what's the difference between \ast as lualatex/xelatex uses it and $\ast$ as pdflatex uses it?

From what I see looks like pdflatex just won't accept \ast at all and needs the math mode. I wonder if it does affect the rendering in either of these engines?

@Lacey Weird. \ast produces no output but no error in LuaTeX, but (as expected) complains about missing $ in XeTeX and pdfTeX. So it's only LuaTeX that behaves unexpectedly. Thoughts @DavidCarlisle @UlrikeFischer?

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\ast
\end{document}

Odd. \ast prints the expected asterisk with luatex and xetex for me, and pdftex complains about it

Wait, it doesn't produce output in that small example too but it produces the correct output in the actual documents I have.

Some common package I use 'fixes' it perhaps

@AlanMunn luatex feature mathchardef tokens act as chardef makes more sense with unicode-math when the font encoding matches there is presumably a missing character message in the log

@Lacey unicode-math?

@DavidCarlisle I see the MathML discussion is lively

@JosephWright yes going the expected course of things it'll get less lively when it's down to the level of exactly what accessibility api calls should this C++ rendering class in the middle of a million lines of chrome call... The person writing the code has the upper hand in the end:-)

@JosephWright but it is good to discuss with actual chemists first

@AlanMunn sure, public or private?

@MarcelKrüger Could you have a look at the latest L3 checkins and let me know if they address your use case? On \pdfescape(string|name), the plan is to move l3str-convert to stable, but there may be a few adjustments just yet ...

@cis a lot? :) vimeo.com/279491730

@PauloCereda does it work now then?

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle oh no

@DavidCarlisle wrong question. It should be "finished arara?"

@UlrikeFischer you are mean

@PauloCereda help ^^^^

@UlrikeFischer you are not mean. :)

This is getting too complicated. :)

@PauloCereda uff ;-)

@JosephWright It looks great but there is still one thing I am missing: I object equaivalent to \driver_pdf_annotation_last:. Basically my use-case for anonymous objects would not be objects that are never referenced but objects which are only referenced once directly after their definition.

@MarcelKrüger I'm not sure if this is in the long run the right strategy. You perhaps will need the object number in other places too, e.g. to put it in a associated files dictionary or a structure object or a collection. The l3drivers variant looks quite good. Did you try to use l3str-convert to avoid \pdfescapestring/\pdfescapename?

@MarcelKrüger Hmm, perhaps a third argument is needed (@UlrikeFischer)?

@JosephWright where?

@UlrikeFischer For anonymous objects: I'm imagining a third argument that is the 'payload' to use the object ref

@JosephWright but what should the third argument do? Imho it would more sensible if \driver_pdf_object_now:nn would store the created object number in a special name (e.g. g_driver_last_obj) that could then be used with \driver_pdf_object_ref:n.

@JosephWright btw: the first public harftex question and what happens? We find a bug in the newest engine version ;-).

@UlrikeFischer Hmm, OK

@UlrikeFischer Don't think it can work with \driver_pdf_object_ref:n, as that still needs a name, unless of course we reserve one name. Probably \driver_pdf_object_last: or similar is easier

@JosephWright yes it wouldn't work with the constant integer used internally currently. Also it doesn't fit well with the \driver_pdf_annotation_last:, \driver_pdf_object_last: looks more consistent.

@UlrikeFischer Coming up

@JosephWright discussion about resources: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/493285/…

@JosephWright does it works with dvips/dvipdfmx too. Do they give back the number if there is no name?

@UlrikeFischer Will do, with a bit of adjustment. Give me a few minutes!

@UlrikeFischer Agree with your position entirely

@JosephWright putting pressure on us ;-) announcing everywhere changes to come means we will have to do them ...

@UlrikeFischer Very true

@UlrikeFischer In dvips and dvipdfmx, I have to give the object a name even though there is not a 'public' one. So it's all good

@MarcelKrüger Latest commit adds \driver_pdf_object_last:

@UlrikeFischer We have a plan, I think

@JosephWright yes I think it is going quite well. I have been thinking about "validity checks" . E.g. /OCproperties has two required entries. I have a check for it in \@@_catalog_OCProperties_gpush: but I think this gets messy and incomplete. It would be better to outsource this and to go at the end (if wanted) over the props and seqs.

@UlrikeFischer like promising latex3 in 1993 you mean?

@DavidCarlisle ;-)

@DavidCarlisle Norbert is adding harftex to tlcontrib.

@UlrikeFischer ooh I don't suppose it has a cygwin binary? (I really should see if that compiles again here....)

@DavidCarlisle I don't know, you could ask tex.stackexchange.com/questions/493180/… (but I didn't see the binaries yet in tlcontrib)

@UlrikeFischer I'll try again here first, I can compile xetex and luatex so harftex ought to be Ok but it was including a bleading edge icu I think and that failed to build on cygwin (existing reported issue on the upstream repo)

@DavidCarlisle there was just a discussion on the texlive list that harftex will drop icu and Akira committed something.

@UlrikeFischer yes so I saw, I'll pull the latest versions and try again when I get a minute

@UlrikeFischer I wasn't trying to pressure anyone :). It is not a big deal for me to load pgfsys, I can spare a few seconds of compile time. I just didn't know the right way to get around the problem. Thanks for the input.

@StrongBad I didn't say that you are putting pressure on us, we are doing it ;-)

@UlrikeFischer if you turn your comments into an answer, I will give you a green tick.

@JosephWright there is a space missing in \driver_pdf_link_last: with pdflatex, and luatex needs \tex_numexpr:D imho:

\cs_new:Npx \driver_pdf_link_last:
  {
    \exp_not:N \tex_the:D
    \cs_if_exist:NTF \tex_pdffeedback:D
      { \tex_numexpr:D \exp_not:N \tex_pdffeedback:D lastlink \scan_stop: }
      { \exp_not:N \tex_pdflastlink:D }
      \c_space_tl 0 ~ R
  }

@JosephWright hyperref uses this to write the numbers of fields to the aux file but only in pdftex/luatex driver, can this actually work in dvips/dvipdfmx?

Today I've learned the most important example of a Man-in-the-Middle-attack: Phishing mails. (stupid economy professors)

@UlrikeFischer You don't get the 'raw' PDF object number in dvips and dvipdfmx, you get a reference that can be resolved by the driver. I guess it depends what hyperref is trying to do

@JosephWright it trying to get a list of the fields (and to sort them if requested) so that calculation order works. tex.stackexchange.com/a/76500/2388. I don't think that passing through the aux is really necessary if we find something working for dvips for the "end of the run" question (I haven't checked yet how the field stuff is done in the dvips driver).

@UlrikeFischer I'll have a look a bit later on: currently I've not really tested ...

I need two more commas: 3, 6, 9, 12!

@CarLaTeX here, use these: , ,

@DavidCarlisle Thanks :)

@CarLaTeX don't use the one after "here" that's mine.

@DavidCarlisle I don't have such a package directly included in the document, though a package I use may insert it I guess?

and keep in mind, I can only use \ast et al with luatex and xetex, pdftex still wants me to use $\ast$

@Lacey try this vvv it will give an error in pdftex or xetex, and no visible output in luatex, if you uncomment the package it works as intended in luatex and xetex

\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage{unicode-math}
\begin{document}

\ast
\end{document}

@Lacey look in your log file which shows all files loaded

@DavidCarlisle I don't need it, I need only two

@CarLaTeX Easily fixed:

@CarLaTeX I was afraid you'd take it and keep it for 3,6,9,12,15

@DavidCarlisle I make it on time to retire before reaching it

@HaraldHanche-Olsen Perfect, thanks!

@CarLaTeX But after you retire, you'll have tons of time to spend on tex.se.

@HaraldHanche-Olsen The problem is they're constantly increasing the age for retirement!

@CarLaTeX But the expected lifetime keeps increasing too. Maybe you'll live forever!

@DavidCarlisle no substring with unic exists in my .log file, let alone unicode or unicode-math. I have found mentions of the actual packages I use in the form ofPackage: <name> Info: ... though

@HaraldHanche-Olsen I'm an highlander and I didn't know it :)

@CarLaTeX There can be only one!

@JosephWright 👍

@CarLaTeX -- And you've got one more thing to do before then. (How's it going?)

@barbarabeeton Ops, in this period it's stopped, unfortunately

@CarLaTeX -- Well, don't forget it's there to be finished. (Good luck.)

@barbarabeeton I'll be back on it in June :)

@CarLaTeX -- Just a few days ...

@barbarabeeton Yes, I hope so!

@DavidCarlisle all the packages I have loaded: hastebin.com/ovefemanur.txt

I don't have mentions for all of these in my actual document, so I think this list includes the packages loaded by packages as well. seems to be a complete list

@JosephWright -- email on the way.

@barbarabeeton And replied

@JosephWright -- Got it. Thanks.

For some reasons I don't get the -- ligature to work in LuaLaTeX. My preamble is \documentclass[twocolumn,DIV=18,fontsize=10pt]{scrartcl}\usepackage{fontspec}\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}\setmainfont{Latin Modern Roman}\usepackage{xparse}\usepackage{tabularx}

What am I missing out?

Fixed, for some reasons, building a custom format from the preamble killed that ligature. Is that somehow known?

@Skillmon Would depend how you built the format ... LuaTeX is tricky in this regard

@JosephWright this here shows with luatex \l_tmpa_tl=1\scan_stop: 0 R.:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expl3}


\begin{document}
\ExplSyntaxOn
xx\driver_pdf_link_begin_user:nnw{}{/A<</Type/Action/S/URI/URI(www.blub.de)>>}
\driver_pdf_link_end:
\driver_pdf_link_last:
\tl_set:Nx\l_tmpa_tl{\driver_pdf_link_last:}
\tl_show:N\l_tmpa_tl
%
\ExplSyntaxOff
\end{document}

@Skillmon Public is fine.

@Skillmon you can't put fonts and lua-code in a format.

@JosephWright like I build with pdfTeX:

$(TEX) -ini -enc -jobname="$(NAME)" "&$(TEX)" mylatexformat.ltx """$(FILE)"""

@Skillmon Are 'templates' that Overleaf provides are all user supplied? So there's nothing to point people to particular CTAN packages for example?

@AlanMunn most/many are user supplied, some are supplied by publishers etc.

@Skillmon Yeah, I meant which packages you load: do you try to build-in any Lua?

@AlanMunn I'm not sure whether I understand the second part of your question.

@Skillmon The reason I'm asking is that there are a lot of dissertation templates around, but they don't relate at all to existing CTAN classes. So I searched for my university, for which I maintain a class on CTAN, but there is nothing there.

@JosephWright just the preamble I've shown above, plus 127 line of expl3 code.

@Skillmon So if someone puts together a (crappy) template, that will show up despite the fact that there's a well maintained class available. (I understand that Overleaf can't decide what's 'well maintained', but the larger point remains.)

@Skillmon Yeah, that won't work

@Skillmon You cannot pre-load (system) fonts in a format with LuaTeX (or XeTeX)

@AlanMunn this might happen. You could however supply a basic template utilizing your class. Be aware that the Overleaf installation is currently a bit behind (an early TL2017), and we can't guarantee when a more recent installation will finally be available (should be this year, but no precise ETA).

@JosephWright didn't know that. Thanks.

@JosephWright so loading fontspec in the format would be ok, but the \setmainfont shouldn't be in the format?

@Skillmon Ok. That's what I figured. Thanks. I expect people to have differing ages of distributions so the class is quite robust AFAIK. btw the search function on Overleaf is pretty, shall we say, primitive...

@Skillmon Yes

@AlanMunn yes, I know.

@Skillmon :) Any signs of improvement on the horizon?

@UlrikeFischer Hopefully fixed

@Skillmon expl3 takes precautions to be safe in a format, I'm not 100% about fontspec (you have to check and re-load the Lua code)

@AlanMunn I don't know, sorry.

@Skillmon No worries, just curious.

@JosephWright fontspec needs to be outside (no time to further investigate right now)

@UlrikeFischer I've not set any tests up at driver level: longer-term, I'd expect that to happen for \pdf_... or similar

@AlanMunn I could ask the devs, if you really want me to :)

@Skillmon Sounds about right

@Skillmon No need. It was just idle curiosity. I rarely use Overleaf myself, but I know that lots of my students do.

@JosephWright I already have a number of tests. They still fail quite often when object numbers changes when I rearrange something but are useful anyway, I already spotted quite some bad errors with their help ;-).

@UlrikeFischer I guessed you did: I just meant that in general I've not written tests for \driver_... code as it's so tied to some higher-level concept

@UlrikeFischer Of course, there is no data for XeTeX ... :(

@JosephWright and dvips. Difficult to make tests there too.

@UlrikeFischer No, we do get object data there for links as they are made using pdfmark (Try it ...)

@JosephWright oh I misunderstood you, I thought you meant test files not object numbers ;-)

so I am tryin gto upgrade to tex 2019, tug.org/texlive/upgrade.html If you installed symlinks in system directories (via the installer option or tlmgr path add), remove them now with tlmgr path remove.

how would I know? I installed it a year ago or something, I don't remember what options I picked

Is it possible to use the JIT mode for LuaLaTeX? There's a question for this, but without an answer.

It's closed as a dupe of another question.

But that other question doesn't cover the LaTeX case.

I'm also unclear what the --fmt flag is for.

In the answer by Marco, that is.

Should I ask a different question, or what?

It's not super important. Just curious.

cd to your top-level .../2019 directory. does this mean I should be at /usr/local/texlive OR /usr/local/texlive/2019

@Lacey even if I load all of those, I get no visible \ast and a missing character warning in the log:

\documentclass{article}
%%%\usepackage{unicode-math}
\usepackage{scrkbase}
\usepackage{scrbase}
\usepackage{keyval}
\usepackage{scrlfile}
\usepackage{tocbasic}
\usepackage{typearea}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{expl3}
\usepackage{expl3}
\usepackage{xparse}
\usepackage{iftex}
\usepackage{luatexbase}
\usepackage{ctablestack}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{fontspec-luatex}
\usepackage{fontenc}
\usepackage{hyphenat}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{ifpdf}
\usepackage{ifvtex}

@FaheemMitha luajittex is in texlive (but a latex format is not built by default)

@Lacey what does which tex report?

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I'm aware it's in TeX Live. Does that mean that using it for LaTeX is hard or what?

@DavidCarlisle i found out that i dont have symlinks. now im just curious if i should put and call the upgrade.sh at texlive OR texlive/2019

And should I ask a question. Like - how do I use JIT with LuaLaTeX?

The other question covers somewhat the same ground bit is not as direct.

@FaheemMitha it is rather easy to use but imho there is not much gain from it, the context people are dropping it.

@UlrikeFischer Ok. I was just planning to experiment. Can you offer instructions? Or should I post a question?

@FaheemMitha just not that useful (Hans has dripped support for jit altogether in the successor to luatex)

Hey

anyone can help me with a modification of this?

@DavidCarlisle Successor to LuaTeX? There's a successor?

@DavidCarlisle heh. odd. you have to compile twice

maybe something to do with table of contents?

@FaheemMitha you can simply remove the #! in fmtutil.cnf (or copy the entry to a local fmtutil.cnf: #! luajitlatex luajittex language.dat,language.dat.lua lualatex.ini then you can build the format and it should work.

exact same input. former is on the first compile, latter on the second compile. these markigns aren't in any specific block

@Lacey ?

for the \ast to appear, I have to compile the document twice

@Lacey post example code?

sure, give me a bit to produce an example

i found out that i dont have symlinks. now im just curious if i should put and call the upgrade.sh at texlive OR texlive/2019 can you answer this in the mean time?

@UlrikeFischer Ok. I'm a little handicapped by not knowing what a fmutil.cnf file is for, but I expect I could figure it out.

@FaheemMitha mailman.ntg.nl/pipermail/ntg-context/2019/094476.html

@Lacey I didn't know what you meant by "put", I never upgrade in place I just download the tl2019 installer and run it (from anywhere) and it installs into /usr/local/texlive2019

@DavidCarlisle Oh. Version 2.0.

Presumably not a new from the ground up reimplementation.

@FaheemMitha well except it isn't called luatex version 2 it's called lmtx

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see.

Anybody? I am in desperate needs.. need to give in the Thesis on Tuesday =S

Except it says it's for Context.

@FaheemMitha only because currently there is no documentation so no one can really use it to build anything big except Hans

@DavidCarlisle Oh.

@FaheemMitha but as (according to the specs that are available) almost all support for legacy tex things is gone, any format would need a major rewrite and possibly commit to just that and give up working on pdftex or xetex (as of course context has done)

@DavidCarlisle That doesn't sound so good.

Does legacy TeX mean LaTeX?

@FaheemMitha it's called pruning dead wood, sometimes it looks a bit drastic but longer term it keeps your trees healthy...

@FaheemMitha tex/pdftex/xetex

@FaheemMitha things like tfm fonts, so in latex terms you have to use fontspec/unicode-math not any fonts you would use with pdflatex

how do i get this formatted as code ;,,;

anyway, this is it. it produces a visible ast.

you have to compile it twice, though

(you need to indent by 4 spaces, or use the fixed font button, but I got it, thanks:-)

@DavidCarlisle So if you want to use this new version of LuaTeX you might have to change some things about your document?

@FaheemMitha unless someone ports latex to it then you have to rewrite your document

@DavidCarlisle I miss the days when one didn't have to change formats.

@FaheemMitha you don't have to change

@Lacey @UlrikeFischer ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ?

what do you mean :o

@Lacey I hope you noticed my hi tech expert debugging strategy....

@Lacey wait and see if it works...

actually i remember you using vvv in a sentence before, i was going to ask but forgot, is that like a latin abbrv or a word?

or was it downwards pointing arrows in hindsight :D

@Lacey oh no sorry they are just "ascii art" arrows to look up or down the chat, I was just asking Ulrike to look at our conversation

oh okay. so this thing im doing, would this be considered a bug or an unexpected case?

i just always thought /ast was fine. it was how i was using it the entire time :D

@Lacey currently I have no idea:-) (but I can confirm same here)

@Lacey (@UlrikeFischer) Oh I see, hang on...

\documentclass[english]{scrartcl}
\begin{document}

%\sbox0{$ $}
\section{Section}
\subsection{Subsection}
b
\ast
d
\end{document}

I think you need the table of contents for the ast to work, for some reason

oooh

its the sbox that does it?

@Lacey the above will give the missing character warning on every run (no table of contents) but if you uncomment \sbox0{$ $} then it works even on the first run, the problem is that \ast takes the * from the math fonts and these are not set up until the first math in the document so you need some math (even if it is hidden in the table of contents formatting) to set things up

@Lacey the sbox there just makes an empty math list in a box and discards it but that is enough

i should mention, \ast and $\ast$ produce different things for me. \ast produces the nice asterisk with the font im using, whereas the math version produces the... matshy version of it?

@Lacey in xetex or pdftex it isn't an issue as you have to start math before using \ast luatex relaxes that constraint but allows you to fall into a hole....

@Lacey yes

so how would i produce the nice marking symbols without the \ast et al?

@Lacey really you should not use \ast, just use ∗ or ^^^^2217 to access the character directly

im trying to make my document compatible with all the engines, you see :p is pdftex fine with ^^^^2217 ?

@Lacey er no it wouldn't be fine at all:-)

so how do i produce these symbols without the specific commands? do i ifpdftex it and define my own commands for each?

@Lacey define something like \textasterisk that is $\ast$ in pdftex and ^^^^2217 in xetex/luatex

@DavidCarlisle sorry had to make the dinner ... but I see you managed on your own ;-)

pdftex can't produce the non-math asterisk at all i imagine?

@UlrikeFischer I thought it was some weird lua font caching issue, but was just classic latex delayed math font setup, so i can't really blame you

classic? :p

@Lacey with pdftex you can use `\textasteriskcentered

@Lacey if you load textcomp package you can use \textasteriskcentered which is as near as you are going to get I guess

@Lacey see @UlrikeFischer knows stuff about fonts:-)

wait how does textcomp do it then?

@Lacey \textasteriskcentered is also pre-defined to be U+2217 in the TU encoding used by luatex, so that will work out of the box if you load textcomp in pdftex and not in luatex

@Lacey the TS1 encoding is the "text companion" encoding a second, but matching font that matches the main font and has extra symbols (not all pdftex font setups include this, but it should fall back on the ec fonts so still give an * in all cases)

is pdftex being actively developed? what's up with the pdftex/luatex engines

@Lacey it's not being developed, but is actively maintained (ie updated for any system changes that need updated libraries etc) but it's just a fact of life that you can not fit the entire unicode range into a 256-character font.

so i take it the tex guys themselves use luatex these days?

@Lacey 'The TeX guys'?

@Lacey no (who are the tex guys?)

i imagine, the people who use tex a lot, the core development team, etc

@DavidCarlisle The Piano Guys but with TeX instead of a piano?

@PauloCereda this, too

@Lacey you have three of the core latex development team in this conversation

so what do you use for your own, new documents? :p

@Lacey I use pdfTeX mainly

@Lacey i don't use tex:-)

@DavidCarlisle wow, such a plot twist

what do you use instead?

@Lacey these days I only generate html (usually from xml sources)

@JosephWright +1

so out of the 3 core devs, 2 uses the no-longer-developed version, and another doesn't use tex at all? :o

@Lacey For more complex cases, I do use LuaTeX, but at present most of my requirements are satisfied by pdfTeX: it's faster

@Lacey pdftex is still (by far) the most commonly used version.

@Lacey how about s/no-longer-developed/stable/g

@Lacey Engine development isn't all that necessary for a lot of day-to-day work, though work on accessible/tagged PDFs will likely push toward LuaTeX (and relatives) soon

between 2005 and 2010 we have xetex, luatex, latex3(?), bibtex, fonts

what did we get in 2010-2019

@Lacey biggest change to latex recently was the last year's release where we switched to utf-8 as the default encoding

last year being 2019?

@Lacey we do publish a change log....

@Lacey 2018

@DavidCarlisle \expanded?

@DavidCarlisle More expl3 stability, more usage?

@JosephWright that only affects you so doesn't count:-)

@DavidCarlisle :)

@DavidCarlisle ooh

@JosephWright yes I was thinking of the format

@DavidCarlisle Fair enough: UTF-8 was a big change

@DavidCarlisle Latin Modern in XeTeX/LuaTeX?

@DavidCarlisle having more Germans in the team to share the blame?

@DavidCarlisle i cant find the changelog actually. texfaq.org/CHANGELOG.html you dont mean this right?

@JosephWright yes all the 2015 changes, TU encoding and including fixltx2e would be

tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html#x1-840009.1.14 perhaps?

@Lacey mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/ctan.org/macros/latex/base/changes.txt

@Lacey actually lt news is easier reading mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/doc/ltnews.pdf (but you have a copy locally) the change log is mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/ctan.org/macros/latex/base/changes.txt (but again you have a local copy)

would you guys mind if i asked the updated version of the same question? its tough to find something accessible in these documents.

@Lacey well you are free to ask anything you want, I'm not too keen on that kind of question as the answers show there get a rather random scattering of information that's not terribly useful, but you never know....

on ltnews, I can't find the release announcements of luatex/xetex(or even updates until after 2010s), im probably missing something obvious, but they seem like big things that should be in the news?

@Lacey well that's the problem, ltnews is just the format (not any contributed packages or engine changes) and we struggle to keep that understandable and down to 1 or 2 pages per release so over 5 years of one or two releases per year that would be 15 or so pages just for the format which is way too much for an answer, so it woul dbe alot of work to cut that down to a couple of paragraphs...

@Lacey no it is latex news on changes that we have made to the latex base release, we don't control (or have write access to) luatex or pdftex or xetex or any of the contributed packages on ctan

@Lacey there is an ltnews for every latex2e release going back to the first one in 1994

@DavidCarlisle Er ...

@Lacey I used mostly pdflatex or lualatex depending on the needs of the document (or the needs of the people I make documents for ...).

oh I meant that the first mention of xetex and luatex is only in 2017, a long time after these engines have caught on

does anyone in the core team use xetex? :p

@Lacey there was no official support for them until 2015

@Lacey I have in the past, but as I don't write Asian languages it's not been a big thing

@Lacey we test latex with all the engines (including the Japanese uptex) but I dobut any of us use it regularly

@Lacey lualatex and xelatex (separately) were originally contributed code on ctan that had to patch latex in various ways to work with the unicode engines, in 2015 we pulled them both in house so the base latex release built the lualatex and xelatex formats without needing contributed patches.

@DavidCarlisle Er, nope: we test LaTeX with e-TeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX; you are thinking of expl3

@Lacey None of those are part of the LaTeX kernel

@Lacey sure they are things people use but they are not latex and they are not maintained by the latex team that writes latex news.

that makes me think, how would one discover a new package? is there a board for these things?

@Lacey there is a ctan-annouce mailing list that you can subscribe to, or check its archive from time to time

i see, thank you very much

so finally... what exactly is latex3?

@Lacey ah.

@PauloCereda "sharing"???

@Lacey TUGboat has a column on new packages

@UlrikeFischer oopsie :)

@JosephWright I think there is a q/a on what is latex3 isn't there? I'll look

@DavidCarlisle Yes

pdftex>xetex>luatex>latex3, would this be an accurate timeline of sorts?

@Lacey Nope

@Lacey no mixing apples and oranges

@Lacey there is

@DavidCarlisle hmm oranges

@Lacey Usual problem: engines (pdfTeX/XeTeX/LuaTeX) and formats (plain/LaTeX) are separate ideas

asked Aug 3 '10 at 22:41 :D

@DavidCarlisle xor

@Lacey pdftex>xetex>luatex>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>latex3 is a better timeline ...

@Lacey L3 preceds the L2.x series.

so will there be a latex3 one day, that people would switch to from latex2?

or is it like an abandoned idea that was incorporated into latex2?

@Lacey LaTeX3 already exists.

the latex im using when i just write something and compile it, is that called latex3?

@Lacey no that is latex2e see

does anyone use latex3? or, say, can i enable it somehow with a configuration flag?

@Lacey the latex3 project have been maintaining latex since Leslie Lamport stopped (in about 1991) we produced latex2e which has been the standard version of latex since 1993, all that time there have been development versions of something that might be called latex3 one day but not in a form that you can use if you need to ask. The coding layer (expl3) is used and if you are using lualatex you almost certainly use it as fontspec is written in that layer

so wait is latex3 essentially created as an experimental playground in which you just backport the good ideas from ?

@Lacey No, it's more complex than that

@Lacey that is one way to view it, or perhaps it will be a new format one day or perhaps not. Future is hard to predict

will there be a latex3 one day that people actually use like latex2e?

or maybe a question to ask would be, why not just release latex3? I mean, if it works... It will never be finished just like no software is ever really finished, no?

@Lacey perhaps perhaps not. The thing is, in 1993, latex2e was the absolute maximum that a tex format could be, if you lloaded article class and amsmath you had about 50 (five zero) commands left for a user to define or use as \label etc on a PC of the age, so the only way to contemplate new features was as a complete replacement. Now loading the format hardly makes any impression at all on the memory requirements, so you could have a new format or you could add code to the existing fomat,

so whether you ever need to make a new format that doesn't have the existing 2e code is not so clear.

I was thinking perhaps the idea were, lets start over and leave all this cruft behind?

@Lacey the part that works is expl3 and that is released (and used in many packages) but that is a programming layer that allows you to write packages,

and if one day a latex3 is released, what would be that released thing?

@Lacey sorry crystal ball ran out.

:D

oh well, thanks for all the help!

@DavidCarlisle @JosephWright we could add expl3 to the kernel and call it latex3, then this discussions would stop ;-)

@UlrikeFischer er well....

not sure if its intended but, all the copyrights on the latex3 project end at 2018, including in the readme.md -- just saying :p

@PauloCereda we interrupt this discussion for important news: bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/48466791

@Lacey yes there has not been a latex release since December 2018

ok here's a weird question, why so many germans, and so many german lawyers in particular?

looks like germany is over represented in the tex community :D

@Lacey and the next project meeting of the latex3 project is going to be in ....

germany?

@Lacey lawyers?

@Lacey bingo:-)

yes, have you not noticed? a lot of the people with german names have a profession listed that is or at least close to law

@Lacey I never look at profile pages (and a lot of people don't use real names)

good point, perhaps germans just tend to use real names while others don't so they stand out

@Lacey but dante (the german tex user group) is by far the biggest of the local tex groups, they host and maintain ctan (since the US, then the UK dropped out) and generally use tex quite a bit.

what? whole countries just drop out, that's a thing?

how does the US like just drop out?

and why would they do that

@Lacey I mean ctan started with three hosts, one in the US, one in teh UK, and one in Germany, but only the German one remains.

is tex dying?

@Lacey no actually internet connectivity makes a single host feasible and in some ways simpler these days, but it's not exactly a coincidence that it's the dante maintained one that has survived all this time. there are of course dozens of mirrors but all the uploads and maintenance is in the ctan host

oh I thought you meant host as in a place where people would meet, and germany was the only place left people were willing to meet.

@Lacey no I mean master ctan server where packages can be uploaded

@Lacey German here, proud not-a-lawyer!

I should probably switch on the wifi at least at home...

@yo' nah better off without it

@yo' you view a lot of youtube videos on your phone :)

@PedroFontanarrosa What modification are you trying to do? Maybe you should ask a new question with an example document and link to other question.

oh btw, speaking of changelog, is there a migrating guide of sorts? like this will be/is broken now, this way of rendering has changed, etc. ?

@yo' 10 GB of mobile youtube data: you are turning into a typical teenager

@Skillmon well, you go for the 720p60 if you can :)

@DavidCarlisle I actually, just 2 weeks ago, finished my teenage years even in hexadecimal :)

@Lacey you almost never need to change a latex document, we go to great lengths to ensure that. (switching to utf-8 was the biggest change and even then the vast majority of documents would not need to change)

will \ast work one day in luatex?

@yo' my data: Youtube - 0B, Chrome - 0B, Tethering & portable hotspot - 0B, Firefox 0B :)

@yo' perhaps you are reverting to your youth in your old age...