TeX - TopAnswers

CarLaTeX replying to निरंजन

Thank you <3

निरंजन replying to AlMa0r

This is a friendly community for discussions regarding a specific topic, i.e., TeX/LaTeX. TeX and LaTeX have a history of around half a century now and asking questions, creating samples are very common practices in this community. There are several packages for generating random text (e.g., [`lipsum`](https://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum), [`kantlipsum`](https://ctan.org/pkg/kantlipsum), [`blindtext`](https://ctan.org/pkg/blindtext)). There are packages for using sample graphics in test files (e.g., [`mwe`](https://ctan.org/pkg/mwe)). None of these used the language you used in your example. Accident? No. This is done in order to avoid offending anyone. You don't care about that, so why should we care about you? More than that, the users you are targetting with your unnecessarily sarcastic replies have been here since the inception of TopAnswers and they have actively participated in building the site into a friendly forum. That is why they are a part of the flagging team. If you don't want to adhere to the bare minimum etiquette of this online forum, please find another forum that suits your writing style. This is not a place for discussing language/class politics. Feel free to change the world, but spare us.

CarLaTeX replying to AlMa0r

In your case, the content was only vulgar, I was talking in general

AlMa0r replying to CarLaTeX

My dear CarLaTeX, how remarkable that you are so offended by content The New Yorker covered without so much as batting an eye.

CarLaTeX replying to AlMa0r

Not if the content is vulgar or offensive

AlMa0r replying to निरंजन

Thank you for your input, निरंजन. The question poses a genuine technical challenge in accurately reproducing the visual style of a specific figure from a paper accepted for publication, where fidelity to the source material is essential for the typesetting exercise. In academic typesetting contexts, discussions should center on the methodological “how” rather than subjective reactions to the content being typeset.

AlMa0r replying to samcarter

My dear samcarter, how profoundly moving to witness your delicate constitution so bravely shielding the TeX community from the grave peril of faithfully replicating a figure from a paper accepted for publication—the very same paper The Guardian and other major newspapers covered and cited without fainting. One can only imagine the trauma averted by your swift flag—after all, why bother matching the original when we could typeset something as edifying as “TeX is great” instead? Truly, your commitment to irrelevance is an inspiration to us all.

निरंजन replying to samcarter

I saw the question and the comment both. I was unsure if it should have been flagged or not, but I agree with what you said. I also don't see any reason for using offensive language on a question-answer forum.

samcarter

I assume we would anyway see a meta question soon, so here my stance:  
  
I just flagged a chat message and a question for including offensive content. While the underlying TeX question is certainly interesting, I don't see any reason to use such language here - especially as the exact wording of the text is absolutely irrelevant to the solution. A question about creating this graphic with "TeX is great" would have the same educational value.  
  
I am actually looking forward to an inoffensive version of the question as I have an idea for a root-based solution.

Also if posts are cross-posted from other sites, all versions of the post should include a link to each other. This ensures that others can find all proposed solutions and don't get stuck in a cul-de-sac.

CarLaTeX replying to samcarter

:D

samcarter replying to CarLaTeX

... then you absolutely have a hamster keyboard -- congrats! :hamster:

CarLaTeX replying to samcarter

without

samcarter replying to CarLaTeX

A keyboard with or without cable? :)

CarLaTeX replying to samcarter

I have no mouse, I use the keyboard :D

samcarter

Is your input device a mouse or a hamster? https://mastodon.social/@sjvn/116272797141111938

CarLaTeX replying to samcarter

Thank you!

samcarter replying to CarLaTeX

A user first flagged and then retracted their flag (maybe clicked the wrong button?) -- no need for you to do anything. But thanks for looking!

CarLaTeX

What is this notification? What should I do?

CarLaTeX

![blob](/image?hash=dca6fd72fe992883928bbf573efa928fcee9998f8ff68a0adc77112d6fca0b83)

CarLaTeX replying to Skillmon

@samcarter Hahahahaha!

samcarter replying to Skillmon

Hahaha!

Skillmon replying to samcarter

Thou shalt use MS Word!

samcarter

What a great idea for an exhibition: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/typos-have-plagued-us-for-centuries-just-ask-the-publishers-who-printed-the-seventh-commandment-as-thou-shalt-commit-adultery-in-1631-180988353/

CarLaTeX replying to Skillmon

Thank you! <3 :D

Skillmon

@CarLaTeX  and @samcarter, sorry, I had a very busy `\pi` day and didn't manage to wish you a happy one. Happy late `\pi` day!

samcarter replying to CarLaTeX

Happy \pi day to you, too!

CarLaTeX

Happy `\pi` day!

samcarter replying to CarLaTeX

Thank you for creating such a handy overview!

CarLaTeX

@samcarter Thank you for the bounty!

samcarter

A new dodo book: https://literatur.social/@fiee/116118646962533179

Skillmon replying to निरंजन

I think I tend towards the same (and basically current) solution. Though one could still use that code to throw more meaningful error messages (though they might sometimes be off -- but I seriously doubt whether that warrants the amount of code to put in)

निरंजन replying to Skillmon

I think it's much safer to simply say "wrong input, go and correct it." I don't have any mercy for mistaken code.

Skillmon replying to Ulrike Fischer

:D Sounds like a splendid plan. Do you know whether there's an LLM running inside TeX available?

Ulrike Fischer replying to Skillmon

the modern method would be to embed a prompt "which key is that" and call an AI :-)

Skillmon

Or I make any resolving an error and only execute the match as a form of error recovery (so people would fix their wrong keys/choices but a first pass in nonstopmode or batchmode would still yield a most likely correct result)

Skillmon

I could also implement this in Lua, but then it'd be LuaTeX only, which I'd like to avoid.

Skillmon

And the amount of code I'd have to write for it would be quite some (it needs sorting to build the tree, afterwards we can traverse by a recursive algorithm to build the tree (we'd need splitting at the centre, so it'd need two passes on each node, one to count the viable children one to actually partition), all in all tree building will take some time, the question is how much, then later traversing the tree won't be lightning fast, but reasonable well; and the space efficiency would most likely be rather poor)

Skillmon

So, whenever a `choice` isn't exactly matched this mechanism kicks in as error recovery. It could be used to only give better error messages, or it could be used to silently correct such errors (but as I said, since `expkv` is fully expandable, and this would be as well, that'd mean I couldn't issue warnings whenever this happens).

Skillmon replying to निरंजन

I meant like an extension to `expkv`, installing unknown-handlers that do exactly that.

निरंजन replying to Skillmon

By system you mean just a system or an operating system? If prior, describe more. If latter, which one?

samcarter

Gerd shared a sneak peek of the new ctan design: https://mastodon.social/@GerdNeugebauer/116079728604665610

samcarter

What a clever bird!  
  
https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/panorama/bremen-verletzter-kormoran-klopft-in-notaufnahme-an-a-bafd85ef-d971-4932-bf91-7a692292b269?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en

Skillmon

One could use exactly the same system to also resolve key names.

Skillmon

I have an idea for some system to get key choices auto-abbreviated and even a bit typo resilient (if the typo happens towards the end). I have not yet developed an implementation draft and don't know the performance, yet (the algorithm should be O(log n) at use time as it's basically some form of binary search -- but you never know for sure how well it behaves in TeX).    
  
This would basically mean that for a list of valid choices `default, deprecated, foo, bar` any of the following input would work:  
  
- `def` -> default  
- `depercated` -> deprecated  (anything at least starting with `dep` would do, so also `depault`)
- `f` -> foo  
- `ba` -> bar
    
My basic plan would be to implement this fully expandable and hence I'd not be able to throw a warning that there was a choice substitution!  
  
The basic layout would look like the following decision tree that'd be created while the choices are set up:  
  
```  
                    d
      --------------|--------------
      ↓             ↓             ↓
      b             e             f
 -----|-----    ----|----    -----|-----
 ↓    ↓    ↓    ↓   ↓   ↓    ↓    ↓    ↓
ERR  bar  ERR  ERR  f  ERR  ERR  foo  ERR
             -------|------
             ↓      ↓     ↓
            ERR  default  p
                  --------|---------
                  ↓       ↓        ↓
                 ERR  deprecated  ERR
```  
  
You read it like this: Coming from the top if the current character in the input matches the tree node go straight down and move to the next input character, if it's charcode is smaller go below left, and if it's bigger go below right. Each node called `ERR` is an error message picking up any non-`ERR` leaf node of its parent as valid choices and generating an error message along the lines of "ambiguous input <input>, did you mean any of <list-of-leafs>?". Any multi-letter node is what I called a leaf node (a valid final result).

Do you think people would be interested in this?

Ulrike Fischer replying to Skillmon

well show a small example and I can take a look.

Skillmon replying to Ulrike Fischer

The pixelated headings aren't an issue, the actual text is behind the pixels in white, so a screen reader should do the right thing, I guess, and tagging should be almost fine. Also I don't necessarily need the documentation to be tagged correctly, first step would be to correctly support an `alt` key that does the right thing once `tagpdf` is loaded/`\DocumentMetaData` was used.

Ulrike Fischer replying to Skillmon

I took a quick look yesterday and see a number of "Baustellen" ;-(. It would help if the docu would use lualatex. For l3doc you need a supporting sty we have in latex-lab. For the listings you need (at least) some definitions that I have in the tagpdf-docu-patches. enumitem is only partially supported, so some keys must be adapted (and you must also remove the space before the optional argument of description, but that will perhaps change). titlesec is not supported so you need to replace that. And you need something to add actualtext to your pixelated headings.

samcarter replying to Skillmon

I was considering this, but went the easy route.

Skillmon replying to samcarter

I think you could get away with creating two or maybe three copies of macros to make things work again.

samcarter replying to Skillmon

I know. I had to split a presentation into two files because of this :P