TeX, LaTeX and Friends

TeXnician

05:58

Some people are brave:

yes i want the re-implement in the SIunitx. without using the package — Saravanan.O 2 mins ago

Skillmon

06:37

@TeXnician very brave!

David Carlisle

06:57

@TeXnician perhaps finally we will get a proper implementation:-)

Ulrike Fischer

07:45

@DavidCarlisle pgf broke the interfaces package (unmaintained since 2011 ...) by using \scantokens.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Yay!

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer the error message had \scantokens written all over it but I didn't bother tracing last night:-)

@JosephWright github/fix-interfaces......

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle yes same with me.

@DavidCarlisle The main things that broke are imho all the redefinitions of internal pgfkeys commands so some public tikz/pgf developer is needed here ...

David Carlisle

08:01

@UlrikeFischer or as I think I saw you comment under the question, just declare the interface package as not working, and move on....

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle much better idea.

David Carlisle

08:15

Another question answered by not using one of my packages...

Ulrike Fischer

08:33

Did anyone get a luaotfload update with texlive?

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer I have an up to date tl, what version do you expect? by the way vvv

 %% FIXME  The date is meaningless, we need to find a way to
    %%        use the git revision instead.
    [2018/10/28 v.2.93  OpenType layout system]

@UlrikeFischer couldn't l3build fill that in now....

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I expect Lua module: luaotfload-main 2019-05-18 2.97 in a log. Where is the FIXMe from?

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer luaotfload.sty

@UlrikeFischer -main.lua has

local ProvidesLuaModule = {
    name          = "luaotfload-main",
    version       = "2.96",       --TAGVERSION
    date          = "2019-02-14", --TAGDATE

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle oh, looks as if the tagging is missing this. Will check.

@DavidCarlisle I will write to the texlive list. lualibs came on sunday, but luaotfload seems to be lost.

Ulrike Fischer

09:16

@DavidCarlisle found the error, a period too much ... But I'm a bit disappointed that Petra didn't complain.

David Carlisle

10:05

@UlrikeFischer I have lots of complaints from Petra in my mail archive that I could forward if you feel you are missing out

Ulrike Fischer

10:44

@DavidCarlisle second hand complaints ;-(

daleif

11:20

Ulrike regarding the missing update in tl, what kind of hello doc do we need to trigger that information?

Sorry my bad, too used to look in the console log.

Fully up to date from Danish mirror (dotsrc.org)

Lua module: luaotfload-main 2019-02-14 2.96 luaotfload entry point
Lua module: luaotfload-init 2019-02-14 2.96 luaotfload submodule / initializatio
n
Lua module: lualibs 2019-05-18 2.65 ConTeXt Lua standard libraries.
Lua module: lualibs-extended 2019-05-18 2.65 ConTeXt Lua libraries -- extended c
ollection.
Lua module: luaotfload-log 2019-02-14 2.96 luaotfload submodule / logging
Lua module: luaotfload-parsers 2019-02-14 2.96 luaotfload submodule / filelist
Lua module: luaotfload-configuration 2019-02-14 2.96 luaotfload submodule / conf

Ulrike Fischer

@daleif every document compiled with lualatex is fine, as it shows the version of luaotfload-main. But the update is really missing, it should now say 2019-05-18 2.97.

daleif

@UlrikeFischer seems so, the Danish mirror is usually quite fast with its updates once they are running again after a new TL release.

I'm assuming that since luaotfload is an internal component in lualatex, that is why it never shows up under \filelist

Ulrike Fischer

11:36

@daleif lua files aren't shown anyway, but I added everywhere the module messages, so at least the log is rather clear now.

Skillmon

12:58

I don't know why, but I wrote a parser that translates \romaji{niku} into にく the last night. Does anybody know whether such thing already exists in LaTeX? (I know there is kanaparser for LuaTeX, but only found out by chance when I entered texdoc kana)

Oh, and \romaji{TABERU} translates to タベル (guess what that means in English)

Faheem Mitha

13:19

I'm trying to partially rewrite some TeX code into LuaTeX.

So, I understand that one includes Lua code in TeX using \directlua. And called to e.g. tex.sprint are sent to TeX.

But suppose I want to replace part of a string I'm sending to TeX (using sprint) with a Lua function, say.

How would that work?

(I realise this is vague. I'm just thinking aloud.)

David Carlisle

14:37

@FaheemMitha I am not sure what you mean, you would normally execute the lua first and then tex.print its result to return it to tex

Faheem Mitha

14:57

@DavidCarlisle I didn't/don't have a clear question. Just experimenting. Trying to get a feeling for how it works. What's possible.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha I recommend studying the chickenize package, despite the silly name and silly default behaviour (changing every word to "chicken") it's clear code and well documented, i learnt a lot from it.

5

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle texdoc chickenize?

Or just the source code?

And LuaTeX, I assume.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha both (but source code mostly)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

Wow, that's a awful lot of Lua code.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha but actually doc from texdoc is quite good with tutorials on lua callbacks

Faheem Mitha

15:02

@DavidCarlisle Sorry, I didn't follow that.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes but look at the doc it is a lot of different text manipulation functions and each is more or less independently coded, so quite easy to follow

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok. Doc of chickenize?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes part II starting on page 10 is not doc for the package but general documentation on how to code in luatex

Faheem Mitha

Is it a hard requirement for LuaTeX that all existing TeX and LaTeX packages keep on working without change?

@DavidCarlisle Oh? Ok, looking.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it is not even an aim. luatex is explicitly, by design,not compatible with tex.

Faheem Mitha

15:04

@DavidCarlisle So packages can break?

Even LaTeX packages?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes and any pdftex font related package is probably sub-optimal in luatex even if it doesn't actually give errors

Faheem Mitha

The version of chickenize I have is v0.2.5. Is this up to date?

@DavidCarlisle Well, that's discouraging.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok, thank you.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha pdftex font packages are almost all related to squeezing characters into 256-character fonts in weird tex-specific encodings. luatex (and xetex) use system fonts in Unicode encoding so almost everything that a pdftex font package does is not needed

Faheem Mitha

15:07

That tutorial does indeed look interesting. Thanks for the tip.

noob

Please help me with this question

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56250062/how-to-calculate-the-double-integration-in-r

Phelype Oleinik

@FaheemMitha All packages can break, except for @DavidCarlisle's

2

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik well that is true.

Faheem Mitha

@PhelypeOleinik Good to know.

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle ;-)

@DavidCarlisle I was especially amused by the amount of typewriter questions in the past few days.

David Carlisle

15:09

@PhelypeOleinik scary that people actually use it, I thought it was a joke. But then I thought afterpage was a joke as well and people use that....

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Moral: don't upload jokes to CTAN :-)

Ulrike Fischer

nobody told me that the new tugboat is there ...

3

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Since you are apparently around for the moment, what are your thoughts on SILE, if any?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha I have seen a couple of talks and read a couple of papers but not motivated to try it yet,

@FaheemMitha beware of software with a user base of 1, no matter how good it is....

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle How do you know it has a user base of 1? Evidence suggests it is higher.

Issues and pull requests, for example.

Actually, one of our high rep users over in U&L is the second largest contributor behind Simon. Namely Caleb.

David Carlisle

15:17

@FaheemMitha well perhaps. Also it was a while (year?) ago I last looked so it may be a few more now but still same applies, replace 1 by 10 or 100 or whatever guess you think reasonable.

Skillmon

@UlrikeFischer nobody told me, either.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle It's certainly not very large.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha for me the use of a marked up document as communication is as important as the typesetting aspect so a markup language with a small user base is a fundamental problem

Faheem Mitha

That chickenze tutorial recommends:

\directlua{dofile("filename")}

I was doing:

\directlua{luamacro = require "foo.lua"}

Are these equivalent or not? Should one prefer the first for some reason?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha usual these days is \directlua{require("filename")}

Faheem Mitha

15:22

@DavidCarlisle Oh. But these all do the same thing, right?

Sometimes require has brackets, sometimes it doesn't. It's confusing.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha dofile is lower level than require (require doesn't reload already loaded packages), like \usepackage luamacro= would grab any retuned object (although name a bit odd as it would not be a macro)

@FaheemMitha that is just lua string syntax can be " delimited or [[ delimited, affects the quoting rules

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha oh you meant () brackets not [] again just Lua syntax being forgiving for functions that take a single string argument

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha There are places you can shortcut, but the parenthesis here are always allowed

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I see.

@JosephWright Ok.

Ulrike Fischer

15:40

@JosephWright did you see the article from Hans in tugboat?

Phelype Oleinik

I was reading Barbara's editorial comments in the new TUGBoat, and came across the Diacritics to die for: Brill (nice name :). Does the link for the slides mentioned there (www.tiro.com/John/Hudson-Brill-DECK.pdf) work for any of you? Since that question was asked I couldn't access that pdf.

David Carlisle

15:59

@PhelypeOleinik tiro.com/John/Hudson-Brill-DECK.pdf works for me

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle For me it never loads. ping www.tiro.com doesn't reach :/

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik works for me, so i don't care:-)

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Where are those “you are mean” messages when I need one?

David Carlisle

Apr 20 at 11:48, by David Carlisle

Jun 29 '17 at 16:15, by Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle you are not mean :)

--- tiro.com ping statistics ---
12 packets transmitted, 12 received, 0% packet loss, time 11012ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 165.872/166.656/167.886/0.766 ms

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Close enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

David Carlisle

16:04

@PhelypeOleinik ^^

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Not that I'm asking anything, but did you know of send.firefox.com? ;-)

David Carlisle

@PhelypeOleinik send.firefox.com/download/071e6bf53cb2aac5/…

Phelype Oleinik

@DavidCarlisle Thanks :D

6 mins ago, by David Carlisle

Apr 20 at 11:48, by David Carlisle

Jun 29 '17 at 16:15, by Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle you are not mean :)

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda ^^

Paulo Cereda

16:24

@DavidCarlisle ooh

Faheem Mitha

16:37

Do all sprint calls within one Lua file share state? In the sense that if I was to define a TeX/LaTeX macro in one call, future calls in that same file would know about it?

I'm assuming it's the same TeX "process", for lack of a different word, being fed tokens in single session.

barbara beeton

17:12

@UlrikeFischer -- I routinely announce to the TUG board when my copy arrives. Should I do that here too?

Paulo Cereda

@barbarabeeton quack <3

barbara beeton

@PhelypeOleinik -- I've just checked, and it loaded immediately. (Sometimes links do disappear between the time an issue is sent to the printer and when it's received in one's mailbox, but this one's okay here. And I did test by copy-and-pasting what you posted, so you did enter it correctly.)

@PauloCereda -- Likewise.

Phelype Oleinik

@barbarabeeton Thanks for checking! I think it's some region issue, because since that question was posted I didn't get to open the link (the browser spends some minutes trying to connect and then gives up). David sent it to me though :)

@PauloCereda Does this link work for you? tiro.com/John/Hudson-Brill-DECK.pdf

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha no it doesn't work that way at all, Lua shares state but anything you write back to tex works just as if you \input a file with that string at that point so it is just inserted into the tex document at that point and executed by the main tex procrss and subject to any text grouping at that point.

Ulrike Fischer

17:30

@barbarabeeton normally we get a mail about it, perhaps it comes tomorrow.

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik oh, Katakana.

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon Katawhat?

Skillmon

@PhelypeOleinik that smiley uses the Katakana character "chi", it's a Japanese script.

Phelype Oleinik

@Skillmon Oh, nice. I knew it was something I can't access from my keyboard, but I didn't know from where :)

Paulo Cereda

17:46

@PhelypeOleinik no, it does not resolve.

Probably our backbone.

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I wonder if we should/can do something about crop.sty. It has no luatex code and this has some curious side effects: it tests for pdftex by testing for \pdfoutput. And so with luatex it either doesn't use the pdftex code, or if microtype is loaded (which gives \pdfoutput a definition) it fails because of the missing \pdfpagewidth:

\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\show\pdfoutput
\usepackage{microtype}
\show\pdfoutput
\usepackage[center,cam,a4]{crop}
\begin{document}
blub
\end{document}

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Well, ok. That's what I meant. But I guess your point was that (for example) if a macro was defined inside a group somewhere in the TeX input, then it would be invisible outside that group?

After messing around with LuaTeX a bit, I realise I don't understand how it works. Take this example.

gist.github.com/fc89c3f55dcfdf9e2dbb0f8d770d5b52

egreg

@PhelypeOleinik If you send me a mail, I can send you back the PDF. You should easily find my address looking at my profile page: follow the home page link and look at the bottom.

Faheem Mitha

How does tex.sprint distinguish the variable "row.name" from the characters "row.name"? It's a Lua variable (I guess?) but how does TeX know that?

Does it have access to some context I don't know about?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Huh?

@FaheemMitha Lua carries out it's work, and passes the result back to TeX

Faheem Mitha

17:55

Consider the line:

 tex.sprint(-2,row.name)

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha So you send back to TeX a string comprising the value of row.name: TeX sees no Lua

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Oh, right. Sorry, I was being dumb.

Phelype Oleinik

@PauloCereda Hm. Apparently that page doesn't like Brazilians :-)

Paulo Cereda

@PhelypeOleinik ~~who does~~ heuhehuehueheuheue

:)

Phelype Oleinik

@egreg David already sent it: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/50392743#50392743. Thanks a lot anyway :)

@PauloCereda You are ~~right~~ mean :-)

Paulo Cereda

18:03

@PhelypeOleinik oh no

@PauloCereda you are not mean :)

9 secs ago, by Paulo Cereda

@PauloCereda you are not mean :)

4

ooh

@PhelypeOleinik we are good people. :)

Phelype Oleinik

@PauloCereda LOL

barbara beeton

Readers of TUGboat, now that I've got your attention here. I'd like to do a little survey. Are there topics that you'd like to see more of? Conversely, are there topics that you'd like to see less of? Obviously, I'd like to see more articles that are understandable by non-experts, but it's a hard sell trying to persuade people to write them. And obviously, I'm happier if I find a topic interesting. But ideas are welcome. Thanks.

Ulrike Fischer

18:36

@barbarabeeton My husband joined TUG mainly because of the DuckBoat column. He claims that he would develop a bipolar disorder without it. He sometimes exaggerates.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer is the author still contactable do you know?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle I found a github site: github.com/drehscheibe

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer oh last commit 2017 the date in the tl version is 2003, push a PR for luatex?

Ulrike Fischer

@DavidCarlisle it doesn't harm to try.

Skillmon

18:58

@PauloCereda you are not mean :)

@PauloCereda now you can cite another person.

Paulo Cereda

@Skillmon awww <3

Thanks, mr. rabbit!

Skillmon

@PauloCereda you're welcome, mr. duck!

barbara beeton

@UlrikeFischer -- I think exaggeration is endemic with husbands. I noticed that he was the impetus behind "Die Walküre"; delightful! (If a bit noisy.) Gordon and I attended a week-long seminar on the Ring at the Peabody Institute; were treated to a couple of different films of all four operas, plus background, theory, analysis, etc. (But they missed out on Anna Russell's interpretation.) Since Gordon and I met in an Althochdeutsch class, this was a natural. (I hope we will see you at TUG 2019.)

Phelype Oleinik

@barbarabeeton I really like writing macros (more than I like their output on paper :), but I'm rather new to this whole thing, so the ones I like most are the tutorial ones. I have read Stephan v. Bechtolsheim's tutorial articles (namely “\string and \csname”, “A tutorial on \expandafter”, and “A tutorial on \futurelet”) probably far too many times. I like them because they are thorough in one single concept, so they are excellent for learning the very basics of how these primitives work.

@barbarabeeton Another very good one is Joseph's “Exploring \romannumeral and expansion”, which gives an excellent explanation on expansion. As a beginner I found (and often still find) it really difficult to understand the basics of writing TeX code, so these tutorials are a great help.

Joseph Wright

@PhelypeOleinik /Blush

barbara beeton

19:06

@PhelypeOleinik -- Those are good examples. Can you suggest other primitives that you would like to see examined? (Then I can go searching for potential authors.)

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright ;-)

Joseph Wright

@barbarabeeton Get @DavidCarlisle to write about \outer ;)

2

Faheem Mitha

So, if I want to pass TeX code interspersed with Lua variables, would I be correct to think I need to use string concatenation?

Phelype Oleinik

@barbarabeeton Right now I can't name any, but when I remember one I'll let you know :-)

Faheem Mitha

I guess I could test it...

David Carlisle

19:09

@FaheemMitha yes there is no structured connection you just generate a string and re-parse from tex, unless you manipulate nodes directly

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok. I read about nodes. I didn't understand it, though. Seemed TeX-specific.

Like TeX structures exposed at the Lua level.

In that case, I'm at a disadvantage, not really knowing TeX.

@DavidCarlisle So functionally tex.sprint behaves similarly to the Lua print command? That seems to be the case.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well yes except it prints to the tex input buffer not the terminal

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- and why \outer has been "disallowed" in latex. (My instincts were developed with plain tex, and, honestly, I miss \outer!)

David Carlisle

19:24

@barbarabeeton because it is the most useless annoying feature in tex. If I had my way we'd \let\outer\undefined

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Right

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle ^^

user280247

Hi!, I've a rather opinion based question but the margins in book class seems to large, is there any agreement on how to set those margins to 'normal' values?

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle and @CarLaTeX -- Here's a news flash for you (for different reasons).

@DavidCarlisle -- Well, it has saved my hide more than once. We will just have to agree to differ.

CarLaTeX

@barbarabeeton Indeed it may be a sensible reason to get extinct!

David Carlisle

19:37

@santimirandarp it's not that the margins are large, it's that A4 paper is wide

@barbarabeeton you are allowed to be wrong sometimes:-)

barbara beeton

@santimirandarp -- As @DavidCarlisle says, the paper usually used in a laser printer is wide. You probably would rather carry around a book that isn't meant for presentation on a coffee table. If you set the margins to be narrower, the text would get cut off when a normal sized book is printed.

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton

davidc@dc-bantham /usr/local/texlive/2019/texmf-dist/tex
$ grep -r 'csname new' . 2>&1 | wc -l
418

@barbarabeeton the only effect of making \newcount and friends \outer is that over 400 instances have to obfuscate their code as \csname newcount\endcsname just to avoid the error, and \outer does nothing other than make errors that people have to try to avoid

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- you apparently never had to develop code in plain tex for highly nested stuff that had to be counted, and accidentally put \newcount within a group, hence running out of hashsize.

David Carlisle

19:52

@barbarabeeton well naturally I never have any errors in my code, but making \outer is completely the wrong way to catch bad use within a group, making it impossible to define anything that needs to allocate a new counter like newtheorem or newfloat or newanything that should be used at the top level, but as part of a higher level structure declaration that just needs to allocate a counter as part of its internals

user280247

@DavidCarlisle but I'm just looking the output of the code

David Carlisle

@santimirandarp which code?

user280247

@DavidCarlisle I mean the pdflatex output, and it looks with large margins; when printed, it will look the same, isnt it?

Faheem Mitha

Random thing I was wondering about. Did Knuth actually write TeX all by himself? Did he maybe have teams of collaborators working on it, including grad students? Since he was at Stanford. I know he worked on it for a while. 10 years?

David Carlisle

@santimirandarp yes but A4 is too wide for single column text to be readable, the widths latex uses are about the maximum that good practice says should be used for a singl eline of text

Faheem Mitha

19:58

I don't really know the history. But getting a working system like TeX involves an awe-inspiring level of difficulty. Seems like a lot for one person.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha he writes at length about that, students helped notably Liang's phd thesis on the hyphenation algorithm

user280247

So there is no way out? If we want it to be nicely readable there will be wide spaces? Or should I change a4paper for a different one?

David Carlisle

@santimirandarp well of course you can do lots of things, you can specify 1mm margins all round and have long lines, or you can use two column or you can use larger fonts or ... see:

270

Q: Why are default LaTeX margins so big?

I've read that—unless I know a lot about typesetting—I shouldn't change the margins of a LaTeX document. The default margin size of the article class is really big and it feels like a lot of space is waste. Thanks to the geometry package, it is simple to change the margins, but I'm not sure if I ...

@santimirandarp also it depends on the content, if you are writing a novel with lots of dense paragraphs you really do want to aim for a "paperback book" size and not have over long lines filling A4 paper, but if your content has lots of display math or indented lists or other things that break up the lines anyway, you can get away with making the text block wider. there are no actual rules, it's art not science:-)

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- As @DavidCarlisle says, DEK has written a lot about this. His first cut was to leave two grad students to write a prototype from his outline while he was on sabbatical. And other grad students contributed both ideas and code, but in the end he (re)wrote the entire final code himself; that's what's published in TeX: The Program.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Any particular essay or piece of writing you'd point to?

And did he not work with other researchers on this?

I mean non-grad student researchers.

barbara beeton

20:17

@FaheemMitha -- His book Digital Typography contains just about everything he has written on the subject. (Much of that is republished from TUGboat articles, but I don't have the energy to look that up right now. But you can make guesses from the TUGboat contents list by author.) A general overview is presented in this article: "TeX: A branch of desktop publishing evolution, Parts 1 and 2". He did work with other people, but mostly about fonts.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton If he worked that all out himself, it seems quite hairy.

A group approach would be... easier.

@barbarabeeton Fancy article. And relatively recent.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- Which is one reason why TeX hasn't been superseded by something else. But he had good reasons for the solo approach -- it didn't turn out to be either a zebra or a camel. (The classic examples of a horse designed by a committee.)

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Some languages survive being designed by committee. E.g. Common Lisp.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- An uncommon example.

Faheem Mitha

That looks like a really detailed article.

Page numbers? Where are the page numbers?

David Carlisle

20:21

@FaheemMitha lisp hardly conquered the world.... compared to say python

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle It isn't a competition. And CL is doing ok. Just making a point.

And yes, a single person design does bring more coherence to the table. Not disputing that.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- What you've got there are the "accepted" drafts, not the final version. The page numbers are applied when the articles are put into an issue.

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Oh.

barbara beeton

@FaheemMitha -- Another article, from a different perspective, is "Communication of mathematics with TeX". Not as much about the development, but the evolution and the current environment and use of the tool,

Faheem Mitha

@barbarabeeton Thank you.

user280247

20:49

I've found this code on the web:

user280247

\newenvironment{dedication}
  {%\clearpage           % we want a new page          %% I commented this
   \thispagestyle{empty}% no header and footer
   \vspace*{\stretch{1}}% some space at the top
   \itshape             % the text is in italics
   \raggedleft          % flush to the right margin
  }
  {\par % end the paragraph
   \vspace{\stretch{3}} % space at bottom is three times that at the top
   \clearpage           % finish off the page
  }

user280247

To write dedications. It is on the right side, but not left-aligned, Any idea how to modify it?

user280247

that's what I mean

David Carlisle

to get a left aligned block on the right use \hspace*{\fill}\begin{tabular}{@{}l@{}}one\\two\\three\end{tabular}

user280247

21:08

thanks, works perfectly @DavidCarlisle

Faheem Mitha

21:35

How does the NewDocumentCommand option argument show up in Lua? It looks like a boolean.

I'm not even sure how it is represented in TeX.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha sorry the question doesn't make sense:-)

@FaheemMitha you just get a list of characters and pass in lua source code, there is no automatic mapping of internal structures.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle What character is that optional argument then?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha sorry I can not even guess what you mean

Faheem Mitha

Or what characters are the true/false values?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I think he means \BooleanTrue

Faheem Mitha

21:38

@JosephWright Probably.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha whatever code you are putting in \directlua{...} you can put in \edef\tmp{...}\show\tmp and what gets shown needs to be valid Lua code, that is all there is to it.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Currently they are \char0 and \char1

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Oh. Is that 0 and 1, then?

That would also have been my initial guess.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it is to tex but to Lua it's probably a syntax error, depending what you do with it, as I say you need to construct valid Lua expression

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha They are not just 0 and 1, they are \chardef'd, so not expandable: you really want to pass using something like \IfBooleanTF #1 { <true marker> } { <false marker> }

David Carlisle

21:42

@FaheemMitha why are you exposing internal implementation details of tex commands to Lua?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha I have to wonder, like @DavidCarlisle, what your aim is here: xparse is for document-to-code linking, doesn't really belong at the Lua level at all

Faheem Mitha

Oh, never mind. Perhaps it's not necessary to bring Lua into this after all.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha You haven't shown what you are doing but it sounds like you are doing something very strange:-)

Ulrike Fischer

@FaheemMitha I have no idea what you are trying to do, but here is some code to query a boolean from lua: tex.stackexchange.com/a/438782/2388

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Not strange at all. Very ordinary, and very boring.

David Carlisle

21:48

@FaheemMitha No, if you are exposing internal implementation of xparse to Lua then you are doing something very unexpected.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Well, I don't need to. So I'm not.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha Ok but you have been on the site long enough to know that asking for help by talking in riddles gets frustrating after a while, I tried to give you some pointers to luatex use but it's impossible to understand the last set of questions so i give up.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Sorry. I didn't realise I was talking in riddles. It's not always easy to know when one is being obscure.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it's easy to know that you have asked dozens of questions without posting a single line of code

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Sometimes I post code. :-)

David Carlisle

21:52

@FaheemMitha no, not in this round of luatex questions.

Faheem Mitha

I could post my current code, but it's not pretty to look at. Probably migrane-inducing.

But I'm making progress.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha you know the drill, no one is interested in the full original document but you can always make a small test file for any specific issue.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I know. But mostly I've been managing to isolate the issues myself.

If I get stuck, I'll post a MWE.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well the last set of questions is completely impossible to answer without one.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle You mean the boolean thing?

David Carlisle

21:57

@FaheemMitha scroll up and count the number of luatex questions you have asked and how many examples you posted:-)

Faheem Mitha

Possibly 5 or 6, depending on how one counts.

I actually made good progress today. But I'm tired.

user280247

22:38

Hi guys, I'm stuck with this:

user280247

A document needs to be set up and some images are missed, so want to get square boxes instead, is there any way to do it?

user280247

\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{ }}
\caption{this is a missing file}
\label{generalstructure}
\end{figure}

user280247

that's what I'm trying to modify

Faheem Mitha

@santimirandarp You want a blank image in the place of those images?

I'm not sure what a "square box" is.

user280247

Only the image-space surrounded by a box like \fbox boxes @FaheemMitha

Faheem Mitha

22:47

@santimirandarp What is an image-space? You mean just a border with nothing inside?

If you are trying to generate something like an image in place, TikZ seems to be the popular option.

user280247

@FaheemMitha yes, sorry, I'm rather tired and couldnt figure out how to express it XD

user280247

fine...

Henri Menke

23:23

Please upvote this post which was ignorantly downvoted.

2

Q: Cannot remember picture in context

In an attempt to connect two inline nodes as I used to in LaTeX, I wrote the following code: \usemodule[tikz] \starttext \starttikzpicture[remember picture] \node (A) {Node 1}; \stoptikzpicture Hi world \starttikzpicture[remember picture] \node (B) {Node 2}; \stoptikzpicture \starttikzpictu...

tikz-pgf context

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