BlackBird

@LastStar007, In Latin languages, the neuter form has been "absorbed" into the masculine. Language is not as logical as we want it to be. And, on the other hand, many people/societies in many languages are not free and/or have no wish to invent pronouns as they see fit. Why should one bother with those issues if everyone learns at school that grammatical gender is different from social gender and biological sex? I'm not suggesting that English speakers do as I say, but a comparative view may open one's horizons in this debate, e.g. the answer here: qr.ae/TU1jQX

As a native speaker of a rather conservative Latin language (Portuguese), I find it ludicrous that people still debate gender politics through the prism of grammar change. It suffices to teach children that the pronoun "he" doesn't mean male (sex/gender), but means "grammatically male". In English you can use "they" because it is by default gender-neutral; in Latin languages there are no neutral plural subject pronouns (just possessive). Children just learn at school that if you have 10 boys and a girl, the subject pronoun ("eles") is (grammatically) masculine.

@AndréCaron, I've seen this in Québec but never in France. Québec seems to want to avoid political annoyances while preserving the grammar; the French seem to put grammar above politics.

@PauloCereda, when people take my attention off LaTeX and German and say there's something on TV...

I'm sure I already shared some more bizarre pizza flavors, but here it goes, for a blasting New Year ahead, full of new culinary experiences: dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-3306019/…

@CarLaTeX, sure, its borders are also filled with "catupiry" cheese: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catupiry. Yummy.

@CarLaTeX, next time I order one I'll take a picture. ; -)

@CarLaTeX, well, it's practically across the street from where I live. although I just ask the usual bacon and chicken, it's delicious

@PauloCereda, why haven't I though of this before? so perfect! must come with some lemon.

there is also "fried pork belly [torresmo] pizza"

@DavidCarlisle, I've got a pizza menu in front of me in which there are delicacies like "nutella, strawberry and power milk pizza", "chicken heart pizza", "pork rib pizza"...

@PauloCereda, seeing German around, now I've been motivated to study German because of my daughter. Maybe it's "good karma", or just to settle the score. Perhaps now I can read the original Koma doc's.

"my supervisor asked me to convert something that I wrote with LaTeX into TeX style because he only knows how to use TeX." that's mean.

@PauloCereda, that's what I asked the guy, what do you want to do with it, he said, "look, I can do pie charts in tex but not in latex". kkkk I was like: LOL

@PauloCereda, I guess I've read it in your thesis somewhere...

@PauloCereda, yes, teach plain TeX in Portuguese to Brazilian thesis class authors (if such a thing exists) and you'll see top-notch results, presto!

@PauloCereda, I remember this question being asked so many times... they'll never forget your thesis.

@PauloCereda, just came across a fellow claiming that thesis class authors (you know what I mean!) will benefit from a Portuguese translation of gnu.org/software/teximpatient because, well, TeX can do unspecified amazing things that Latex can't.

@PauloCereda, and for you too!!!

@DavidCarlisle, that's more or less what I thought.

By the way, happy new year for ye all. :-)

or is it a really silly question?

Inspired by @marmot, there is a question nagging me, if it can be answered at all: "Is there anything that can only be done in TeX but not in LaTeX"? -- or should I post it as a question?

@PauloCereda, feliz aniversário!!! :-)

;-)

I've seen the results of using German-style sarcasm south of the Equator.

Daily joke for @PauloCereda: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/432740/… "My crystal ball is on holiday".

@DavidCarlisle, yes, it's one of it's infinite reincarnations. Just note the 2013 "to-do list": 1. provide hyphenation for words with accents and cedilla. 2. fix problem with \uline and sections

@PhelypeOleinik You're so lucky. I wish I had that power. Where I work there are "honors thesis" (TCC) without a committee, but they "demand" ABNT, even if no one is going to read it.

@PhelypeOleinik, ABNT = Hydra. ABNT worshipers = minions. Brazil = a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Been there. Using Latex to follow typewriter-era standards isn't very rational.

@PhelypeOleinik I've come across someone who wanted a list of footnotes... go figure. I can even suspect where this came from...

@DavidCarlisle@PauloCereda, it was a CC BY-NC-SA licence. I wouldn't care in the least if anyone used or modified it as they see fit. What boggled me was that a "librarian" of a huge journal portal wrote to an editor asking for "additional implementations", saying the said editor "wrote the class", most probably sold it (who does this for free?), and now cannot change an iota in the code.

@PauloCereda, also found out yesterday that someone downloaded, made a few tweaks, and "sold as his own" a class of mine to an editor.

@PauloCereda, sure, the animals wake me up early, regardless of the day.

@PauloCereda, didn't get the job, though. Hahaha!

I remember one guy asking me, "Is that a book?" It was just a handout for a PPT presentation. In Georgia.

@marmot, i'm searching for a question like that. haven't found it yet -- perhaps it's not an adequate way to put it, but in general terms it's really intriguing and worthwhile to know. perhaps David Carlisle can answer, and I'll take his word for it!

sorry for taking your time -- I don't know if there are things that require primitives in this code, but I just found is suspicious because it was shown as evidence that plain TeX must be taught to university thesis classes authors, instead of LaTeX.

there was just a code snippet, not the full MWE, just this:

it wasn't I who did it, but what could be complained about using TeX syntax? the objective of the code I came across was just to prove TeX syntax is superior and can achieve more.

@marmot, should I just delete this question, then? it's not really useful for other people. I'm not in the mood for replacing tex with latex macros either.

@marmot, that's what was meant: the guy said there were no equivalent commands in Latex for his "plain TeX" "macro", i.e., that you cannot use LaTeX commands to do the same thing, which I thought was very suspicious. So if I can replace plain TeX macros with Latex ones for this example, the affirmation is plainly false, as I see.

@marmot, really stupid of myself forgetting to include that library. It solves one part of the question -- I'm even thinking of deleting it altogether, but I'll wait for the comments on whether "this cannot be done with Latex".

@DavidCarlisle, in the context it did really mean that: "using LaTeX you cannot do it, therefore you must learn e-TeX/plain-TeX". It comes after a lengthy discussion on the superiority of TeX over LaTeX for some kind of project; when asked to provide an example of the said superiority and something that cannot be done in LaTeX, the macro author showed his code.

@DavidCarlisle, translated, it was said: "This macro would never be possible without TeX" (that is, if you use LaTeX, it is impossible).

OH....

=help

well, this doesn't work, does it?

=fatcat