TeX, LaTeX and Friends

yo'

8:29 AM

So silent ... is everyone Rio-bound or what? :)

Joseph Wright

@yo' :)

yo'

@JosephWright solving the sockets problem, I realized the only thing I'll need is a power cord for my notebook (the "Mickey mouse" one)

Joseph Wright

@yo' I have an SK Ross adaptor: they do Brazilian support

yo'

@JosephWright I'm afraid I can't get anything like this here, so I'll have to rely on shops in Rio touristic area being ready for European tourists :-)

Joseph Wright

@yo' You'd hope so!

@yo' I'd have thought the airport has something

@yo' I had to get a new adapter recently, and decided to invest in the best one I could get my hands on

yo'

8:41 AM

@JosephWright may be. I still hope there'll be an electronics shop somewhere that sells the AC cords for local people.

David Carlisle

8:53 AM

@UlrikeFischer Es-tu impressionné par mon français?

Ulrike Fischer

9:12 AM

@DavidCarlisle Moi, je suis une femme, donc je suis impressionnée <- e.

Paulo Cereda

10:38 AM

arara users: try running with -L qn and have fun. :)

David Carlisle

10:54 AM

@UlrikeFischer I'm sure that modern equality rules mean that it's illegal to change words based on a person's gender:-)

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle Cannot you blame the French?

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda no they are world champions they can't be blamed.

@DavidCarlisle $20

@PauloCereda £

@DavidCarlisle ooh

11:01 AM

@PauloCereda 20 GBP =102.248BRL

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle: we could get money from @JosephWright, he got reais

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda You know I had exactly the same thought

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@UlrikeFischer: shouldn't you be in the airport? :)

Ulrike Fischer

@PauloCereda we still have a few hours ...

Paulo Cereda

@UlrikeFischer oh :)

Ulrike Fischer

11:19 AM

@PauloCereda in about four hours we will start vvvv

Paulo Cereda

@UlrikeFischer Yay!

@JosephWright ^^ they are going to the beach

Ulrike Fischer

@PauloCereda not really ;-)

Paulo Cereda

11:36 AM

@UlrikeFischer :)

Marijn

12:41 PM

I don't really like the canonical MWE meta question tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/228/…, I think it should be improved to be more clear for new users

the question talks about a thesis of 100s of pages and multiple files, which is a very specific use case

and the accepted and top voted answer is very long and detailed, without explaining what an MWE is or why we need it

the second answer is better at explaining this, but it is the second answer and it is still rather long and contains some off-site resources that do not really help understanding

so I think that when new people read this they will be confused, intimidated, and still not be able to make a good MWE

does anyone agree on this, and if so, what could be possible improvements?

maybe editing the question and the top answer?

or provide a big link at the start of the question to a new FAQ-type of question?

David Carlisle

12:56 PM

@Marijn the second answer is only the second answer as it has less votes and isnt accepted, if another answer is posted that gets more votes then it will bubble up. The question seems clear enough to me and is fairly clear that "thesis" just is an example document that is too long to post and teh question isn't really specific to theses.

Marijn

@DavidCarlisle I immediately believe that it is clear for you because you are one of the most productive contributors to the site - my point is that the question is not clear to everybody, i.e., not foolproof and newbie-friendly, whereas this question is one of the very few questions that should be exactly that. It's a manual/tutorial FAQ for the site, and I think it can be made much clearer than it is now.

and a new answer will not rise to the top any time soon because the accepted answer is a. accepted and b. has 168 votes.

David Carlisle

@Marijn I can understand your concern that the answers are too long but I don't think I agree with your concern about the question. can you suggest (here) a re-wording?

@Marijn yes but that's how the site works, you shouldn't try to subvert that for a specific question. If there is a flaw in the voting mechanisms they apply to every question and shouldn't just be avoided for this one alone.

Marijn

in general I agree with that, but this is a special question - it is not so much a real question, it is a FAQ entry (which should imho be in the Help Center and not on Meta, but as long as it is there I think a special treatment might be a good idea to improve the guidance to new users).

David Carlisle

@Marijn perhaps but as I say, how would you re-word the question?

Marijn

I'm working on it :)

I was posting some question about this strange thing LaTeX is doing when I try to compile my ---thesis--- **document**. Someone asked me to provide a minimal **working** example that reproduces the problem. My ---thesis--- **document** ---is now a few hundred pages long and spans along ten different source files!--- **has many pages and uses a lot of packages**. How am I supposed to know what or where is the cause of the problem?

Do you have any hints or ideas on how should I go about producing such a small example?

hm the markdown didn't work

that's strange

I was posting some question about this strange thing LaTeX is doing when I try to compile my __document__. Someone asked me to provide a minimal __working__ example that reproduces the problem. My __document has many pages and uses a lot of packages__. How am I supposed to know what or where is the cause of the problem?

Do you have any hints or ideas on how should I go about producing such a small example?

ok never mind the formatting :)

David Carlisle

1:17 PM

@Marijn yes multi-line cut-n-paste is assumed to be verbatim her but don't worry about that. I'll let your comment sit there for a bit for others to comment (I starred it)

Marijn

ok thank you

barbara beeton

1:34 PM

@UlrikeFischer -- i hope he has a pleasant and safe flight.

5

marmot

2:29 PM

@Marijn Please recall that people answer the questions for fun. So I think that it is the good right of everyone to ask for an MWE. At least I cannot see anything wrong with it. Or are you suggesting to forbid people to ask for an MWE?

Marijn

@marmot no, that is not what I am saying at all :) currently, when people ask for an MWE (which I am very happy they do, I do it myself too, many, many times, and we should all keep doing that), then they usually refer to this specific meta question that explains what an MWE is. The issue is that I think this meta question and the answers to it are not clear.

marmot

@Marijn Well, I do not fully disagree with that statement but certainly do not feel I could do a better job either. But if you could do a better job, I will be happy to upvote your post (if it is really better ;-).

phollox

Does anyone have a quick advice about redefining/patching class defined macros \NewDocumentCommand. I'm trying to use xpatch without success. Should I try regexpatch? Would that work? Maybe I should address this question directly to @egreg. Thanks

Marijn

2:45 PM

@phollox a 'quick advice' is a bit vague - it may be better to follow the general procedure of the site, which is too see if there are any questions already on the site that may address your issue, to read the manuals of xpatch and regexpatch (and etoolbox), to search Google for a specific error message. And if that doesn't help you, then you can ask a new question on the main site and you will probably get a reply quickly, maybe even from @egreg :)

egreg

@phollox Neither xpatch nor regexpatch support patching xparse defined macros and never will.

phollox

@Marijn Sorry for not following procedure. First time using the chat. I already posted my question on the main site, and managed to narrow my needs to xpatch. I found out that it doesn't work with `xparse' defined macros. Didn't knew that it was related to \NewDocumentCommand. I have a lot of catch up reading to do. Thanks again

@egreg thanks. Big fan of yours here. I'll look for option. Thanks again

Marijn

@phollox no problem, you didn't break any rules or something... I just tried to explain what the regular (and often best, although not always) way is to solve an issue, which is to use the main site.

@marmot the reason I mentioned this in chat is that 1. a new answer to the current meta question will not be very visible because the existing answers have 150+ votes, so it would take a long time for a new answer to go up, even when it is very good and many people vote for it, and also the accepted answer should be changed, which is a community decision that should be discussed - and 2. this would not solve the issue with the question, so I could [...]

@marmot either 3. edit the question, and the answers, but with such an important canonical question that should be again a community decision, or 4. start a new question with a self-answer, but that would not get a lot of attention and add redundancy to the site

marmot

3:06 PM

@Marijn This might all be but this is how that system works. Everyone, even @egreg and @DavidCarlisle, has just one vote per question/answer, and I do not think the chat is made for drawing extra attention to something that should be discussed on the meta site.

Marijn

@marmot this is a special question that may need special treatment, because it is not really a question but a FAQ entry

and I think it may be a good idea to discuss it on meta itself, with comments or with edits or with new answers or new questions etc, but since it is such a special question I thought it would be a good idea to bring it up in chat first before doing anything with the question itself

which is what chat is for, among other things

in my opinion it would be better do delete the question entirely, and instead put a section on MWEs in the Help Center with a clear explanation, without all the noise and scattered information from comments and multiple answers on the current meta question, which I think is hard for new users to read and understand

but as long as it is a meta question we might be able to improve on that, either very very slowly through the normal voting, editing and accepting mechanisms, or very fast by making a few changes agreed upon by a small number of regular users in chat

David Carlisle

3:51 PM

@marmot but @PauloCereda has a whole army of robot voters

Faheem Mitha

Hi folks.

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle quack

David Carlisle

Is it possible to accept an edit that's been rejected in the review queue?

Faheem Mitha

I'm writing what I imagine is TikZ syntax, but `\\` isn't splitting the line. I'm guessing that's normal behavior, but is there any way to force this? Example code:

\node at (3.0,-3.2){\textbf{foo\\ bar}};

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha specify the node width then it is a minipage not an mbox (or put a tabular in the node)

Paulo Cereda

3:57 PM

@DavidCarlisle or text width

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle By default, what is the thing inside the node?

Is it an mbox then?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes

Paulo Cereda

\node [font=\bfseries, text width=1.5cm, align=center] at (3.0,-3.2){foo\\ bar};

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda I knew that (I have a gold badge)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I see. Thank you.

@PauloCereda Thank you.

@Marijn One way to do is to simply by bisection. Remove half of your document and see if you can reproduce the problem. Then try the other part. One of those two parts would hopefully exhibit the problem.

Then just keep repeating. I don't actually do this myself, because I usually have a fairly good idea where the error is coming from, but if you really have no idea, that's a reasonable strategy.

@Marijn Actually, looking that that text again, it seems possible that is not a question you are actually asking, in which case, please ignore.

marmot

4:11 PM

@DavidCarlisle Really crazy that this comes from one of his robots... something's terribly wrong here, I seem to be the only normal marmot here ;-)

Faheem Mitha

Though really efficient strategies for producing an MWE might be useful. I always feel I spend more time than necessary coming up with them, myself.

@marmot What makes a marmot normal? Just wondering.

Anonymous

5:06 PM

Could you figure out why the following code does not produce a correct animation? I compile with pdflatex with shell-escape enabled?

\documentclass[margin=10mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{filecontents,graphicx}

\begin{filecontents*}{test.tex}
\documentclass[tikz,margin=10mm]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\foreach \r in {.1,.2,...,1.5}{%
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \fill[black] (0,0) rectangle (6,6);
    \fill[yellow] (3,3) circle (\r);
\end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}
\end{filecontents*}


\immediate\write18{pdflatex test.tex}

\usepackage{animate}
\begin{document}
\animategraphics[autoplay,controls,loop,scale=1]{5}{test}{}{}
\end{document}

My TeX Live is already updated last month.

Please poke me if you answer my question above. Thanks!

StrongBad

@DavidCarlisle diamond moderators can accept rejected edits, but regular users cannot. While you can could copy and paste the edit from the review timeline, it might be worth telling the mods so they can tell off whoever rejected a good edit.

Circumscribe

5:27 PM

Hello, everyone.

I have a tremendously pertinent question, which I'm almost afraid to ask...

Why ducks?

(I mean, I like ducks, but I also like squirrels. I feel like I'm missing out on some implicit reference.)

(I also don't object to marmots)

David Carlisle

@Circumscribe because they are tasty?

@PauloCereda ^^

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle oh no

David Carlisle

@StrongBad thanks I suspected as much.

Circumscribe

@DavidCarlisle certainly true :D

David Carlisle

@Circumscribe in answer to your original question there is no reason other than @PauloCereda's infectious silliness (fortunately I am immune)

Circumscribe

5:36 PM

@DavidCarlisle Ah, thanks. I'll try not to get infected then.

Torbjørn T.

5:54 PM

@FaheemMitha You don't need the text width actually, align=center is enough to allow for linebreaks with \`. But with text width` you get automatic line breaking as well, as the node becomes a minipage like box.

Faheem Mitha

6:28 PM

@TorbjørnT. Yes, I see. I don't think I want automatic line breaking, actually.

What's the easiest way to get the effect of letters of a word spread out uniformly with a given space between letters?

Torbjørn T.

@FaheemMitha \textls from the microtype package?

Faheem Mitha

@TorbjørnT. I'll check it out, thanks.

Circumscribe

@Marijn My opinion probably doesn't carry much weight, but I agree that this meta question about MWEs is not a very good place to link to when someone has no idea what an MWE is.

The actual question and the accepted answer aren't about what an MWE is, but about how you can create one if you're working on a long document.

Since the accepted answer is a community wiki answer, couldn't someone prepend a brief summary of what an MWE is to it?

Something like:

A Minimal Working Example (MWE) is a short (La)TeX document that should be

- an **example**<br>
It should either reproduce the problem you are experiencing or produce output that is as close to the desired output as you have managed to come.
- **working**<br>
Others should be able to compile [I never know, is "compile" the right word?] your MWE or attempting to do so should produce the error message that you don't understand. Make sure your MWE starts with `\documentclass` and ends with `\end{document}`

(Though I'm sure someone could improve on that.)

(by not using 'output' twice in the same sentence, for starters)

David Carlisle

6:59 PM

@Circumscribe @Marijn I never link to (any) answer if asking someone to post a mwe I always just write some one-off text for that answer, I only link to the how to make a MWE answer if someone is failing to cut their example down and still says it is too lo post after two or three comment exchange, so for that use I'd want the answer to stay focused on how to cut down text rather than answer "what is a MWE"

Circumscribe

@DavidCarlisle Clear. I've seen multiple people post links to it though, and I may have done so once or twice myself (though I believe I also added a very brief description of what an MWE is).

I'll stop adding the link.

Marijn

7:14 PM

@Circumscribe I like your proposal, together with a bit of 'why you should do this' as explained in the second answer to the meta question, that I actually like better than the first answer

@DavidCarlisle indeed I also write custom texts for each new question, because I don't like the meta question, but it does feel mostly repetitive and I would link to the meta question if it were more to the point

Also many people do link to the meta question, as @Circumscribe also mentioned

David Carlisle

@Marijn personally I think all these boilerplate meta texts are over used

7

A: Welcome page needs more welcoming

If I happen to be first to a "new user" I often add a "welcome to tex.sx" comment, but have never linked to the page and I agree with percusse that the "if you wish to familiarize yourself with our format." in one of the boilerplate comments does have negative connotations. Really I don't think ...

Marijn

7:28 PM

@DavidCarlisle I agree about the generic boilerplate text being unnecessary sometimes, but asking for an MWE is something specific to comment when a question is missing an MWE (while it would be helpful for that question to include one), therefore it is a good comment to make, and that can be boilerplate as long as it is a decent boilerplate

like virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Railway/en/ag/lg16.jpg

David Carlisle

@Marijn on the general theme of recyling old answers of mine:-) I don't know, if people only commented if they had time to write a comment rather than linking to some standard answer, perhaps there would be fewer comments which on teh whole might be a good thing:

22

A: Should we "educate" (new) users by not answering until...?

Personally I think you should only ask for a MWE if the presence of an MWE would help you to answer the question. A MWE almost always helps even if only to avoid the answerer having to write some standard article class boilerplate to make a test file. But it doesn't always help, and unless you ...

Marijn

@DavidCarlisle in this case I do think that a text a bit longer than a comment could help to clarify the issue to a new user, for instance to show an example of what they are supposed to do

also sometimes when I ask for an MWE it is not strictly necessary to answer the question correctly, but I still ask for one because I am too lazy to write the code of the problem myself, where I would rather spend time writing code for the solution

manooooh

7:44 PM

I think the welcoming is well-receive for any user, with an only "Welcome to TeX-SX!".

and a link to the "Getting started" is OK for me.

Marijn

I usually phrase it as 'TeX.SE', not SX

although I think that sometimes new users don't know what the abbreviation SE means, or why I'm saying TeX instead of LaTeX

manooooh

Oh yes, you are right.

David Carlisle

@Marijn the problem with .se as a shorthand is that it is a real top level domain. (We had some meta question discussing that somewhere)

manooooh

Do you want to treat new users like idiots? By not knowing the acronyms they will not unsubscribe from the page or think badly.

They just need a few minutes to understand the basics of SE.

Marijn

I don't want to treat them like idiots, I think that somebody that wants to use the site doesn't mind if they don't understand stuff at first

but I do think it might be confusing to see an unknown acronym as the first message that you receive

manooooh

7:52 PM

If the person liked the site he will start to enter more often, looking for other questions related to his. In these cases they often meet with these acronyms, and until they do not understand them, it will be difficult for them to follow the question/answer mode proposed here.

Quack quack @CarLaTeX!

Circumscribe

@DavidCarlisle .sx is also a real tld (though not nearly as common)

David Carlisle

@Circumscribe that occurred to me as I was typing but I couldn't be bothered to check. perhaps i should have said, people from the real .se domain objected:-)

CarLaTeX

@manooooh Quack! tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7473/101651

David Carlisle

3 hours ago, by David Carlisle

@Circumscribe in answer to your original question there is no reason other than @PauloCereda's infectious silliness (fortunately I am immune)

manooooh

"I am Herr Professor Paulinho van Duck" ha ha !!!

CarLaTeX

8:18 PM

@manooooh not the soccer player :)

manooooh

@CarLaTeX in p. 303 the Professor adds a link: tug.org/TUGboat/tb38-2/tb119beet.pdf to an article of Barbara Beeton about how to debug the code, but the link is dropped :(

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX for some reason I never got past section 2 to read the stuff about mwe

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle I think you don't need it :)

yo'

So I wonder, when does everyone arrive at Rio? For me it's Tuesday 17th, 19:35 local time.

David Carlisle

@manooooh tug.org/TUGboat/tb38-2/tb119beet.pdf

CarLaTeX

8:22 PM

@manooooh Strange, I can download it...

David Carlisle

@CarLaTeX you mean I didn't need the cruel remarks in section 2? I agree!

manooooh

Thank you @DavidCarlisle!

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Cruel? There are no cruel remarks in van Duck's article!

David Carlisle

@manooooh (@barbarabeeton) there is a spurious tug.org/TUGboat in the middle of the URL

manooooh

David Carlisle

8:25 PM

@CarLaTeX true, same as there is no pizza in Hawaii

CarLaTeX

@DavidCarlisle Exactly :P

manooooh

@DavidCarlisle yes yes I found it!!. "tug.org/.../tug.org" twice :P

Ok I will continue reading

David Carlisle

@manooooh the article used the shorthand url starting tug.org/TugBoat.... but as there is no https:// that is interpreted as a relative link and...

manooooh

Ya

@CarLaTeX There is a mwe package?!?! Any user from here used it to show his problem?

Is the package that reproduces the appearance of an image with crosses and gray colors (and other stuffs)?

David Carlisle

@manooooh the package supplies the example-image and example-image-a etc that are used in numerous answers. the rest of the package is less useful, just some dummy text genetrators etc, so you often use the mwe package distribution even if not loading the mwe package

manooooh

8:40 PM

@DavidCarlisle I get it

I loved the duck-PDF!! It is very pleasant to read the paragraphs. However, I would have liked to read also that when someone does not like the answer they have given or believes that it does not contribute to solving the problem, he has the possibility to give a negative vote (within section 3.4)...

David Carlisle

@manooooh down voting seems so anti-social I only downvote spam (I know that's not the way the network is supposed to work:-)

manooooh

8:56 PM

@DavidCarlisle but... the arrow pointing down is for that, to warn that the question is not clear, does not show dedication or even has something to do with the purpose of this site.

So for that take it off

I found the first question here in TeX.SE!! We all know that the links of the questions has in the middle a number, which corresponds to the number of the question made here. If I am not wrong, the first question is this!! Those people who are from that time should be very proud of how much this site has progressed :)

However, when changing the number 1 to the 2, the question that appears dates from the year 2010. It is fine, but it has been marked as "duplicated" because ... "it has already been asked before!" question here. Sometimes I am surprised by this site, and this is one of the reasons. Who in your soul and body occurs to put that mark to the second question of the site.....?

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- i'll have to take this up with karl; his stand has been that requiring a visible http:// or https:// just makes line-breaking harder (which is very true). it seems that we will have to be work harder in making the links two-level, with the short version visible, and the actual workable link in the underlayer. sigh.

manooooh

@barbarabeeton why not use a shortener url, like bit.ly?

Marijn

by the way, what is the 'Accessibility workshop' that is advertised on the main site?

barbara beeton

@manooooh -- we do sometimes, but not often. the full content of the url has information that can be useful otherwise; for tugboat references, it provides the location of the full issue, which can't be divined from a bit.ly shorthand. (maybe nobody else uses this information, but i've had to on quote a few occasions. i've also been known to type in references incorrectly, though i try hard not to.)

manooooh

@barbarabeeton you are right. It lost information when shortening URLs. I thought the full URL was shown in the lower left corner but the bit.ly link also appears (in Google Chrome) :/

barbara beeton

9:12 PM

@Marijn -- as i understand it, the "accessibility workshop" is designed to share information about the requirements for making documents usable by readers who have limited vision or other reasons that they are unable to read a pdf file on an ordinary monitor, and how best to adhere to those requirements. in other words, how to make it possible for everyone with an interest to gain access to the information.

Marijn

@barbarabeeton thanks for the info, who is organizing it and why? (although I agree of course that this is an issue that deserves attention)

David Carlisle

@Marijn latex team suggested it as Ross will be there (and talking about tagged pdf earlier in the day)

@manooooh that looks pretty horrible in the primary, printed paper, version of tugboat, but it should be easy enough to make the liks have full url but omit the http(s):// bit from the link text

manooooh

9:32 PM

@DavidCarlisle for me it isn't horrible at all. Links that use 50 characters or more separated with +20, or I don't know what symbols, is disgusting to see. In a paper I am making the rules say that the links should be shortened with any shortening program. Even the sheets should be printed (in gray, so the shortened links of the references will not be blue/light blue). Of course there is nothing written about it

What does seem right to me is the point that @barbarabeeton points out

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$TeX - LaTeX$ TeX, LaTeX and Friends