IRC log of #maemo for Friday, 2019-03-08

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DocScrutinizer05chem|st: sorry, no idea. Isn't sicelo one of council? or is board even sth different than council? no idea, I only know the wiki page as linked in topic hasn't seen updates since afes03:15
DocScrutinizer05is wiki.maemo.org down?03:24
DocScrutinizer05aah nope, just slow03:24
DocScrutinizer05council, Current: January 2018 - (current):  Eetu Kahelin (eekkelund)      Jussi Ohenoja (juiceme)       Timo Könnecke (mosen)03:26
DocScrutinizer05juiceme_: do you know about status of coucil?03:27
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ceenei'm just going to use you guys to rant a bit11:58
ceeneI hate latex with the same passion I love it11:58
ceeneI've spent 2 hours to find the issue that was breaking my document, and it was an unescaped _ in text11:58
bencoh:)12:12
ceeneand it's not even fixed yet12:19
ceenei'm gonna end up rewriting this shit on word12:19
bencohaww, noo :/12:21
ceenei have this thing to document a few things at work12:21
ceeneand some of the sections are autogenerated from code12:21
ceeneit's pretty and automatic12:21
ceenebut since a couple of days it doesn't work12:22
ceeneand I don't know fking why12:22
ceenethere's no reason, no reasonable error, no explanation12:22
Maxdamantusgit bisect?12:31
ceeneI already know which is the thing that makes it fail12:32
ceenebut I didn't know the exact underlying reason12:33
ceenei think it's the underscores12:33
* Maxdamantus has wondered when TeX will be replaced.12:34
ceenei think it's pretty when it works12:35
ceenebut getting it to really work is a pain in the ass12:35
ceenei don't think it's worth the effort12:35
MaxdamantusI think the basic principle behind TeX is desirable: having a programming system for concisely creating printable documents, where various stylistic things are just handled by normal abstractions you have in programming (eg, functions)12:37
MaxdamantusThe way it works just happens to be essentially magical.12:37
Maxdamantusbecause it was designed a long time ago, when a lot of programming concepts were either still being developed, or were just difficult to implement.12:39
ceenethe language is ugly, you always need to load and undefined number of packages, but sometimes they conflict one with the other or must be included in a very specific order, but that order may conflict with some other package you need12:39
Maxdamantusso instead of figuring out how to express everything cleanly using something like a lazy programming language that just fundamentally does function application (which is basically all you need), it's based on macro expansion, which is very hard to reason about.12:40
Maxdamantusreally, all you need is some usable syntax for expressing function application, function expressions, and variable binding, and you basically have the same level of power as the TeX language.12:41
Maxdamantusjust need to then provide some typesetting primitives (which TeX does in its own system), and some higher-level typesetting library (like LaTeX), and some module system for referring to third-party libraries.12:42
ceenemost of the time you don't really need something like that12:43
ceeneyou only need a sensible way to write a table12:43
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MaxdamantusYes, but unless you have "make a table" as a primitive operation, you need some sort of abstraction to do that.12:43
Maxdamantusand having "make a table" as a primitive operation would be a very inflexible system.12:44
ceeneyep, but latex/tex is supposedly about how you can separate content from presentation, but that is basically false12:44
Maxdamantussince practically everything requires special support from the base system.12:44
ceenegiven that you need to splatter all your text with arcane commands12:44
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MaxdamantusHaving it without the ability to write abstractions is basically like writing TeX, but without being able to write things like \def12:46
MaxdamantusPractically noone writes plain TeX, and the ones that do will probably be using \def12:47
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KotCzarnyso, basically html+css but with more up-in-the-ass granularity?12:47
MaxdamantusLaTeX is just that common library on top of TeX, which depends on being able to write abstractions.12:48
KotCzarnywell, xml+css12:48
ceenewell, yes, that seems more sensible than latex to be honest12:48
ceenemost of the time you want to write paragraph after paragraph of text, why the hell do I have to add \paragraph{} ?12:48
ceenemarkdown is even better12:48
ceenebecause the inevitable commands are basically non code, so it doesn't interfere with the textual visualization12:49
KotCzarnylast time i had to create a folder out of products, i just created html that i later converted to pdf and set it to printing company12:49
KotCzarnyso basically: sql+files -> php -> html -> pdf -> printing12:49
MaxdamantusSo PHP is where you get your abstraction from.12:50
MaxdamantusI don't think HTML/CSS alone is sufficient for replacing LaTeX as it's used, eg, in academia.12:50
KotCzarnystill, it was enough, and flexible at that12:51
KotCzarnyany changes were easy to add and were seen instantly12:51
MaxdamantusRight, it's very flexible, because you've got an actual programming language in the pipeline: PHP12:51
KotCzarnysome say php isnt programming language12:52
KotCzarny;)12:52
KotCzarnybut preprocessor12:52
MaxdamantusSo you're fully capable of separating the "content" from the "display"12:52
Maxdamantusie, you're not having to write something like "indent 5px" at the beginning of every paragraph.12:52
KotCzarnythat's css's work12:53
Maxdamantusor denote classes that effectively say the same thing.12:53
Maxdamantusanyway, here's something I was working on at one point (I'm not the primary author), very dubious of trying to write this in pure HTML/CSS: https://maxdamantus.eu.org/42.pdf12:55
KotCzarnyimo it's very doable with html+css12:56
MaxdamantusIt's obviously *do*able12:57
Maxdamantusbut is it maintainable?12:57
KotCzarnyyes12:57
KotCzarnyif you throw php at it too12:57
KotCzarnyto generate things in proper places12:57
MaxdamantusYou can obviously write Linux in x86 assembly12:57
Maxdamantusbut is it maintainable?12:57
KotCzarnybut yes, i think you can write it quite cleanly in pure html+css12:57
MaxdamantusSure, if you use PHP instead of LaTeX, you can do whatever you want with it.12:57
MaxdamantusYou can write a layout system in PHP that just figures out where every character goes.12:58
Maxdamantusyou could even just write a font renderer in PHP, so you don't have to rely on font handling in the HTML being accurate.12:58
KotCzarnyany preprocessing makes it much easier. that i agree12:58
ceenethe thing is that latex doesn't really does a good job in the end12:59
Maxdamantusbut for all of that, you need libraries, so you need to either write it yourself, or rely on someone else having written it. That's the part that you actually get with LaTeX: someone else has already written a bunch of reusable layout combinators.12:59
KotCzarnybtw. what's that 'FOO' on next-to-last page?12:59
KotCzarnysomething left behind?12:59
ceenehttps://i.imgur.com/JnpCI6d.png12:59
MaxdamantusCan't remember. That whole document is a WIP.12:59
ceenesolve this12:59
KotCzarnyor spacer put there so big cells go on next page12:59
Maxdamantuscan probably look at it in git12:59
KotCzarnynah, got own work to do, eh13:01
ceenewhy is that <we over the border of the box?13:01
Maxdamantusceene: because we weren't caring about exact positioning issues at the time.13:02
ceenewhy do you have to manually tweak that? is it because < is somehow a special character?13:02
ceenebut that's the thing, you should have to care about that13:02
ceenes/should have/shouldn't have/13:02
infobotceene meant: but that's the thing, you shouldn't have to care about that13:02
Maxdamantusceene: the document is mostly defined semantically, positioning issues can be fixed by mostly just fixing the combinators.13:02
Maxdamantusceene: it's really not important for a WIP.13:02
Maxdamantusceene: should the document really be purple?13:02
KotCzarny:)13:02
KotCzarny80/20 rule13:03
KotCzarny80% of work takes 20% of time. remaining 20% takes the remaining 80% of time13:03
KotCzarny'hey, can you put that dot 3px higher and make it glow?'13:03
ceeneyou know what I mean, the presentation is wrong and it's not your fault that latex somehow decided to move that <we a few pixels to the left13:04
ceeneand thw whole document is astonishing, but why does it fail in something so trivial?13:04
Maxdamantusceene: because with power comes responsibility.13:06
ceeneyou're justifying a bug13:07
Maxdamantusceene: if the system gives you the ability to have fine-grained control over layout (instead of saying, eg, "I'll put whatever you output inside a box which is strictly bigger"), then you have to be careful about things like that.13:07
ceenethat whole string fits in that box13:07
KotCzarnyi remember when i was looking for work, trying some big newspaper company13:07
ceenethe text above and below is alineated13:08
KotCzarnythey did their webpages PIXEL EXACT13:08
KotCzarnywith few supported browsers and html+css13:08
KotCzarnyand css was primitive back then13:08
ceenebut that line, that doesn't begin with a math character somehow is broken, and there's no reason for it to happen13:08
KotCzarnyand ie6 still ruling the world13:08
KotCzarnyluckily i didnt get that job13:08
ceenealineated doesn't exist in english?13:09
ceenelol13:09
ceenealigned13:09
ceenei'm an idiot13:09
KotCzarny:)13:09
ceenethat whole string fits in that box, the text above and below is aligned, but that line that doesn't begin with a math character somehow is broken and there's no reason for it to happen13:10
ceenemuch better13:10
MaxdamantusThe actual reason is because there's a random `\hspace{-2ex}` in front of it.13:12
KotCzarny:)13:12
ceenelol13:12
ceenemaybe this time it's just that13:12
Maxdamantusfor the most part, the TeX code is free of positioning information, that's one of the few exceptions.13:12
KotCzarnywhich means it was a workaround for something else that didnt quite get bug matching rule set13:12
ceenebut i'm really fed up with that kind of thing that happens just because13:12
Maxdamantus\produzione{\XvP\!\!}{ \Xt{}{\x}{\T}{ \valP } }{}\\13:15
Maxdamantus\seguitoProduzione{ \hspace{-2ex} \mbox{<we write just $\val$ and $\vs$ when $\p$ is clear from the context>} \hspace{-10ex} }{}\\13:15
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MaxdamantusThat first line corresponds to the production rule just above the positioning error pointed to.13:16
Maxdamantus(the actual source code has additional newlines/indentation, so it's a bit easier to read than what I posted here)13:16
Maxdamantus(though I often did get annoyed at the main author's occasional indentation inconsistency (occurs in Java code, not just TeX))13:17
Maxdamantushe's also Italian, so the TeX is partly in Italian.13:17
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MaxdamantusI think the occasional negative spacing is just to force stuff to fit onto one line, but since the document was being semantically updated (not just updated to improve styling), those negative space hacks might've become inconsintent. They should obviously be fixed at some point.13:20
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ceenei'm reading this http://www.danielallington.net/2016/09/the-latex-fetish/13:28
Maxdamantusand as for the "FOO", apparently one of the source files was just replaced entirely with the content "FOO"13:29
ceenewell, that's obvious, I thought it was yet to be written13:30
Maxdamantuspresumably because the content was moved to a different place, and I guess he didn't feel like removing/unreferencing that file at the time.13:30
ceeneneither that nor the guy writing italian is latex' fault :)13:30
KotCzarnyor that didnt feel like fixing broken page layout13:31
KotCzarny;)13:31
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