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183
votes
13answers
31k views

Text building blocks

There are some replies that are used quite often. For example, the first reply to many questions is a demand for a minimal example. These replies should typically include a link with additional ...
131
votes
31answers
7k views

Often referenced questions

Quick links (alphabetically) Additional (math) operators, relations and so on ❧ Beamer ❧ Bibliographies and citations ❧ Classes and class options ❧ Correct centering ❧ Cross-referencing, including ...
122
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7answers
2k views

I am a serial upvoter

I am Paulo. I am the top voter of the entire StackExchange universe. And I believe I fit the description of being a serial upvoter. It is my OCD. I like to upvote, it is one of my favourite hobbies ...
105
votes
44answers
16k views

TeX Community Polls

Welcome to the TeX.SX Community Poll thread! This thread is used for opinion and usage polls around TeX and TeX.sx. The poll questions are added as "answers" to this "question". Their answers have ...
94
votes
7answers
5k views

Who are the package maintainers here?

Quick links: LaTeX Packages A-M, N-Z ❧ LaTeX Classes ❧ ConTeXt Modules ❧ Generic Packages ❧ Support Scripts ❧ Biblatex Styles A fair few users here have ...
86
votes
122answers
2k views

Who Wants to Win a LaTeX Book? [closed]

I am organising a lottery and Springer have kindly agreed to donate a copy of LaTeX and Friends. Joseph Wright has kindly agreed to act a an independent witness/judge and he knows the winning number. ...
81
votes
8answers
2k views

Why do people answer in comments?

Browsing TeX.SE, I have noticed that very frequently people provide answers to a question in the question's comments. See for example BibTeX error "inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8: not set up ...
76
votes
89answers
2k views

The duck giveaway 2016

Friends, the contest is over! The winning number was 3, picked by R. Schumacher. Thanks everybody for joining the contest! 'ello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, ducks and mallards, children of ...
71
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123answers
1k views

Who Wants to Win a LaTeX Book in 2016? [closed]

I am organising a lottery and Springer have kindly agreed to donate two copies of LaTeX and Friends. The lottery closes when the judge (I) announces the winners. The judge's decision is final and ...
68
votes
6answers
958 views

Should high-rep users hang back a little?

This is meant to start a discussion on etiquette and sustainability. It is very clear from looking at the answers that the first-page users are very quick to answer most questions. This of-course is ...
66
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5answers
11k views

Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question

Our question LaTeX Editors/IDEs is very popular, with close to 35k views as of Feb ’13. However, the answers vary a lot in terms of quality and the kinds of information they provide, which makes ...
65
votes
37answers
2k views

Relicensing code from answers

Part of the discussion about packaging some of the TikZ answers into a LaTeX package has centred on the issue of licensing the code. Contributions here are licensed under a CC license (see links at ...
65
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6answers
1k views

Vote early and often!

I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "question" is actually unsolicited advice, based on our experience from the initial launch of MathOverflow. We should encourage everyone to vote ...
64
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39answers
5k views

What are your favourite TikZ/PGF answers?

I proposed in chat that we put together a "Best of TikZ on TeX-SX" package. There have been some really neat answers to problems developed on the site, and I think it would be nice to put them ...
64
votes
1answer
1k views

Do we want Stack Exchange to become an institutional member of the TUG?

I suggest Stack Exchange Inc. becomes an institutional member of the TeX User Group. I'm glad that many votes alread show interest in this topic. So let's work it out! What are the benefits for our ...
62
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4answers
2k views

Our Do-it-for-me and Draw-it-for-me comments don't reflect our hypocrisy. Can they be improved?

Yes, we don't like people pasting something and asking how can I do this? or if it is TikZ, PSTricks, Asymptote case how can I-draw this? without even making a template of a TeX document, let alone ...
61
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14answers
2k views

Why do (top) users on this site have such high reputations?

This is something that I've found vaguely weird about this site for some time: the reputations of top users are insanely high here. Today I got curious and went to other big sites on the network, and ...
60
votes
1answer
2k views

Which questions led to the creation of a new package?

TeX.sx occasionally inspires people to be ingeniously creative and write cool packages. Let's have a list of all the CTAN packages that originated in a question on TeX.sx. I suggest a single CW ...
60
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2answers
1k views

Community effort in fixing the double backslashes issue

First things first, the background for this meta thread is the following issue reported by Enrico Gregorio (egreg) at the beginning of the year (January 11, 2017): Double backslashes disappear from ...
60
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4answers
1k views

Cooperation of TeX Stack Exchange and TeXample.net

While thinking about promoting our site and attracting more users, I was looking for the hottest topic with highest possible impact. Looking at the tags with the most questions currently we see that ...
57
votes
1answer
688 views

Close voting is not a sport

We strive to be a friendly and rational community here, but the question below Reducing the huge space before the first line of the KOMA letter class was just closed as "Too broad". This is a ...
54
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23answers
2k views

When will @egreg reach 654321

And the winner is: yo'! Congratulations! As prize yo' selected a scout duck with neckerchief: (it is already available in the development version of the tikzducks package and will be included in the ...
53
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27answers
2k views

Make TeX.SX look nice again!

A collection of user scripts to make the main site look a bit better again, after the new design has gone live on August 3, 2018. The scripts can be used e.g. with Tampermonkey (Chrome) Greasemonkey (...
53
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4answers
856 views

TeX.SE really are nicer voters

I've heard a rumour, that people on TeX.SE are nicer and more inclinded not to down vote, where as people on Programmers.SE are the opposite. The first is true, where as the second is not. Here are ...
53
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0answers
547 views

Thanks to the Community

I know that the post will very likely be deleted. I try it anyway: I just finished my (German) PHD project and I wanted to thank the community here for all the help and inspiration. The thesis can ...
51
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2answers
1k views

Reviewers; what do you eat for breakfast?

Ahem, this is going to be a rough one, so it's gonna be a long one too ala Pascal's famous quote. First, some context; we have How to deal with robo-reviewers? Should we have a Grace period to avoid ...
49
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1answer
2k views

TeX Stack Exchange swag for top users

As a thank you for being awesome, if you have at least 950 reputation and are on page 1 or page 2 of … https://tex.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all … we'll be ...
48
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2answers
2k views

Why is “thanks” inappropriate at the end of a question?

This question seems to indicate that it is inappropriate to say "thanks" at the end of a question, but does not provide justification. In a question I once asked, such thanks were removed and I tried ...
47
votes
3answers
712 views

Best practise for answers which are for the community, not the OP (“tikz answer to pstricks question”)

I think that we should define a best-practise for how to handle answers to questions which are ... well, not answers to the OP. This is motivated by my own uncertainty: on the one hand, I like to ...
47
votes
0answers
655 views

Running a questionaire across the TeX user base

I'm in the process of experimenting with river detection in paragraphs and as part of the research I would like to get a questionaire filled out by TeX users (and perhaps users of other systems). So ...
46
votes
1answer
277 views

Proposal: rename mathematica tag to wolfram-mathematica

The mathematica tag is for questions relating to the Mathematica software. People (typically newcomers) sometimes mistakenly add this tag to questions when they really mean math, not Mathematica. ...
45
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10answers
2k views

When is (and isn't) it acceptable to edit?

Update: Sort of ironically, this question has been left unedited for a while, even when there seemed to be some consensus in the answers below of the kinds of edits that are acceptable and those that ...
45
votes
5answers
116k views

Usage of the lipsum package in answers

I've notices several times people have been using \usepackage{lipsum} in answers as a space filler. While this is great for demonstration purposes when the document is going to be immediately ...
45
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4answers
839 views

Welcome page needs more welcoming

We try to welcome all new users to the site by giving them a "Welcome to TeX.sx!" link in the comments of their first question or answer. But I've seen a few recently (here's one) where users comment ...
45
votes
4answers
703 views

Colorblind, links hard to see

I have red-green colorblindness. I don't really notice it, except on two occasions: When I see an Ishihara plate. When hyperlinks are styled using only a color that normal people have no trouble ...
44
votes
2answers
565 views

When should I start to give back?

So far I think tex.se is a great resource for any LaTeX issue I have. Answers given here has been of great value to me, but I started to feel a bit guilty. So far I have only been taking from the ...
44
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1answer
2k views

TeXtalk interviews

TeXtalk http://tex.blogoverflow.com/files/2012/02/textalk2.png Introduction As part of the celebrations of our first birthday, we decided to interview great members of our community. Since we ...
44
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0answers
1k views

Mac OS changes that affect lots of answers

Those us who are Mac users may be aware that the next version of OS X will change major aspects of the the way users can interact with the underlying Unix infrastructure of the OS. In particular, ...
43
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7answers
1k views

Empathy for those who don't know LaTeX well

I'm a big proponent of TeX. I want it to be accessible to a broad family of people, not just those who are sufficiently technically-minded to understand its inner workings, and/or understand the ...
43
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4answers
962 views

How can we, as a community, improve the LaTeX WikiBook?

The topmost answer in the very popular question What are good learning resources for a LaTeX beginner? recommends the LaTeX Wikibook. I found it helpful as well when writing my thesis, because it ...
42
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1answer
312 views

Updating an old answer when my knowledge improves, or a package is updated

One of the things I like the most about our community is that we learn from each other. I love reading and learning from everyone's answers- I have seen things done with LaTeX that I would never have ...
42
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1answer
305 views

TeX volunteers needed for project on recognition of math symbols

I am currently writing my bachelors thesis about recognition of mathematical symbols. This is supposed to be followed by a masters thesis about recognition of mathematical formulas. (I already spoke ...
41
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4answers
1k views

A proposal to include a duck in our background image

Nowadays, TeX and friends are far beyond of just academic usage. I would like to propose the inclusion of a greyscale duck (courtesy of tikzducks) in our background image. This is the current image: ...
41
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2answers
582 views

I just want to be able to participate

I find it frustrating that I cannot vote anything up or comment on anything unless I ask a question. I don't know how many answers and comments have helped me from this site, none of which received ...
41
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6answers
990 views

Useful StackApps and other User Scripts for TeX.SX

Some people might not know it, but on https://stackapps.com/ there are several applications / user scripts available which makes certain tasks easier for moderators and other users which often post ...
40
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6answers
2k views

Why does TeX require such elaborate MWE:s

Compared to StackOverflow, where you basically can post code snippets and ask questions about them, this community seems to require more or less the entire document to be posted. Why so, is it the ...
40
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8answers
1k views

How to recover from TeX.SE (or, in general, TeX-LaTeX) addiction?

TeX.SE is addictive, we have recently had evidence. I don't think this is only due to the reputation mechanism. For example, the little games available on FB have a similar reward mechanism: you win ...
40
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3answers
531 views

biblatex for idiots

Every time I post a link to the following useful question I cringe a bit. I don't think everyone is familiar with the idiomacity in English of this phrase "X for idiots" or "X for dummies", and for ...
40
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0answers
439 views

Thank you TeX.SE!

I just got my first book published and I would like to thank everyone here at TeX.SE for the help that they provided by answering the questions that I posted. I know that accepting an answer is ...
39
votes
3answers
574 views

Consistent policy about downvoting and asking the OP to 'show what they have tried'

I was struck by the difference in reaction to two questions that have a lot in common https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/82894/how-to-build-this-table-in-latex How to draw a sine wave on a ...

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