27
We have two tags that try to separate the differences:
tex-core is about format-independent questions involving TeX the language, and so it can be used for LaTeX questions involving TeX primitives.
plain-tex is about the plain TeX format, and is mainly there for people who use it so that their questions don't get lost in the sea of LaTeX questions.
So if ...
26
In general, tags are supposed to be about questions, not answers. So the tikz-pgf tag should be used if the question mentions or implies Tikz, but not if the answers do.
24
Every question has to be tagged, but it's possible for all valid tags to 'vanish'. This is most obviously true for migration but can also occur if tag cleanup removes a tag. In these cases questions will be marked 'untagged'.
22
Note that you can not actually use plain tex in latex. plain is a different format defined in plain.tex which is not input into the latex format. There are of course some macros with the same name in both plain and latex and (some) of those have the same definition, but it's not really plain tex whatever you do.
So if you want to ask how to do a floating ...
19
Similar to the linked question, I vote against such a tag.
Let's consider some points:
Is it a meaningful category?
Is is useful for filtering or look-up?
Which tag features to we need? Such as following the tag RSS feed?
Looking at the idea:
The idea of a beauty-alert tag would be to act as a flag to tell the
questioner that what she is trying to do ...
18
Yes, a tag would be nice. We could also migrate such questions to Code Review.sx - it already has a TeX tag.
18
In the case of list environments, questions and answers about one specific type (enumerate, itemize, ...) will often be useful for other types as well. Examples are Q+A's about spacing or page breaks before or after lists, spacing between list items, indentation of item labels, ... Therefore, the tag descriptions of enumerate, itemize, and description ...
18
The unannounced change should be reverted as soon as possible. I would even remove boldface from the current tab name, normally active, because the rule under the tab name is sufficient.
Boldface is a device to be used very sparingly, because it catches attention: with the current setup, tags are more prominent than question titles.
17
I agree fully with Joseph's answer. Tags are about the question, not the answers.
Questions should be retagged if the OP used the wrong tag, forgot one or it turned out to be a different problem than expected. Like, he got an error while using macro \foobar but it is actually the barbaz package which causes it. Then the question should be tagged for that.
...
17
There is a difference between cosmetics that TeX should perform and cosmetics that purely rely on the typesetters choice.
If the question is about how to turn on/off ligatures, implement auto kerning hyphenation, letterine, ornaments etc. or the specification is given and don't know how to realize in terms of TeX then it is obviously on-topic.
But if it ...
16
I suggest using dvi-mode.
Today usually the DVI mode of pdfTeX is used. pdfTeX is the default engine in modern TeX distributions and capable of producing both PDF and DVI.
dvi-mode makes clear that we
don't mean DVI as format, which is covered by the dvi tag,
actually deal with a mode of a TeX engine rather than a non-pdfTeX engine. tex as part of the ...
16
I can see the potential usefulness of a latex-kernel tag. However, it should only be introduced together with a tag wiki excerpt that clearly states that the tag is not meant for general questions about LaTeX. (As a working definition of what latex-kernel is about, I suggest "anything that requires delving into source2e", e.g., my question What exactly does \...
16
bidi is the name of a package, and should be preserved as an independent tag. right-to-left is a description of how text is set, and is not the same as bidi. It's possible that RTL questions might not concern the bidi package (for example RTL in an editor); most bidi questions will also be about RTL, but that should be an additional tag, in my opinion.
So ...
16
Once you get the "retag questions" privilege (500 rep), you no longer need to edit a question (thereby gaining 2 points) to retag a question – simply retagging gains you no points. If you have the "edit questions and answers" privilege (2000 rep), you get no points for editing questions.
16
LaTeX3 is much more than expl3.
LaTeX3 is about the LaTeX3 project, it is about the successor of LaTeX 2e, i.e. the format LaTeX3, it is about all the different concepts like coffins or the idea of xtemplate...
expl3 however is the programming layer of LaTeX3, i.e., one part of many.
I'd tag a question {expl3} (in addition to the {latex3} tag) when the ...
16
The tagging approach taken here is quite deliberate. Whilst TeX-sx covers the TeX world generally, LaTeX is by far the dominant format in use (plain TeX and ConTeXt are much less widely used). As such, it was clear from the earliest days of the site that questions should be treated as about LaTeX unless they are explicitly not. Thus we have tags such as ...
15
It may be that you favorited biblatex, as Martin explained, but it also can be that you just happened to visit a lot of questions with the biblatex tag: you can have implicit "frequented" tags. See this post on meta.SO for more details: Why are “etymology” questions on german.sx highlighted for me?
15
I'm in favor of such a tag. We just have to be careful that new users don't use it a general LaTeX tag.
Suggestions so far for the tag name where latex-core or latex-kernel. Actually I find kernel now much better because that is the term also used by the original LaTeX2e team, at least it is part of some kernel macro names.
15
Questions about Excel have typically nothing to do with Word, and vice-versa; hence, I'm in favor of two separate tags ms-word and ms-excel.
15
Since the vast majority of questions on the site are about LaTeX, the tag is really not very helpful. Most plain TeX questions will be tagged plain-tex but there are at present only 168 such questions, so plain TeX users are few and far between on the site. You can add plain-tex (and other tags that interest you) to your favourite tags, but it's true you can'...
15
Honestly the SE sites have generally very good designs and very nice choices in regards to how things appear, but the tag change is really a punch in the eye. The tags now are as black as the text, making them virtually indistinguishable from the text at a first sight.
I'll just say this:
Using bold for everything is like using the highlighter pen for the ...
15
I've seized the initiative and created the abnt tag. I just assigned it to a question that clearly falls in the scope of the tag.
I leave to our Brazilian friends, so fond of their beloved ABNT, to retag other questions.
14
I think there are enough differences between classes and packages that separate tags are useful. So adding the relevant extra tags to particular questions would make more sense than merging the two tags.
14
The reason is that we want to prevent people from creating tags that are considered inappropriate. The site has quite a strict policy on existing tags so that the tags have some structure. New members are often not aware of this which causes the system to "break".
If you don't know what are the appropriate tags, try to do your best, however be sure that ...
14
I think the main site looks a little bit silly now. In the following screenshot, the things encircled in red need to be bold as well.
The content of the blue circle needs to be super-mega-bold to fit again.
Just reverting the bold tags to normal would be easier and better, though.
14
Turned my comment into an answer so it can be downvoted as well.
I'd vote for option 3, that is to say a new tag els-cas. It seems to me that elsarticle and cas-... classes are sufficiently different to warrant a new tag. elsarticle is thoroughly LaTeX2e, while els-cas makes heavy use of LaTeX3's expl3 and xparse.
It might help to add cas-sc and cas-dc as ...
13
Although I suggested this in chat, I was being a little facetious. I think that this comes under the same rules as "best practices" and similar "meta" tags. If there is a situation where one thinks, "Yes, that is technically possible, but your life is going to be much easier if you don't do that.", then I think that an "answer" explaining why the whatever-...
13
Splitting vague tags is time-consuming, causes lots of random bumping, and is only worth it if all or nearly all of the relevant posts are sorted out and the new distinction is valuable. So, I'd be cautious.
If you are still keen, I suggest tackling just the clearest case and reporting back. That seems to be the preview case: of 78 tagged questions, 20 ...
13
Policy from 'the early days' has been
Package names are inserted as code
If pointing to a package in an answer, it should if possible be linked to CTAN:
[`some-package`](http://ctan.org/pkg/some-package)
Tags are used for tagging, which means that they are almost exclusively placed in the 'tags' part of a question and not in the main body. Sometimes tags ...
13
Although the article and report tags exist, it seems that whenever the books tag was incorrectly applied to a question about the book class, the tag was removed, but nobody bothered to create a separate book tag. My guess is that such a tag (like article and report) would "only" reveal what should be revealed by a MWE, namely, the class used by the ...
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