TeX, LaTeX and Friends

1:41 AM

@FaheemMitha -- a few people still use amstex, but if a manuscript is submitted to ams in amstex, it is rekeyed in latex according to ams style. latex won because so many people had adopted it for the automatic numbering and cross-referencing, and weren't willing to give that up. math could still be typeset without amstex, although painfully in many situations.

@Krishna -- there's a very simple explanation -- we are in many different time zones. i'm in a time zone six hours later than europe, and i know several participants who are three hours later than i am. never mind the handful of users in places like australia, which isn't close to anywhere else.

-- here's what it says on the tug website on the "board" list about spivak's participation: Spivak, Michael
Board member, 1980-1985
Acting Chairman, 1981-1983
Finance Committee, 1982-1983

@FaheemMitha ^^^^^ this was meant for you.

manooooh

2:42 AM

@DavidCarlisle lol! Did you know that I actually write ${(x+y)}^2$ ? I noticed the 2 is a little above than without braces, but I thought the correct way to use superscripts and/or subscripts was adding braces, even if I had to write something like ${\left({(x+y)}^2\right)}^2}...$ . Even in 2018 should I leave this notation? Thanks!

@DavidCarlisle (but I don't use it in, for example, $x\in{\mathbb R\wedge...}$ , I don't use braces there, but I use it in $\lim{f(x)}$ because adds some extra space that I think is necessary for this type of math operator. Also in $\int{...}$ , $\sum{...}$ , etc. In these cases is that correct? I think yes, because there is no visual problem, but you know more than me :))

CarLaTeX

3:13 AM

@Sebastiano Ciao! Happy TeXing!

CarLaTeX

3:25 AM

@Krishna Someone else asked this before: tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6203/do-you-have-a-life

manooooh

3:38 AM

@CarLaTeX "Do you have a life?" sounds like a phrase from a movie. Oh wait, some people spends hours here. Is that question necessary? No? Hmmm... I don't know....

CarLaTeX

4:45 AM

@manooooh I don't remember a movie with that citation but it's very suitable here, lol!

boycott.se - yo'

6:28 AM

@manooooh well, there is basically always a visual problem with braces in math, as it kills space stretchability (I hope I remember this correctly)

Faheem Mitha

6:39 AM

@barbarabeeton Thank you.

@barbarabeeton Could automatic numbering and cross-referencing not be added to amstex, then?

David Carlisle

6:56 AM

@manooooh you shouldn't have {} or \left\right there, just (x+y)^2

@manooooh $\lim{f(x)}$ because adds some extra space the {} do nothing there, f is already a mathord. \sum{...}$, there should be no braces there, you make the following thing a mathord , and box it so that the white space can not be shrunk or stretched to help line breaking.

@FaheemMitha that's what lamstex did, but it was a decade too late, and no one used it. (@barbarabeeton)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I see.

manooooh

10:24 AM

@DavidCarlisle you're right... Take for example $\lim{(1)}$ vs. $\lim (1)$ . The first one adds some extra space (the correct I would say), when the last one it doesn't. I don't care line breaks, I'm asking for the correct way to use math operators

@boycott.se-yo' lol yes

@CarLaTeX :((

Krishna

10:46 AM

@CarLaTeX About the sleep thingy, I thought adults needed atleast 7 hours and children about 9 hours of sleep. I cannot function the next day without sleep. I was genuinely surprised when I saw a few folks zealously helping newcomers here without much thoughts about their personal health

David Carlisle

@manooooh the extra space is so you can go \sin x and get a small separation it isn't needed and not added if you go \sin(x) so \sin{(x)} just means that you are fighting TeX's rules for math layout. that isn't necessarily wrong it is your document and you can make up the rules but certainly the extra braces are not intended, and not generally correct markup there.

Krishna

11:13 AM

Frank Mittelbach just uploaded an interesting package to ctan.....widows and orphans

looks useful

David Carlisle

@Krishna we've been keeping ctan busy this week:-)

Krishna

Hmm... I noticed, latex-bin was upgraded in TL

On a cursory glance, Raphael Pinson's nowidow package seems to provide similar functionality.

David Carlisle

@Krishna yes i saw that in cygwin too, not sure what changed there.

Krishna

@DavidCarlisle Do you know how Frank's package compares to nowidow?

David Carlisle

@Krishna not really,

Krishna

11:20 AM

I am of course trying to impress my viva examiners

@DavidCarlisle Ok. I thought they both affected clubpenalty and such values

Maybe I can use both packages in my thesis :)

David Carlisle

@Krishna not tried either but nowidow is basically a wrapper for setting 10000 penalties to prevent widows, the new package has some options for setting those but the main point is that it warns in the log when there are widows so you can fix them by re-writing or whatever. setting the club and widow penalties rarely does the right thing.

Krishna

I see.

So would you recommend not loading nowidow ?

David Carlisle

3

A: Compromise between too large whitespaces and `\raggedbottom`?

Using \clubpenalty10000 and \widowpenalty10000 is usually not the best way to avoid widow and club lines, especially with \flushbottom as they almost always make the constraints on page makeup impossible to achieve. A typical example is a paragraph in which a last line has a couple of words whic...

@Krishna I guess that was you leaving an issue on Frank's page?

Krishna

Yes. That was me :)

"although in luatex one could consider using the line and page breaking callbacks to automate this." - I am interested in this

How would one go about doing this in luatex ?

David Carlisle

@Krishna with difficulty:-) but in principle you can replace the entire tex line breaking algorithm by specifyng a lua function that does the line breaking, but you have to come up with a better algorithm and code it in lua....

Krishna

11:33 AM

@DavidCarlisle hehe.... alright. So not happening for my thesis :)

Phelype Oleinik

Good morning everyone :)

So I updated TeXLive and one of the new packages has the following (quite curious) code:

      \begin{doublespace}
        \textbf{\small The \@doctype{} committee for \@author{} certifies that this is the approved
        version of the following \MakeLowercase\@doctype:}

        \hbox

        \hbox

        \textbf{\headingsize\@title}

        \hbox

        \hbox
      \end{doublespace}

What is this supposed to do? And more importantly, why doesn't it produce an error?

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik why should it error? Oh you mean the two \hbox ? That can't work!

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle I tried to use an "empty" \hbox like that and got a ! Missing { inserted...

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik yes sorry I was looking at \textbf{\headingsize\@title} which isn't an error, just poor style and didn't notice the hbox:-)

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle :)

user 2646

11:43 AM

to err is human

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik presumably no one in Texas has passed, so the class hasn't been used yet.

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle The thing is, the code apparently runs without problems:

\documentclass[masters]{utexasthesis}

\author{Me}
\title{hbox}
\supervisor{That guy}
\graduationdate{probably}{never}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\end{document}

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik give me a minute...

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Sure :)

David Carlisle

11:58 AM

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{setspace}
\begin{document}

\begin{center}
\begin{doublespace}

zzz

\hbox

\end{doublespace}
\end{center}



\end{document}

@PhelypeOleinik ^^

@PhelypeOleinik AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

@PhelypeOleinik \par is:

> \par=macro:
->\if@newlist \advance \par@deathcycles \@ne \ifnum \par@deathcycles >\@m \@noi
temerr {\@@par }\fi \else {\@@par }\fi .

@PhelypeOleinik which means \hbox followd by a blank line ends up as \hbox{\@@par}

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Ooooooooooo(many more)ooohhh

@DavidCarlisle Works by accident :)

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik as long as you define "work" with care.

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle LOL

@DavidCarlisle "Runs without having to type x in the console to exit" is more appropriate

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik yes

@PhelypeOleinik which means doublespace wasn't involved and you can do

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
x

\hbox


\end{center}

\end{document}

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle As long as you define "can" with care.

David Carlisle

12:05 PM

but you need that x

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle If not in the console, in the source at least XD

daleif

12:30 PM

Any advise on how to debug strange spaces in an area where there are fills?

I have no idea where the space before the comma after Oldstyle 5 comes from, so is trying to debug.

David Carlisle

@daleif start with \showoutput and work back...

@daleif usual suspect is missing % but \showoutput will show that. as you'll see if that is a single space or multiple spaces of ~.3em....

daleif

@DavidCarlisle as far as I can see I've ended every line in the generating code by %. I'll try showoutput (had forgotten the name)

Hmm, it seems to be this one

.....\glue 5.0
.....\pdfstartlink(*+*)x* attr{/Border[0 0 0]/H/I/C[1 0 0]} action goto name{su
bsection.1.3.3}
.....\pdfcolorstack 0 push {0 0.2 0.6 rg 0 0.2 0.6 RG}
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 1
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 .
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 3
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 .
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 3
.....\penalty 10000
.....\glue 2.5 plus 1.49998 minus 0.59998
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 O
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 l
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 d
.....\discretionary
......\T1/ppl/m/it/10 -
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 s
.....\T1/ppl/m/it/10 t

David Carlisle

that is spaces:-) three 2.5pt glue will be three space tokens, almost certainly

daleif

12:45 PM

Note that the other entries does not have this 3x \glue 2.5 plus 1.49998 minus 0.59998

Hmm, just found others. These are online entries in a toc. This is not at the end of a line, it is in the middle of the line. I'm guessing that the method for adding the comma is not working as intended

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