary knowledge and wisdom a code to surround every token in a l3-seq with \mbox{}?

@Skillmon I was just having a quick look at your code:-) @UlrikeFischer's probably done it already:-)

@DavidCarlisle I don't see a pull request nor a branch of my git repo, so at least she didn't show it to me :)

@DavidCarlisle \@noligs didn't help or I used it the wrong way.

\NewDocumentCommand{\AddAnimal}{ s m +v }{%>>>
  \tl_set:Nn \l_tmpa_tl { \ #3 }
  \regex_replace_all:nnN { \r } { \c{tabularnewline}\c{null} } \l_tmpa_tl
  \regex_replace_all:nnN { [\-] } { \c{mbox}\0} \l_tmpa_tl
  \cs_gset_eq:cN { g_ducksay_animal_#2_tl } \l_tmpa_tl
  \keys_define:nn { ducksay } {
    #2 .code:n = \cs_set_eq:Nc \l_ducksay_animal_tl { g_ducksay_animal_#2_tl }
  }
  \IfBooleanT{#1}{
    \keys_define:nn { ducksay } {
      default_animal .meta:n = {#2} }}
}%<<<

@Skillmon that just makes - safe you could add other characters eg [\-<>] or whatever is needed

\@noligs work but you must use it ad definition time (and find a way to disable it again).

@UlrikeFischer I tried to include \@noligs in \AddAnimal with grouping (since the important code storing the stuff in g_ducksay_animal_#2_tl is globally anyway) to no avail.

@Skillmon \@noligs changes catcodes, so like \makeatletter it is to late if you do it in an argument.

@Skillmon you would need to change catcodes before reading the argument, but since you are using regex already just adding one more as above is simpler

@UlrikeFischer that make sense :)

@DavidCarlisle wouldn't it be better to just surround every token with \mbox with a single regex (except for \r and changing that later), or would this be overkill?

@Skillmon possibly, although if you assume there are no letters in the picture part the only ligatures are probably --- and `? and `!

@DavidCarlisle This way it works, but the regex is quite expensive on cpu-time.

@Skillmon blame bruno:-)

@DavidCarlisle good idea :)

@DavidCarlisle Do `? and `! really form ligatures?

@Skillmon yes to inverted Spanish open punctuation

@DavidCarlisle either I'm entering them wrong, they need babel, or not on my pc :)

@Skillmon you have to do what I meant, not what I wrote.

?` and !`

@DavidCarlisle with a leading backslash?

@Skillmon no that's just for the wacky backtick markup here in chat

@DavidCarlisle I just thought you forgot about that, sorry. The other way around they appear as a ligature without ` in the regex.

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
 ?`this?
\end{document}