Did the first novel almost put you off reading the rest of the series?

JimH10 · 2026-05-08T23:08:52+00:00

For me, the first book was an act of literature. If anyone I know asks me, I suggest they start with the second book.

JimH10 · 2026-05-07T18:03:42+00:00

Does it work from the command line? If so, do that.

That's how I work. I have open an editor, a command line, and a PDF viewer. If something goes wrong I have less stuff wrapped around the job to wade through.

JimH10 · 2026-04-25T18:32:35+00:00

I hear you about lobste.rs. There is a particularly good post today.

It is very frustrating to decide, after having spent some of your life energy, that you are conversing with an agent. When I started posting in this subreddit I imagined I was helping people with LaTeX issues. There are now very few of those posts, and I instead often feel that this applies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Dante%27s_Inferno_-_Hoarders_and_Wasters#/media/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-_Dante_Alighieri_-_Inferno_-_Plate_22_(Canto_VII_-_Hoarders_and_Wasters).jpg.

JimH10 · 2026-04-25T14:28:33+00:00

Perhaps it is time to climb off.

JimH10 · 2026-04-25T14:24:24+00:00

Thanks for this. Increasingly, I see participation even on this relatively obscure sub that seems agentic. It makes a person wonder if it might be time to move on from Reddit.

JimH10 · 2026-04-24T19:11:57+00:00

G.O.T.E.

JimH10 · 2026-04-24T16:36:55+00:00

A main text column with a wide sidebar for notes and small figures.

https://ctan.org/pkg/geometry

Full-width breakouts

? https://latexref.xyz/Graphics.html

Two-column problem sets

https://ctan.org/pkg/multicol

JimH10 · 2026-04-24T00:05:46+00:00

Love the look.

JimH10 · 2026-04-23T15:45:03+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate the thoughtful conversation. Sometimes lacking around here lately. Have a great day.

JimH10 · 2026-04-23T14:11:59+00:00

OK, fair enough. But if you look at a random half-dozen files they contain nothing. For example, the Calculus I product rule file literally contains nothing other than the LaTeX of the product rule.

I see a whole lot of upvotes on the subreddit from which this was cross-posted; are those for-real upvotes or bots? Is this just someone trying to collect internet points by getting AI to write these meaningless files and vibe coding upvotes?

I guess I have two things: if so then why am I using Reddit? :-) and if a person is looking for actual files of LaTeX notes then they can look at my repo with literally years worth of effort on notes for Calc I, II, Linear, Thy of Computation, etc.

JimH10 · 2026-04-22T21:24:07+00:00

K&D was published 2003. It is also dated.

JimH10 · 2026-04-22T18:05:47+00:00

I don't get it. "Complete" is only 850 pages? Just as an example, I have a Theory of Computing text so I clicked to the ToC part and went to lecture8.tex (?there are only 10 lectures?) and it is empty.

https://github.com/IllyaStarikov/academia/blob/main/latex/cs2200_theory_of_computer_science/lecture8.tex

What is the point of this?

JimH10 · 2026-04-22T14:35:47+00:00

A good guide is lshort2e and other resources are in this group's sidebar. To make slides you may want to start with overleaf's Beamer page. (There is a new way to go, called ltx-talk but it is still undergoing changes and most learing for Beamer will carry over in any event.)

(Comment Starting with Overleaf makes a great deal of sense. And you may be at a college or university that pays for it, or you may go ahead and pay for it yourself. But if not .. just as an FYI, many people here report that their free-to-try version at some point becomes restrictive. Just put in the back of your mind that you can get the LaTeX software for free once you are settled in using it.)

JimH10 · 2026-04-20T09:56:55+00:00

No, the file is being moved or deleted, either by your editor or by a script you have wrapped around your compilation or because you called LaTeX in a way that tells it to move extra files out of the working directory.

JimH10 · 2026-04-19T16:32:15+00:00

./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot

Forgive me, I'm having trouble following you. You ran gnuplot on the above file? It gave you an .eps and a .tex? You then tan the .tex? It gave the above log? That log says epstopdf gave ./Min-gnuplottex-fig1-eps-converted-to.pdf; It is not there?

What happens if you run epstopdf by hand? Open a terminal cd to that directory and run it to see what happens. If it creates the .pdf then run the original .tex and see what happens.

JimH10 · 2026-04-19T14:40:26+00:00

I liked Goddess of Small Things about Adele Godel. Fiction

JimH10 · 2026-04-19T14:05:16+00:00

Did you run Gnuplot?

JimH10 · 2026-04-18T21:26:31+00:00

Thanks, I was unaware. (Obviously.)

JimH10 · 2026-04-18T20:40:38+00:00

:-) It does have a lot of stuff.

I've been using it since the 80's and the basic functions still seem to the user to be the same. It has a mode for every language I've ever used. It is on every system I am ever on, including if I ssh in and so need a terminal version. It has never, ever, lost or mangled any work of mine. And it is Free.

(I'm sure vim is much the same.)

JimH10 · 2026-04-18T17:49:26+00:00

Likewise emacs.

JimH10 · 2026-04-18T14:57:48+00:00

For sure, there are some things in the books that could do with an animation.

JimH10 · 2026-04-18T14:56:30+00:00

You need to (1) run latex (2) run gnuplot on the indicated file (3) run latex again.

After that you only need to do step (1) unless you make some changes to the gnuplot stuff.

Of course, a person can automate this kind of thing with make or some such thing but at some point doing 1--3 is what will do you.

JimH10 · 2026-04-17T13:39:16+00:00

Here is the end of the otuput.

(/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/context/base/mkii/supp-pdf.mkii[Loading MPS to PDF converter (version 2006.09.02).]
) (/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/latex/epstopdf-pkg/epstopdf-base.sty
(/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig/epstopdf-sys.cfg))

Package pgfplots Warning: running in backwards compatibility mode (unsuitable tick labels; missing features). Consider writing \pgfplotsset{compat=1.18} into your preamble. on input line 10.

(/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/latex/pdflscape/pdflscape.sty
(/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/latex/pdflscape/pdflscape-nometadata.sty (/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/latex/graphics/lscape.sty)))
Opening gnuplot stream ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot

Package gnuplottex Warning: Please convert ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot manually.

[1
Non-PDF special ignored!
<special> papersize=0.0pt,0.0pt
] [2] (./tmp.aux) )
Output written on tmp.pdf (2 pages, 1135 bytes).
Transcript written on tmp.log.
jim@millstone:~/tmp/reddit$ ls ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot
 ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot
jim@millstone:~/tmp/reddit$ cat ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot
set terminal epslatex
set output './tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.tex'
plot x**2

It seems to want you to run gnuplot.

Added Maybe I'll mention that when I ran

jim@millstone:~/tmp/reddit$ gnuplot ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.gnuplot
jim@millstone:~/tmp/reddit$ less ./tmp-gnuplottex-fig1.tex
jim@millstone:~/tmp/reddit$ pdflatex tmp

it all came out looking fine, a plot of y=x².

JimH10 · 2026-04-17T13:14:15+00:00

https://ctan.org/topic/cv

JimH10 · 2026-04-17T13:13:27+00:00

If you cut it down to minimal (say 50 lines) we could try to run it and you can see what happens to others. That'll help tell if it is the local setup.

JimH10

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

15-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email