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00:00 - 23:0023:00 - 00:00

00:05
Aaargh xstring in miktex sucks. Bug :-(
@HarishKumar Really? It should work the same.
@egreg Bug in miktex not xstring :-). It says xstring.tex not found. I think we have to install it manually.
@HarishKumar xstring.tex? Not .sty?
@egreg:
@egreg: That is the error.
This happened after an update to miktex.
@HarishKumar Did you Refresh FNDB ?
00:13
@HarishKumar Oh, yes; it should be in .../tex/generic/xstring In MiKTeX's page xstring is marked as a recent update.
@percusse I did all those. But....
@egreg Can I change the loaction?
@PauloCereda Ha, I read it just now. As I said yesterday, let the colour of arara 2. It’s arara’s corporate identity colour ;-) (But once again: This dark blue looks fine, as well.)
Ah! It is not there in mine @egreg. I have to copy it myself.
@HarishKumar Sometimes a packaging error happens. Look what you have in /doc/generic/xstring
@egreg I don't have xstring in generic :-( at all.
00:20
@HarishKumar It's strange: according to tlmgr, the package has been updated on 2012-07-21, but MiKTeX reports 2012-11-02. I suspect something went wrong with MiKTeX
@Speravir Currently, we have 5 candidates for the new colour. :) My idea is to have a new colour for every major release. The current one was suggested by Brent, and I decided to use it and see how it goes. Now the arara logo is typeset in TikZ, so we can easily redefine araracolor and the logo will have the new colour setup. :)
@egreg Yep. It is a fault with miktex. I think I have to manually install xstring until this bug is fixed by christian. :-(
@PauloCereda Ah, nice idea. But please not for every subsubversion.
@Speravir Don't worry. :)
00:38
@PauloCereda Before I forget: I like this actor. It is from a series he made for a German private TV channel, and I just found this one, the original youtube channel for this series:
@Speravir Oh my! Thank you! :) I'll watch the videos! :D
@PauloCereda Yes, I have to, too – I missed this series almost fully.
kan
kan
Hello!
Cutting teeths with Emacs. My official editor is going to be emacs.
kan
kan
Good day @egreg.
00:47
@egreg: Yep. At last. It is happening not only for me. I am happy ;-)
@kan For me it's bed time! It was a welcome to the group of users of the only text editor. Ciao!
@egreg Good night. By the way which is your editor? Just curious!
kan
kan
@egreg D'oh. Should have seen what is was a reply to. Any way, good night.
@HarishKumar If I interpret @egreg's reply correctly, it's emacs. But, it might also be DC effect.
@kan Welcome. I too got it that way. Just wanted a confirmation from him. :-)
@PauloCereda Actually there was another one which went almost like this, I'm not writing any legal sentence that can be used in any court and lead to something against my benefit, you lawyers FU! I refuse to use any language that you can warp or twist against me. This license is purely English and meant literally there are no subtexts etc. ... and it goes like this one paragraph.
The nice thing about it is that it emphasizes the inportance of staying away from rotten lawyer lingo. Hence, there are no liability legally since the clauses are completely informal. Thus, you play the game at home instead of on their field.
00:57
@HarishKumar @egreg:
4
Q: MikTeX can’t find xstring

TobiI’m not using MikTeX myself but someone I developed a class for. And it seems like there’s a problem with xstring. The following MWE compiles fine with my TeX Live 2012 but MikTeX (on Win 7) can’t find the package, although it seem to be installed correctly installed. Furthermore MikTeX should in...

That's an error in the miktex package. xstring.tex is missing. The bug has already been reported. Until the package is updated: Get xstring.tex from CTAN manually and put it somewhere where it can be found (e.g. in your current folder, or in a local texmf). — Ulrike Fischer 2 days ago
“Has already been reported” is understatement. It was Ulrike herself.
@egreg Oh, sorry.
01:12
Is there a way to replace the dot in the itemize environment with a certain symbol on an item-by-item basis?
@Gnintendo Yes. ;-)
@Speravir How?
@Gnintendo As optional argument \item[{\tiny\bullet}]
kan
kan
But, this is slightly strange! @Gnintendo
@Speravir thanks
 
3 hours later…
04:04
@Speravir @HarishKumar thanks for your answer using indent.plx. I updated the blogpost with your clarified instructions: tex.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/… let me know if you have any other recommendations :)
@cmhughes Looks fine.
@Speravir thanks
 
1 hour later…
05:19
@egreg hey
fancyhdr makes no sense
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\fancypagestyle{firstpage}{%
\fancyhf{}
\lhead{\MyAuthor}
\rhead{\MyDate}
\chead{\MyTitle}
\lfoot[\thepage]{}
\rfoot[]{\thepage}}

\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhf{}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\lfoot[\thepage]{}
\rfoot[]{\thepage}}

\pagestyle{plain}
@egreg I'm trying to just get rid of the line for the redefinition of the page numbering for all the pages that aren't the first page
on the first page I just do \thispagestyle{firstpage}
but I can't get the second part to work without putting a line at the top and if I remove the line then it removes it from the first page as well
05:42
I gave up ^
but for the people who come on and read this, I have a good one for you to reply to (I'll see these tomorrow):
After seeing my homework assignment, my Chemistry professor has become intrigued by LaTeX. He acknowledges that he's heard of it before, but never really looked into it. In one blip of a conversation we had, he inquired on the advantages of LaTeX. While I myself could go on and on about its advantages, what do you guys think I could tell or show someone in his position that would really 'wow' him?
 
3 hours later…
08:41
@Gnintendo What about this?
\documentclass[twoside]{article}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage}

\fancypagestyle{firstpage}{
  \fancyhf{}
  \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.4pt}
  \fancyhead[L]{Author Name}
  \fancyhead[C]{Paper title}
  \fancyhead[R]{\today}
}

\usepackage{kantlipsum}

\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{firstpage}

\kant[1-20]

\end{document}
Hello @egreg.
@Gigili Hello!
I have TeXnicCenter installe don my computer.
I wrote a few lines to figure out how it works.
But F5 doesn't work, do you know how can I get output?
@Gigili I don't. I never use Windoze /harsh voice à la Bela Lugosi/
2
Umm, OK.
good for you, good for you
 
1 hour later…
09:58
@egreg :)
10:25
Hi @Paulo!
@tohecz Hey Tom! :) How are you?
@PauloCereda Quite ok, travelling from Prague back to Paris
@tohecz Cool, how long is the trip?
1:40 by plane
plus: 1:00 travel to airport, 1:00 for drop-off, 1:00 "just in case" extra time, 0:30 waiting for luggage, 1:00 travel from Airport ;)
10:32
Which means that I leave home at 9:30 and arrive home in Paris at 16:00
C'est la vie. :)
I much more like the evening flights, but only when travelling home, not when going abroad
@egreg: ooh speaking of Bela Lugosi, Google's theme today is about Bram Stoker. :)
(N.B.: If I suddenly stopped responding, the airport WiFi kicked me out ;) )
11:02
hi there
@ℝaphink Hello! :)
11:37
@PauloCereda 165th anniversary; it's also the anniversary of Teofilo Folengo (b. 1491), Gottlob Frege (b. 1848), Felix Hausdorff (b. 1868); but most important, it's the birthday of Hermann Zapf. Happy birthday!
@egreg Yay! Happy birthday! :)
It would be a nice addition to the Community Bulletin
It seems that, ironically, tex.sx does not itself support tex notation, unlike, say mathoverflow. Is this right?
@egreg Let's ping @JosephWright. :)
@FaheemMitha yes that's not really tex it's mathjax and would confuse rather than help when asking questions about the darker corners of tex
11:41
@PauloCereda Hermann is 94, today.
@egreg We could write a blog post. :)
@DavidCarlisle Well, if it could be switched on it might occasionally be useful.
@egreg not much older than you!
optionally available, i mean
@DavidCarlisle And much older than Herbert, of course, who just turned 16.
11:43
@egreg LOL
@PauloCereda Sorry, but I have a long lecture in the afternoon and I have to leave in a few minutes to go to the other side of the city.
@egreg Oh. :(
@FaheemMitha well the mods here decided they didn't want it before I was active on the site so I'm not to blame for the decision, but I think it was right, it would confuse especially as mathjax questions are usually closed as off topic
can be closed TL (OP has it working now) tex.stackexchange.com/questions/81915/…
12:03
@egreg: are you still here? :)
Paulo Cereda on November 08, 2012

Today, Google created a doodle (a special logo commemorating a holiday or event) celebrating Bram Stoker’s 165th anniversary. As egreg brilliantly reminded us in the TeX chatroom, November 8th is also an important date for a very special person, it’s the birthday of Hermann Zapf! Hermann is 94 today.

Hermann Zapf at EuroTeX 2006 in Pont-a-Mousson, France (by Adam Twardoch).

3
@FaheemMitha There's a few posts on meta about that. Start with this one and follow the links:
10
Q: Why doesn't maths render as maths?

Andrew StaceyOn some other SE sites, code in between dollar signs gets rendered as mathematics (using MathJaX, I believe). This doesn't seem to work here? Why not? And how do I get round it?

@AndrewStacey Thanks.
@DavidCarlisle Ok.
@PauloCereda Good job! I must run.
@egreg :) Have a nice lecture. :)
12:20
@PauloCereda What's up?
@JosephWright egreg mentioned about adding a note about Hermann's birthday in the community bulletin, but then we thought a blog post might solve this way easier. :)
@PauloCereda Ah right
Sorry for the trouble. :)
12:42
@PauloCereda For me yet another reason to celebrate Nov. 8th: Birthday of my youngest son :-)
Now I only have to connect him to Hermann Zapf somehow. It was such a warm and interesting session in Pont-a-Mousson. Hermann Zapf was genuinely happy that the TeX people are more or less the last on earth who really care about fonts.
@StephanLehmke Oh happy birthday! :)
@StephanLehmke How nice! Did you attend the conference? :)
@PauloCereda I had to work till 22:30 yesterday, was home at midnight, then started baking his birthday cake ;-)
@StephanLehmke ooh cake! Which flavour? :)
@PauloCereda Yes, it was great. Panel session of Don Knuth and Hermann Zapf discussing new CMR and Palatino :-)
@PauloCereda Well a simple chocolate cake (he's turned 2), but with a lot of candy on it and of course 2 candles.
@StephanLehmke Awesome! :) You know, this could be a great subject for a blog post. :) wink wink
@StephanLehmke OMG chocolate! must... fly... to Germany... :)
12:54
@PauloCereda I was really just attending. Hans (and someone else?) prepared the session, really cool, with 3m high projections of the differences between the old and new Palatino glyphs.
@StephanLehmke Wow, a fantastic structure. :)
Germans. <3
@PauloCereda Hans (Hagen) is dutch :-) Never ever call him German ;-)
@StephanLehmke I meant Hermann. :) If I ever meet Hans, I'd be all OMG what do I do now? :)
@PauloCereda :-)
13:18
@PauloCereda Just tell him how much you like LaTeX
@DavidCarlisle Good plan! Oh wait.
13:33
@AndrewStacey I looked at those links. It seems you do favor an optional turn-onable render latex option.
@FaheemMitha I guess you're going from meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/292/86 on that. Note that that was written 2 years ago. In the intervening 2 years I cannot think of a single time that I have wished for TeX rendering on the site. I guess I should update that!
@AndrewStacey Yes, that's the one. You could add an update at the bottom saying you have changed your mind. :-)
I see I have been a member of this site 1 yr 9 months myself. How times flies when one is having fun.
@FaheemMitha Seemed most appropriate to add it as a comment so I've done so.
@AndrewStacey Ok, I see it. Thanks.
13:49
Can we have a few votes on the Packages N-Z answer such that it's under the A-M answer?
49
Q: Who are the package maintainers here?

Andrew StaceyQuick links: LaTeX Packages A-M, N-Z ❧ LaTeX Classes ❧ ConTeXt Modules ❧ Generic Packages ❧ Support Scripts ❧ Biblatex Styles A fair few users here have written or maintain packages on CTAN, some even in the TeX Live distribution, or at the least have s...

without upvoting the biblatex and support script answers please :) Let the N-Z answer overtake them.
@percusse Hmm, I think that no number of votes will be enough ... but then, I view posts by date not votes.
14:06
OK, I need a name for the bibtex thingy. Suggestions?
@PauloCereda Fred
@AndrewStacey What does it mean? :)
@PauloCereda In Norwegian, the word fred means peace. Makes it very hard to keep a straight face in church services.
@AndrewStacey :-)
@AndrewStacey ooh! :)
14:13
@PauloCereda Look at the genus name of these : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_owl
@percusse LOL
@PauloCereda what, the command line tool question?
@DavidCarlisle Yes. :) The app is ready. :)
I thought "perl" would be sufficient answer but the name has to be at least 30 characters
@DavidCarlisle LOL
 
1 hour later…
15:24
0
A: Command line tool to extract .bib entry by key?

Paulo CeredaDisclaimer: I'm not sure if this is the droid tool you are looking for. :) I wrote it in my lunch time, so it might be very buggy. But we do love problematic software, don't we? :) Introducing fred1: The idea here is to behave exactly Seamus' idea: given a bibfile and a key, return the desire...

@PauloCereda ah I'm disappointed as I saw the start of the answer with the bash script I thought you'd done it all with funky bash string handling, but then you dropped into java :(
@DavidCarlisle I'm sorry. :)
@DavidCarlisle: carlisle:2012 <3
@PauloCereda ?
@DavidCarlisle Look at the last screenshot. :)
@PauloCereda hmph well I'd give up reading the answer when I saw it was java, now I suppose I have to go and do some downvoting, back in a bit.....
15:35
@DavidCarlisle Oh no, what have I done?! :)
Saw this on 9gag. :P
@PauloCereda voting completed (I may have got my up and down arrows mixed:-)
@DavidCarlisle awww <3
@PauloCereda I'd hoped to use this bibtex generator in my comment but seems they haven't updated the source database for ages so they only had the CR draft not the final version webcapita.com/w3cbib/… tis bibtex though
15:52
@DavidCarlisle Ah. :)
16:04
What we need is less computers and more monks.
4
16:22
@DavidCarlisle A-ha! An ontological question. Are computers computable? If so, they must be countable and so we need fewer, not less.
Fedora 18 only next year. :(
@AndrewStacey Not so. If computers are computable that only means that there are countably many distinct computers. We could have uncountably many identical computers. But that has no bearing on their being a mass noun or not. I have no idea where I'm going with this.
@Seamus Thus we are working in the skeleton of the category of all computers. So we need fewer skeletal computers. I'm glad we've gotten that one sorted out.
Uh-oh. brain malfunction
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{English}
\begin{document}
\begin{centre}
\colour{grey}Aluminium has an unusual colour.
\end{centre}
\end{document}
16:36
\let\colour\color :)
@PauloCereda Missed that one!
@AndrewStacey <3
1
Q: Finding package documentation

Malthe EisumWhere can I find the documentation for \usepackage{float}? And in general how do I find package documentations? Usually, I google usepackage{<package>} and hope that the documentation will show up.

Duplicate, gentlemen?
Oops, perhaps we should wait a lil' more. I think I voted too soon. :(
@PauloCereda Yes, but what are people doing voting now? We are supposed to give the OP times to come back on this.
@JosephWright Yep, I realized that after voting it. :( Sorry.
@PauloCereda It's OK. It got closed so I've reopened to allow due process.
16:46
@JosephWright Thanks. My bad.
Whoops! Sorry.
@AndrewStacey Not a problem: what moderators are for
17:26
@AndrewStacey I believe that the set of digital computers is not only countable but finite.
@AndrewStacey Leslie wanted me to have [grey] as well as (an alias for) [gray] but I objected on the grounds we'd also need \colour and \centre and \endcentre and we couldn't afford the tokens....
@DavidCarlisle ooh! :)
Hi @MartinScharrer! :)
@JosephWright: I had to pronounce siunitx today. Can I add a feature request for an easier alias? :)
2
@PauloCereda :-)
kan
kan
18:02
Hello friends!
Does anyone use bzr?
kan
kan
(I have created a mess. I renamed the file from GUI. Thus, bzr status returns a missing file... )
@kan I believe @AndrewStacey does.
kan
kan
@TorbjørnT. But, he is not around. :(
And, for the record, I am trying this out after I knew he uses that. :)
Morning
@PauloCereda The only competitors I've seen for German precision are Korean chemists.
Within chemistry at least.
kan
kan
18:09
OK. Figured out. :)
tells himself "I am getting better with this stuff!"
@PauloCereda It would be pronounced as three words. SI (as the letters, since is it an acronym) unit X
@Canageek :)
@Canageek Too much complex for my tiny brain. :)
18:44
@JosephWright: question: can I add this soundtrack to be played in the background everytime I had to pronounce the X in siunitx? :)
@Canageek fo most packges I just pronounce the x as s call that package S I units (just as I'd pronounce the system of units it is based on)
Imperial units.
:)
Royale with cheese.
@PauloCereda yes well we still use those units even if we lost the empire
@DavidCarlisle :)
19:12
I just posted a complicated question on TikZ. Maybe I should have tried to make it simpler. Anyway, I'll stay in the chat in case anyone feels like commenting, but doesn't want to write a comment to the question.
One question: should I add the resulting picture?
@FaheemMitha yes pictures are good, although reading the question I guess there are no ducks in the picture so @PauloCereda will be disappointed;
@DavidCarlisle Ducks?
I added a picture. It is colorful, so that is good.
@FaheemMitha any one of of dozens of links, perhaps starting with this one
32
Q: Cute document in LaTeX

DanitebaMy girlfriend is teacher at primary school, she's new using LaTeX and she needs to make a "cute document" for kids, but I don't know how change the parts, sections, numer of page and all this things to make a cute document.

19:52
@DavidCarlisle Good point, I do that with graphicx, but not siunitx for some reason.
@Canageek I pronounce it 'S I unit X'
@PauloCereda OK, then pronounce it Système international units.
@JosephWright: Next project will dandelion, I promise. :) Expect lots of emails. :)
@PauloCereda Cool
@JosephWright Then we can send Bruno to the TUG conference in Japan. :)
20:04
@PauloCereda Someone from the team has to go, but I think @WillRobertson is closer (and might actually have some time soon-ish)
@JosephWright Ah cool! :)
20:21
A friend of mine, in IM: "Do you have a repository named fred?" :D
@JosephWright: could you use your mod-powers to ask if Ulrike wants to be our next interviewee? :)
@ulrikefischer As @PauloCereda asks, would you be interested in being the interviewee in the next community-driven series?
@JosephWright Thanks. :)
@PeterGrill: Sorry for the geekness. I think your new Gravatar ressembles a thwomp from the Super Mario series. :)
:)
20:43
@PauloCereda Are you recommending that as my Gravatar? Looks a bit mean for my tastes.
So, is this tikzmark thing something someone created?
I find no sign of it in the 2.10 manual
@PeterGrill No, I just thought your current one actually has "spikey" corners like a thwomp. :)
@FaheemMitha \tikzmark is evil! :)
@PauloCereda Good to know.
But doesn't answer my question. :-)
@FaheemMitha I don't know anything about it. :) I just know they guys here use it a lot. :)
@PauloCereda Ok.
20:51
@FaheemMitha Well that is what we want David Carlise to think, so he does not get too far ahead of me.
I have numerous answers on this site about that. I will try to work on your question.
@PeterGrill Thanks.
Basically you use \tikzmark to label the points anywhere on the page, and then you can go into a tikz to draw things on the page between the \tikzmarks as an overlay.
@PeterGrill Ok, and where is this documented?
Sort of like a label, then?
@FaheemMitha I think almost all my \tikzmark answers have a link to Andrew Stacey's original definition. But there is not much documentation needed. Just look at an example. I will find an example that is fairly simple....
Here is a fairly simple use: How to draw arrows between parts of an equation to show the Math Distributive Property (Multiplication)?. Look at the "Basic Solution", and hopefully that makes sense.
For your DNA quesiton, I would first totally ignore the arrows, and the coloring and figure out what is the best way to specify the sequences on both sides.
Then automate the coloring based on the letter, and separately draw the arrows (with each letter having a \tikzmark to get to it.
@PauloCereda I see on Trello you're planning a TUGBoat about arara: will you need some proof-reading?
21:03
@PeterGrill You don't like the current way of specifying the sequences?
@FaheemMitha No, because you have formatting mixed in with the letters. Assuming you are doing this often. If you are doing this once or twice, with no changes required later, then it may not be worth the effort.
@PeterGrill That's true. Formatting plus letters, I mean.
Imagine if you could just build a table, and for the first line say "CxAxGxxGxC" & CG&ACG", where the x is used to denote an empty cell.
Assuming that the coloring is based on the letter it could automatically be filled in.
@PeterGrill : No, the coloring is not that simple.
The table (using multicol) coudl put int he ]\tikzmarks automatically.
21:08
@JosephWright Whoohoo, I pronounce it right
@FaheemMitha Ok, but there must be some logic in how you are doing the coloring. If not, that could be added to each cell. But still the boxing should be done automatically, and not need to be specified for each cell.
@JosephWright Why the x? Was there an SI unit package?
@PeterGrill I agree that separating the formatting and the letters would be a good thing.
So, does the example of \tikzmark make sense to you?
@PeterGrill There is some logic, yes, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to translate to TeX.
Would be interested to see your example.
21:11
@Canageek SIunits :-)
@FaheemMitha Ok, then perhaps a syntax like "C/blue, , A/cyan, , G/blue", etc might be better.
The double commas used to denote empty cells.
@Canageek Formally, siunitx was originally an extension of SIunits, although really it had more from SIstyle. But then it turned out that what was actually needed was to start from scratch: most of the v2 code is my own.
@JosephWright Makes sense. I do like the syntax, used it ALL over the place in my thesis.
@FaheemMitha Ok, but not sure I can do it today, depends how easily I get distracted from my work :-), but wanted to check, that the arrows are only between the top rows, and the bottom rows? I think it'll be easier to just allow for arrows between any two cells, but in case it turns out to be easier just to allow top/bottom row drawing only, I wanted to check.
@Canageek Thanks: I put a lot of effort into it! The key thing was working out how to parse units correctly (look at the awkward \usk in SIunits to see why this was needed)
21:32
A few days ago, I came upon means to optimise listings so that copy-pasting of code lines typeset using LaTeX would be no problem anymore. At the moment, the line numbers on the left often get copied with the typeset code. Unfortunately, I cannot find the tex.SX question anymore …
I used \SI 85 times, \si 4 times and \num once
@PattaFeuFeu Is it this one?
4
A: How to make listings code correct copyable from PDF and with hyperlink

Martin ScharrerYou can mark the line numbers so that they are not copied, i.e. an empty text is copied instead, using the technique described in Is it possible to provide alternative text to use when copying text from the PDF?. The required code can be added using the numberstyle option if listings, as shown be...

@egreg Nope. The one I’m talking about had an image in the question as well as in the accepted answer
21:52
After seeing my homework assignment, my Chemistry professor has become intrigued by LaTeX. He acknowledges that he's heard of it before, but never really looked into it. In one blip of a conversation we had, he inquired on the advantages of LaTeX. While I myself could go on and on about its advantages, what do you guys think I could tell or show someone in his position that would really 'wow' him?
@Gnintendo Don't bother he'll eventually think you are procrastinating instead of doing work. The subtler the more it's tempting.
22:06
@Gnintendo I could send you my UG thesis, I wrote it in LaTeX
@kan bzr mv --after <oldfile> <newfile> "Move only the bzr identifier of the file, because the file has already been moved"
@Canageek I didn't even use latex for my phd thesis:(
@DavidCarlisle Same here
@DavidCarlisle I guess we have to let you off, though, but not me!
@JosephWright I'd love to. :) My plan is to write the article right after releasing arara. :)
@DavidCarlisle shrug I'm seeing how much I can do without using Word, and it means I don't have to mess around with external citation software (CrossRef), and fight with Word forgetting what figure goes with what refrence.
@JosephWright I watched someone finish their PhD thesis in Word. It was crashing once an hour or more on the last stretch, and she had to redo all the section and image cross refrencing more then once.
22:18
@Canageek No real problems here, I have to say, but I am pretty good with Word :-)
@JosephWright When was the last time you tried to get it to do 200 pages with high resolution images?
@Canageek Citations done by hand (EndNote was worse then than now, and is still regarded as the spawn of the devil in my department)
@Canageek Shouldn't need many bitmaps for a chemistry thesis
@Canageek I have none at all, I think
@DavidCarlisle Wasn't yours on a typewriter? runs
@JosephWright They were JPEGS, but there were a lot of spectra and crystal structures I believe; protein chemistry.
@Canageek I'm not saying that would be my recommendation to people, but at the time we had no 'local expert' in LaTeX
@Canageek Spectra should be vector format :-)
@Canageek X-rays more tricky, I'd agree
Also, we are talking over ten years ago now: LaTeX has got easier to use due to things like TeXworks, better packaging for Windows, ...
@JosephWright Should. Mine weren't, I just used the Printscreen button or printed them to PDFCreator. Word doesn't support vector formats as of 2007.
22:25
@Canageek I'm thinking for example of NMRs, which ideally you open in MestReC and paste in, and which therefore are internally in vector format. Or using something like Origin or SigmaPlot, same idea but without the specialist functions.
I used MestReC, but it was still free at that point
@JosephWright Do they support 2D NMR? They were using NMR Pipe, I was using TopSpin. Sometimes they used another NMR program....
@Canageek MestReC certainly does, and Origin can do anything if you put in enough effort :-)
I forget the name though. Some unix program designed for 2D NMR.
@Canageek TopSpin is OK for instrument use, but not really for presentation to publication standards, I find
Lady Gaga is here in Brazil. Oh no.
22:28
@PauloCereda :-)
@JosephWright I found using PDFs with LaTeX to be iffy. Hard to resize them, hard to convert everything to work with LaTeX as an image instead of a page, and I don't want to have to learn inkscape.
@JosephWright There is an SVG package now though, so I'd probably look at that. SVG is an IMAGE format, not a PAGE LAYOUT format like PDF, so it should work better.
@Canageek I never have any issue at all
@Canageek Almost certainly a limited subset, and working at the macro level not with the engine
@Canageek Of course, depends on the software you use. I tend to stick to things which can produce EPS files
@JosephWright Could be that I didn't know LaTeX very well, but I was trying to follow ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/svg-inkscape/InkscapePDFLaTeX.pdf and all the letter sizes and such got messed up
@JosephWright If I was doing it again the SVG package would work, as it is explicitly designed to work with ROOT (The graphing software I was using). Not sure how I would go about NMR spectra, but they were indeed the weakest part of the thesis.
@PauloCereda You contaminated LaTeX with Java? ;)
22:36
@Canageek LOL pretty much it. :P
@PauloCereda Why not use Lua? Or C++ or C or Python or anything that isn't horrible and evil?
@Canageek Because I'm evil. :) On a more serious note, our next secret project is Lua-based. :)
I think only Heiko has a TeX tool written in Java.
@PauloCereda pax
But of course, Heiko can write everything.
@egreg Ah thanks, that's the tool.
@PauloCereda I had to learn Java back in high school, could never figure out things with it. Once I learned C everything made more sense. Doesn't see why you'd use Java when C++ is available, faster and more portable.
22:41
@PauloCereda Eine kleine Nachtmusik always puts me in a good mood, so I could easily remember it. :)
@Canageek You'd need to build the binary for several platforms.
@Canageek IBM golfball typewriter yes (except for large matrix brackets, done with an ink pen.) (I paid the last reserves of my student grant to pay the office typist to type it up, paying by the page is one insentive not to keep revising the phd draft)
@PauloCereda what did I do:-)
@DavidCarlisle ♥
@egreg ooh! :)
@egreg True, but if you use GCC I'm betting there is a port of it for pretty much anything you can name. Also: I bet there are more platforms with GCC or a compatible compiler then JVM
@DavidCarlisle Yeah, I read one of my profs. There was whiteout on a few pages, but only on the last line, and only at the end of the document. I have no idea how he put spectra in it, or how he put in chemical structure diagrams.
@PauloCereda Note January 10 in your calendar: we need to remember that also the Grand Wizard's birthday deserves a blog entry
@egreg I guess I'm a bit biased, due to all the huge security holes they've been finding as of late, and yet I still need it installed due to various programs that use it.
@egreg Ok, and Object Oriented people trying to drill into my head that it is the one true way to program, and that everyone should do it, and how much better OO is then anything else....
22:53
@Canageek I'm language-agnostic. :) IMHO the point would be, we are in charge of our code, that is, our code will be as fast and as portable as we want it to be. I can write slow and system-specific C++ code the same way of writing fast and portable Java code. The view is wrong, we don't look at languages, but at code. For example, what's a compiler? A translator for one language to another. It's all a matter of appearances. :)
@Canageek TeX Live provides binaries for 18 platforms. But there's somebody in charge of the build for each one of them. Otherwise Karl would be building binaries all the time.
@egreg Added. :)
@PauloCereda If equally well written, C++ code is faster then Java, since it doesn't need a bytecode interpreter also running. Sure, in most things you won't notice the response, but if doing number crunching you will see it.
@egreg True, you need to test them all. However, isn't Java only out for a small number of platforms? (Windows, Linux, Mac, OpenSolaris?)
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