TeX, LaTeX and Friends

barbara beeton

1:26 AM

@PhelypeOleinik -- Very nice answer to tex.stackexchange.com/q/558732. I knew it didn't belong in meta.

Phelype Oleinik

@barbarabeeton Oh, I'm glad you liked it :)

Joseph Wright

7:35 AM

@DavidCarlisle, @UlrikeFischer, @egreg You write one blog post, you get asked to write another on the same area ...

@DavidCarlisle Looking at the texfaq stats, I think we might want to update the "Missing number" answer - I suspect it's being picked up due to the kernel date format change

David Carlisle

@JosephWright I also note (Karl will be pleased) that the google console complained about fonts being too small on texfaq

Paulo Cereda

7:54 AM

@DavidCarlisle ooh

quack

Ulrike Fischer

8:07 AM

@JosephWright should we collect some examples about "how to write complicated commands without xparse"?

Joseph Wright

9:13 AM

@DavidCarlisle Have to wait for Jonas

@PauloCereda What did you think of the logos?

@UlrikeFischer Perhaps - marmot has asked me to cover the \newcommand vs \NewDocumentcCommand vs (I guess) \def/\newrobustcmd/... business, so it would fit there

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright I can offer \newcommandtwoopt and if I skim through the various oberdiek codes I can probably find various variants how to define something, he probably found and used every possible trick ;-)

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer twoopt was also in my mind, also newcommandx, withsuffix, etc.

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer you should re-implement xii.tex with xparse, showing how much simpler it is using the xparse interface.

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright there is a long history of extensions of \newcommand. But it would be perhaps interesting to check/show if and how this is covered by xparse.

Joseph Wright

9:31 AM

@UlrikeFischer I was just looking at newcommand.py by Scott Pakin - interesting that it offers the equivalent of u arguments - although I think we are right not to carry them forward to the kernel

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright where is that?

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Sure: marmot was mainly asking how a new user knows whether to use \newcommand or \def or \NewDocumentCommand

@UlrikeFischer texdoc newcommand

@UlrikeFischer I could do a series of examples, perhaps starting with the kernel and expanding to each obvious alternative

@UlrikeFischer Ah, the other one I was thinking of is xargs

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright wow, there is curious stuff on ctan.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I first came across it years ago, probably the second year I was using LaTeX (when I bought the companion)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright more than 9 is perhaps main extra thing it adds, although it's not clear defining a command with that many arguments is a good idea, did we ever consider that for xparse?

Joseph Wright

9:40 AM

@DavidCarlisle Wasn't in the old sources, never came up when I was working on it: I guess not

@DavidCarlisle Once you go beyond nine arguments, life gets very awkward, so I think it would be hard to fit into the pattern (though I do note something like the namedef approach could work)

@UlrikeFischer, @DavidCarlisle OK, I think a post is coming together in my mind

@DavidCarlisle, @UlrikeFischer ^^^ Other entries?

## The kernel: _versus_ `\newcommand`

## The kernel: _versus_ `\def`

## `etoolbox`: _versus_ `\newrobustcmd`

## `twoopt`: _versus_ `\newcommandtwoopt`

## `suffix`: _versus_ `\withsuffix`

## `xargs`: _versus_ `\newcommandx`

## `newcommand`: _versus_ `newcommand.py`

## `newenviron`: _versus_ `\NewEnviron`

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright looks like a good list (and I never did understand the \withsuffix stuff, perhaps I know then for once what it is about ;-))

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Looking at the FAQ, probably we should rephrase texfaq.org/FAQ-cmdstar (@DavidCarlisle)

@UlrikeFischer My aim is to show off xparse, not to get people to use other stuff

@UlrikeFischer What I'll do is a short intro about the general idea, then give an example or for each case, then show how to do it with xparse; for newcommand.py I guess I'll point to 'my earlier answer' to say why a few things are 'missing'

Ulrike Fischer

9:57 AM

@JosephWright I should read the faq more often, I understood this ;-). But yes the "adventurous" stuff needs a bit rewriting ;-).

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I think a re-ordering, mainly: I'm always reluctant to remove text

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright well the last paragraph is now simply wrong, and it will be even more wrong with the next latex version.

@JosephWright I don't see a danger here that people go back to the individual packages. I mean the main point is that you have everything in one place and doesn't clash. E.g. how do you define a command with star and two optional arguments without xparse? Load suffix and twoopt and hope it works?

Anush

@UlrikeFischer did you happen to see that tcolorbox listings doesn't have the same problem?

Ulrike Fischer

@Anush no, but I wouldn't be surprise if the tcolorbox author added some patches here, he is quite good.

Anush

@UlrikeFischer 👍

yo'

10:07 AM

Hi all! Please, does anyone know how good this book is? Dilip Datta: LaTeX in 24 Hours (A Practical Guide for Scientific Writing) link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-47831-9#about

Anush

248 pages in 24 hours :)

what I would really like is "TikZ in 14 days"

yo'

@Anush well, from what I remember, the lshort book is called LaTeX in n minutes, where n is the number of pages :-)

Anush

:)

yo'

@Anush we're weakly considering a couple of TikZ webinars at Overleaf (intro, intermediate+how to use the manual, and advanced with couple pin-pointed cool things). (Still not sure we have the courage to do that though)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright "For those of an adventurous disposition"

Anush

10:14 AM

@yo' that would be cool

yo'

@Anush yep, if made well. As I said, it's fairly non-trivial topic to cover, so no promises there.

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@yo' Picture mode is at hour 10, just in time for a late breakfast :)

yo'

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz :-)

Someone should finally rewrite picture mode using tikz

David Carlisle

@yo' scroll up a page and s/tikz/l3draw/ (picture mode in pgf is already in pgf sources)

yo'

@DavidCarlisle ah

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

10:33 AM

@yo' After scrolling quickly though a couple of pages, I think I won't become a fan

Joseph Wright

@yo' I'd ... avoid

4

daleif

@yo' I wrote a Danish LaTeX book in response to lshort as I saw people use it as a "bible" and never read anything else. If you had a problem, you used lshort to solve it, even if much better solutions were available.

Nowadays we have better sources and everything has a manual

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz So the \Large{...} doesn't all come from the OverLeaf editor ;-)

Joseph Wright

@yo' It's a tough one: one person's 'basics' are another person's 'do not need'

@UlrikeFischer Good point, I'll say that in my intro

David Carlisle

@JosephWright "if you need more than mathematics, you are already an advanced user, not a beginner"

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Well yes

@DavidCarlisle It's a very focussed view on what LaTeX is for

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

10:42 AM

@daleif :D There seem to be other accomplices as well

David Carlisle

@JosephWright thinking again about picture mode, I think (especially with the new length code and hook use) leaving \put on the tex side is the right thing to do, \put is quite a reasonable interface to putting images or text or whatever by coordinate, and is reasonable to do by tex box positioning. The picture mode commands for drawing are an interesting exercise, but even I'd have to admit are something of an acquired taste and likely not going to get used in practice going forward.

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle At this stage, I really don't see a need to adjust picture mode: it works for what it does, but for new drawings TikZ or some such is a better plan - we can argue about exact syntax choices, and imagine some l3draw-based system, but it comes down to the same thing

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Like I said

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

Outch!

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz There's a reason I want a 'known' team for learnlatex.org

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz my favourite:

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

10:46 AM

@JosephWright urg.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yep mainly came up as I needed a PR to pict2e as loading pict2e currently removes length support so if you've used it in a page background hook then.... But I think the current PR just adding lengths and leaving everything else unchanged is fine for current purposes.

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Have to wonder how Springer didn't notice that they publish the very good "LaTeX and Friends" by Marc van Dongen (which I wrote the foreword to)

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz I do wonder what a new user is supposed to do with that

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@JosephWright If one looks at the quality of their books in the last couple of years, it is sharply declining...

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Sounds about right: picture mode fits the LaTeX2e syntax model, but as I've just said in a blog post, there are places where different syntaxes work better, they just need to be clear

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Ah: I can't say I'm 'on top' of their offerings

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@JosephWright Use as heating material in the winter?

David Carlisle

10:48 AM

@JosephWright any guesses at what generated that output with the underlines? a screenshot of a whysywig-ish editor view of the source?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Nope: one of the Amazon reviews says that the colour is not even present in the printed version ...

daleif

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz grrrr

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz One review does say 'When I sat down to write my first LaTex document I found this unhelpful. "Practical LaTeX" is so much better. '

3

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@DavidCarlisle The meta info says InDesign

@JosephWright That sounds like a helpful comment

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz That's the typesetting of the book, not what generated the pictures :)

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz I agree that Practical LaTeX is pretty good

yo'

10:52 AM

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz ouch

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@JosephWright Oh, right. Not every system can do both at once like latex :)

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz :)

yo'

@daleif oh a compliment on Overleaf :-)

@JosephWright oh yes, definitely the right way forward!

David Carlisle

11:24 AM

@JosephWright has the theme we used changed, was the syntax highlighting at texfaq always this bold?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I've not changed anything

David Carlisle

@JosephWright no nothings changed at our end I wondered if the theme had changed at github, or maybe i just got used to the more subdued colours on learnlatex

Joseph Wright

12:30 PM

@UlrikeFischer Nearly done with the blog post

Joseph Wright

12:52 PM

texdev.net/2020/08/20/…

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright I just found that in my xparse.ltx version (installed from the github the \ExplSyntaxOff is missing:

\ExplSyntaxOn
\file_input:n { xparse-generic.tex }
%%

David Carlisle

1:05 PM

@JosephWright Th optiona The or Teh not th :-)

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright there is one <*core> guard to much or one </core> missing in xparse.dtx.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright "the body is saved a(s) \BODY."

Joseph Wright

1:22 PM

@UlrikeFischer I think that's been spotted?

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright sorry? by whom?

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright up to you and David...

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Oh, sorry: thought it was, I was wrong. I;ll take a look

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright I can see that the structure is wrong, but I don't know where which code belongs to:

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle, @UlrikeFischer It read OK? I was mainly trying to highlight what xparse adds

Ulrike Fischer

1:25 PM

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Show-off ;)

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright it is imho quite fine, a nice overview.

@JosephWright I was quite happy when I realized that winedt is doing this, I'm messing up the guards much less now ;-)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright looks OK to me, will it make the marmot happy though?

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer, @DavidCarlisle On another matter, did either of you look at the 'split-pdfmode' branch? The idea is to split up l3backend-pdfmode into a LuaTeX and a pdfTeX part. I'm not sure at the moment whether to have two entirely separate files, the 'mixed' approach I've gone for or something else

@DavidCarlisle Now that I don't know: he's basically unhappy with any additions to the kernel, so probably not

David Carlisle

@JosephWright i saw it existed but I don't think that counts as "looked at"

@JosephWright he should have stayed in 2015

Joseph Wright

1:30 PM

@DavidCarlisle I can see his position, but I think it misses the major pressures; I guess he's abit closer to the plain TeX mindset (that if others move on to new tools, oh well)

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@JosephWright a few typos (I spotted at least one), but fine.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright interesting command suggestion from latex 0.90

% THINGS TO BE DONE TO LATEX
%
%  - make blank lines have no effect in tabbing, tabular and array environments
%    by setting \par = \relax
%  - add \clearpagestyle{STYLE} command to set the style
%    used by \clearpage when putting out left-hand page in
%    twoside style.

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@DavidCarlisle nah, he should've heard Frank's talk from TUG 2018 (I think it was) when he highlighted that backwards-compatibility in LaTeX was always broken.

Paulo Cereda

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz hi mr. rabbit! <3

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Which one?

David Carlisle

1:36 PM

@JosephWright clearpagestyle (the blank lines one he did:-)

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@PauloCereda Hi, Mr. Duck!

@PauloCereda oh, a carrot!

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Ah, right

David Carlisle

@JosephWright would be cleardoublepagestyle now probably

@JosephWright I was looking because of @PhelypeOleinik's answer about drawing packages, interesting that picture mode was in latex right from the start it seems.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Ah, right: that does make sense

@DavidCarlisle Where were you looking?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright ftp.tug.org/historic/macros/latex-saildart/latex-0.90

@JosephWright I can't use firefox for that they have removed ftp support but it works in chrome still

Joseph Wright

1:42 PM

@DavidCarlisle Have they?!!!!

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@yo' The book is from 2017, he is recommending to use {\rm atext} as an equivalent to \textrm{atext} on page 10.

Joseph Wright

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz Oh my

@DavidCarlisle Back when ~ was a letter! Wow

daleif

@DavidCarlisle Are you using Firefox nightly? I can access that ftp thing just fine

in my Firefox

David Carlisle

@daleif yes I'm on nightly:-) blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/04/13/… (@JosephWright)

daleif

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz it is someone new to blame for new users using bad code

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

1:45 PM

@daleif selling that as a book for profit...

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Not sure I follow their logic here: ftp isn't supposed to be secure, it's for public data repositories

daleif

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz exactly

Was wondering why one could just download it as a pdf

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@daleif springer link through my university.

Joseph Wright

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz Ah

daleif

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz same

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

1:47 PM

Back to dayjob for now, want to finish something today...

David Carlisle

@JosephWright well I think it's same logic as moving everyone to https rather than http,

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Hmm, don't really see that, it's very different

@DavidCarlisle ftp servers are likely to be very different it 'outlook' to web ones ... most will simply be cut off

David Carlisle

@JosephWright I think the security is ensuring that the files that are served from one end get through all proxies and gateways and are actually the same file that you receive. I think ftp relies on everyone playing nice.

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@DavidCarlisle ftps?

Joseph Wright

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz sftp I think you mean

@DavidCarlisle No one does banking or whatnot via ftp ...

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

1:49 PM

@JosephWright I was just following the logic to append an s to get something secure, as in https to http :)

David Carlisle

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz sure, but it's simpler for the to simply say to serve with https (I am not sure why tug don't do that) most places you can just change ftp: to http: and it works..

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@DavidCarlisle because the server is set up that way.

David Carlisle

@JosephWright https used to be for banking, now even a latex tutorial has to be served over it.

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz well yes:-)

Skillmon likes topanswers.xyz

@DavidCarlisle well, you don't want to have an evil man in the middle switching {\bfseries a text} to {\bf a text}!

David Carlisle

@Skillmonlikestopanswers.xyz we could put you in the middle fixing all springer tutorials before the reader sees the text

yo'

1:54 PM

@daleif right! But then, if someone recommends the book on Twitter, what can one do?

daleif

2:06 PM

@yo' other than public redicule. There is the same issue regarding YT videos about latex, so many errors. But often the author/speaker does not even know what what they are recommending is wrong.

Paulo Cereda

yo'

@daleif well, that's not something I wanna do when the company was explicitly tagged in the conversation :-/

Joseph Wright

@yo' Conversation?

yo'

@JosephWright twitter.com/Savage_Curtain/status/1296213077814321158

Joseph Wright

@yo' Ah

Paulo Cereda

2:16 PM

@yo' Brazilians...

daleif

@yo' nope. But again, aren't there any type of quality control in a company like that.

I would have expected more

Paulo Cereda

@yo' I cannot understand why the TeXmaker hashtag was even included...

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@PauloCereda Many users don't know there is a difference between latex and their editor

Paulo Cereda

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz indeed... that's why I think the user posted this message without even reading the book they are suggesting in the first place. :)

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I've fixed that issue

yo'

2:47 PM

@daleif you mean Springer? I dunno, but apparently none of the TeXperts were invited to review

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@yo' Maybe they were invited but none survived?

yo'

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz who knows.

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright looks better, I'm just installing and then will try again.

daleif

3:22 PM

@yo' they probably don't know who they are.

yo'

@daleif I dunno. I mean, I don't wanna ridicule anyone, but if this is publishable, I question the trustworthiness of any scientific article...

Anush

question asked on tex.se over an hour ago with no comments or votes. A rare occurrence! :)

(that's a compliment to the people on tex.se not a complaint)

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

4:13 PM

@Anush I replied to you in chat at topanswers.xyz/tex

Joseph Wright

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz And I pinged you on another topic :)

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

@JosephWright Thanks! Have to take a closer look later when I'm back home

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- I got some rather strong comments when I asked for a quick review of learnlatex to the effect that users in the humanities don't need math. While LaTeX has made some originally math-only commands (e.g. \,) available in text, there are areas where it's obvious that math is part of the design (e.g. all the \text... commands). I don't know how to get around that.

Anush

@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz thanks! The columns[T] answer is lovely and the other answer is horrible :)

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton if you mean things like \textregistered one thing that has changed with utf-8 being on by default is that you can just type ® which is probably more natural for most people. If you mean \textrm{...} it's just a name.

barbara beeton

4:27 PM

@DavidCarlisle -- I was thinking more of \textsuperscript and friends. (And, it must be admitted, trying to explain \mathit can get really confusing.)

Ulrike Fischer

@barbarabeeton but if they don't need math, can't you simply say "ignore everything that starts with \math"?

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton why confusing? "\mathit can only be used in math and produces text italic which you should use in favor of math italic if you have words of more than one letter. It is distinct from \textit although it usually uses the same font, as it typesets its content in math mode, so notably spaces are ignored" I even wrote it in American English for you:-)

barbara beeton

@DavidCarlisle -- What you say is true, and you know I understand the difference, but I've seen answers from you that have both "\mathit" and "math italic" in the same sentence. Eek!

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright beamer is a pain ;-). It uses \@namelet to copy colors and so lots of colors are lost to l3color.

barbara beeton

@UlrikeFischer -- The criticism was even more pointed: Why include anything about (or any mention of) math in a tutorial intended for beginners? (I admit to a certain bias.)

Joseph Wright

4:48 PM

@UlrikeFischer I can fix that

@barbarabeeton I'm not surprised, honestly. @DavidCarlisle and I spoke with a well-known member of the TeX community who was setting up a (private) teaching site for his employer, and was keen on our interactive code. He said that he's gone with two separate versions, one with math mode, one without, for much this reason.

@barbarabeeton The best we could do was keep it to one page: it's part of the reason I really don't want to have one of those 'all of the math mode symbols' tables that make good book/website filler

Ulrike Fischer

@barbarabeeton hm. What humanities was that? They seems to have a very restricted view of the world, if they don't know that math can appear in many places. I mean statistics, or some percentages or units. And why is it difficult for them to skip a lesson if they think they don't need it? In every book I ever read was stuff that I ignored.

2

Joseph Wright

@barbarabeeton I know humanities people don't need math mode, but physical scientists likely do at least as far as y = mx + c, so it's a hard balance; did you see @DavidCarlisle's comment earlier (a quote from someone well known to all of us)

@UlrikeFischer Also, we want some design elements in to help with navigation: skipping should get easier

@UlrikeFischer beamer is a pain full-stop: as @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz said, Till wrote it as his first major TeX project, and internally it does show (plus there is that g-type argument)

@barbarabeeton Can you share by mail? Can be anonymous, as a 'proper' review :)

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- I'll see if I can unearth it.

Joseph Wright

@barbarabeeton Thanks; getting a plurality of views is good

David Carlisle

@barbarabeeton yes I did it again here. I thought you'd like it:-)

I broke latex

5

Joseph Wright

4:59 PM

@DavidCarlisle Bug in longtable?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright no that would be a long standing feature, I changed \zap@space (good) then made the mistake of running the test suite (less good)

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright well here some test file which show all sort of missing colors (we need also something to reprocess the xcolor colors like dvipsnames or get Uwe to add the patch code directly):

\RequirePackage{l3color,etoolbox}
\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{xcolor-patches.sty}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\cs_generate_variant:Nn \color_set:nn {ne}
\cs_new_protected:Npn \@expl@color@set@@ne #1 #2
  {
    \exp_args:Nx \__color_if_defined:nT {#2}
       { \color_set:ne {#1}{#2} }
  }
\cs_gset_eq:NN \@expl@color@set@@nnn \color_set:nnn
\ExplSyntaxOff
\pretocmd{\XC@col@rlet}   {\@expl@color@set@@ne{#2}{#4}}{}{\fail}
\pretocmd{\XC@definec@lor}{\@expl@color@set@@nnn{#2}{#4}{#5}}{}{\fail}
\end{filecontents}

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle \let \zap@space \tl_trim_spaces:n?

David Carlisle

I might try that, actually I did `\def\zap@space#1 #2{%
\unexpanded{#1}%
\ifx#2\@empty\else\expandafter\zap@space\fi
#2}` which breaks 2.09 compatibility mode in the new filehook code blurg

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Er, can't you just back it out in the 2.09 support code?

David Carlisle

5:05 PM

@JosephWright yes I could but they were just first couple of failures, I'll look later, on a conf call for an hour now

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Late in the day for that .. have a lot of fun!

@UlrikeFischer For speed I guess: it's the only place Till uses \@namelet

David Carlisle

@JosephWright the world being round is a pain

barbara beeton

5:23 PM

@PauloCereda -- A news item in yesterday's Baltimore newspaper reported an accident in which a car ran a red light, was impacted by a light rail car, which pushed it into the path of a light rail car coming the other way. The auto ended up sandwiched between the two light rail cars, bringing the entire light rail route to a halt, and ending up with a woman dead, a child in the hospital in serious condition, and a slightly injured man. Don't run red lights.

Paulo Cereda

@barbarabeeton oh my

barbara beeton

@yo' -- That's also true of at least one publisher who should know better; one book published by AMS is unfortunately a sad example. (The author is excellent at expounding on math topics, which was assumed to carry over into other topics. Moral: Don't assume.)

yo'

@DavidCarlisle self-blame? That's a new level :-)

David Carlisle

@yo' given this format only exists on my machine.. Oh you mean I should blame Ulrike anyway?

Joseph Wright

@barbarabeeton I'm intrigued

Paulo Cereda

5:32 PM

The Island of TeX just released its own CTAN API.

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- I'm having trouble finding this in my mail archive, so it may even have been a comment interchange here on tex.sx. I'll keep looking, but finding is uncertain.

David Carlisle

@PauloCereda who would want to do this?? // fetch the packages by Paulo

Paulo Cereda

@DavidCarlisle <3

@DavidCarlisle I admit longtable would be a far better example. :)

Joseph Wright

@barbarabeeton Ah, right

@barbarabeeton Cool

@PauloCereda Where do I look?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright gitlab.com/islandoftex/libraries/ctan-api

Paulo Cereda

5:37 PM

@JosephWright what David just posted. :)

@JosephWright you've been poked

Joseph Wright

6:02 PM

@PauloCereda ??

Paulo Cereda

@JosephWright Skype :)

barbara beeton

@JosephWright -- This is the book: bookstore.ams.org/matpub I was allowed to read (and correct) the chapters that were explicitly about (La)TeX, but the topic really pervades the text, and the misinformation (probably including using \\ to end a line) is throughout. I have copy of the book (in an unmarked box, sigh), and all the stickers marking bad pages make it look like a porcupine.

Joseph Wright

7:18 PM

Anyone got LuaMetaTeX set up?

Or ConTeXT MkII?

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright it have a bit older luametalatex from Marcel, but I just tried and get an error

! Undefined control sequence.
<inserted text> \IMPOSSIBLE.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Oh good

@UlrikeFischer I'd not thought of that one ... drat

Ulrike Fischer

impossible errors are nice ;-)

@JosephWright why do you ask?

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer \c_sys_engine_format_str

yo'

@barbarabeeton Yeah, this happens. But if a random incident changes to a rule, that's another thing.

Ulrike Fischer

7:23 PM

@JosephWright you mean how to load the backend?

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer Think I'll deal with LuaTeX/ConTeXt first, and come back to think about LuaMetaTeX (as it's not formall on the supported list)

@UlrikeFischer No, I mean @PhelypeOleinik's new constants

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright ah, right I had forgotten that.

@JosephWright the banner I get is

This is LuaMetaTeX, Version 2.06.14 luametalatex.fmt 2020.8.20 20 AUG 2020 21:22

Joseph Wright

A question from Yannis ...

Phelype Oleinik

@UlrikeFischer I'm never that certain about code, so I go for should :-)

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright dvilualatex?

Joseph Wright

7:26 PM

@UlrikeFischer That one I've added

@UlrikeFischer Yannis asks about XeTeX and Omega: I just haven't seen him for a while, nothing to do with my ConTeXt stuff

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright You're already dealing with that?

Joseph Wright

@PhelypeOleinik Give me a second ... partly

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright Okay. I was doing the \ShowCommand stuff. Probably won't have time to look at that today

Joseph Wright

@PhelypeOleinik Well so far I have

\str_const:Nx \c_sys_engine_format_str
  {
    \cs_if_exist:NTF \fmtname
      {
        \bool_lazy_or:nnTF
          { \str_if_eq_p:Vn \fmtname { plain } }
          { \str_if_eq_p:Vn \fmtname { LaTeX2e } }
          {
            \sys_if_engine_pdftex:T
              { \int_compare:nNnT { \tex_pdfoutput:D } = { 1 } { pdf } }
            \sys_if_engine_xetex:T  { xe  }
            \sys_if_engine_ptex:T   { p   }
            \sys_if_engine_uptex:T  { up  }
            \sys_if_engine_luatex:T
              {

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright Hm... Seems like I oversimplified a bit ;-)

Joseph Wright

7:33 PM

@PhelypeOleinik Still need to check some of those outcomes

@PhelypeOleinik ConTeXt isn't right, though that's tricky as I'm not sure what is 'right' (MkII?, dynamic nature of format files, ...)

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright Maybe check for \development@branch@name to add -dev? I did it in the version check code, but was wondering where's the right place

Joseph Wright

@PhelypeOleinik That's a semantics question partly: is that part of the format name? I'm not sure

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright Probably that should go into the \c_sys_engine_exec_str, if any

Joseph Wright

@PhelypeOleinik Hmm

@PhelypeOleinik I think ConTeXt should give cont-en, as that is the actual format file name

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright I didn't even know that :-)

TeXnician

7:38 PM

@JosephWright And what if a user uses one of the interface translations? Then it's cont-de, cont-nl etc.

Joseph Wright

@TeXnician Well yes, I've actually decided on using \fmtname here, as then ConTeXt deals with things itself

@PhelypeOleinik No? Don't ever run ConTeXt?

TeXnician

@JosephWright Ah, right. Too easy :)

Phelype Oleinik

@JosephWright Mostly with \tracingall, so didn't pay attention to that

Joseph Wright

Also had e-TeX to deal with, so

\str_const:Nx \c_sys_engine_format_str
  {
    \cs_if_exist:NTF \fmtname
      {
        \bool_lazy_or:nnTF
          { \str_if_eq_p:Vn \fmtname { plain } }
          { \str_if_eq_p:Vn \fmtname { LaTeX2e } }
          {
            \sys_if_engine_pdftex:T
              { \int_compare:nNnT { \tex_pdfoutput:D } = { 1 } { pdf } }
            \sys_if_engine_xetex:T  { xe }
            \sys_if_engine_ptex:T   { p  }
            \sys_if_engine_uptex:T  { up }
            \sys_if_engine_luatex:T
              {

@PhelypeOleinik I'm usually \showing stuff, but I have in the past traced the format-building process, so ...

Ulrike Fischer

8:01 PM

@JosephWright hm, I actually meant Yannis question ;-)

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer He wants XDV ...

@UlrikeFischer I'd assumed he needs XeTeX

@UlrikeFischer Worth clarifying

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright David just commented.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I'd missed he'd actually used Aleph: I just thought 'oh, \localleftbox, he's used LuaTeX'

@DavidCarlisle CSS weirdness ...

David Carlisle

8:22 PM

@JosephWright just seem Jonas' email replied...

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Yup - I knew it was a GitHub thing

David Carlisle

@JosephWright that's where I got the page templates in _layouts from to add the interactive examples stuff, so i knew where to go-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Ah, that would help

David Carlisle

@JosephWright @UlrikeFischer recall anything about this?:

well dvilualatex makes a dvi file, but if you use opentype fonts there are not many dvi drivers that can cope (not compatible with xetex's xdv) however there was one driver announced last year I think I'll report back. — David Carlisle 34 secs ago

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle The VTeX people were working on it

Ulrike Fischer

8:29 PM

@DavidCarlisle Marcel wrote some code for dvisvg and open type fonts.

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle github.com/vtex-soft/texlive.xdvipsk

David Carlisle

@JosephWright thanks

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle tug.org/TUGboat/tb38-2/tb119tolusis.pdf

@DavidCarlisle I think VTeX have it working, but it doesn't seem to be in TL (we might ask about that I guess)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright perhaps they plan to sell it?

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Given it's GPL on GitHub ... probably not

David Carlisle

8:35 PM

@JosephWright oh yes (not that GPL prevents you selling it:-)

@JosephWright test suite is looking a lot happier not finished but got to 366/423 in base with no errors. I added \expandafter\@empty TeX is so fragile sometimes:-)

Aaron Hall

:)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle To expand? The \unexpanded?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright still not entirely sure I may try to make a mwe later so I really see the difference but:

\def\zap@space#1 #2{%
  \expandafter\@empty\unexpanded{#1}%
  \ifx#2\@empty\else\expandafter\zap@space\fi
  #2}

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Was reading the xdvipsk docs, they've extended graphic format support too

David Carlisle

@JosephWright ah I think I remember reading that tub article. png and jpeg would be good even without the opentype stuff for luatex

Joseph Wright

8:45 PM

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle I guess ask about it

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright if this goes to texlive then we should probably integrate their font stuff somehow.

Marcel Krüger

@UlrikeFischer I think they should adapt to the dvisvgm approach, that's much saner. (It's merged to dev by the way) Instead of writing the same output into the file and writing additonal files to map to a more useful format, it just writes the right information in the first place.

Ulrike Fischer

@MarcelKrüger then one should perhaps add an issue to mention this. It is not so good if they develop without taking luaotfload into account. Beside this: would it make sense to update luaotfload in the near feature?

Joseph Wright

@MarcelKrüger That sounds good

@UlrikeFischer I think they needed it to work, so they did it however they could

Ulrike Fischer

9:03 PM

@JosephWright you mean they needed luaotfload? Could be. But I don't think that they ever asked to extend the font support for dvi.

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I mean they needed OTF fonts in DVIs from LuaTeX

Marcel Krüger

@UlrikeFischer Yes, we probably should do an update. I'm currently trying to fix the tests locally, then I have a "fix" for Henri's #164 and we probably should adjust the default features (#133), but at the end of the week we should be good for an update.

Ulrike Fischer

@MarcelKrüger hm, then I should probably check what happened on the context side. I wonder if the git mirror still works.

Marcel Krüger

@UlrikeFischer We especially should add an issue there because the DVI code in luaotfload will most likely break their stuff...

@UlrikeFischer Their git mirror still works (the GitHub one at least), I am using it to get my luametatex manuals.

Ulrike Fischer

@MarcelKrüger yes just tried. the fonts-merged file shows only around 200 chars changed, so we can hope that is still works ;-)

@MarcelKrüger hm there are two issues from Tomas Rokicki but one looks completly odd ;-)

Joseph Wright

9:22 PM

In other news, Karl asked me for a TUGboat based on my blog posts (I suspected that might happen!)

@PauloCereda Nothing on Skype ... strange

Ulrike Fischer

@JosephWright they are watching you ...

Joseph Wright

@UlrikeFischer I sometimes get that feeling

Ulrike Fischer

3

barbara beeton

9:51 PM

@UlrikeFischer -- Quite true!

Alan Munn

10:10 PM

From the Open Access Journal of Historical Syntax: "For all articles and squibs submitted from 1st September 2020 onwards, we've therefore decided to require authors to submit the post-review version of their accepted manuscripts in LaTeX, using the JHS submission template." ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/hs/index.php/hs/announcement/view/1

David Carlisle

10:27 PM

@AlanMunn they are doomed:-)

barbara beeton

10:42 PM

@AlanMunn -- Good for them! I do hope they've got (at least) a few savvy production editors. Even better if they have a knowledgeable tech support person available.

David Carlisle

11:02 PM

@barbarabeeton that's what I meant to say.

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