A rock star (who shall remain unnamed) told me he wanted to give away his latest work to the public domain. I helped him get the work in open non-proprietary formats.

I told him in principle that Creative Commons licensing would be what he is after, but that it has problems. Creative Commons license text contains links to the creative commons website which then hooks in more licensing terms. There is nothing wrong with the terms but the CC website is jailed in Cloudflare’s walled garden and the URL is part of the licensing text.

I told the artist he would be liberating his work but at the same time he would be technically subjecting users to a bullying US tech giant who makes content arbitrarily exclusive by shutting out some demographics of people and also abusing the privacy of those who are privileged to obtain access to the license text.

I suggested modifying the CC license to remove the CC URL and exclude Cloudflare from being a license gatekeeper, noting of course the big pitf

Suppose you feed a multi-page PDF into \includepdf. If you only want pagecommand or picturecommand to take effect on some pages, you normally must split the construct up into multiple invocations. E.g.

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\includepdf[pages=1], pagecommand={\doStuffOnPageOne}]{file.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=2-], pagecommand={\doStuffOnPagesAfterOne}]{file.pdf}


  

It gets ugly fast when there are some commands you want performed on every page, and some on select pages, because then you must write and maintain redundant code.

Fuck that. So here’s a demonstration of how to write code inside pagecommand and picturecommand that is page-specific:

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\documentclass{article}

% Demonstrates use of the pdfpages package with page-by-page actions that are specific to select pages.

\usepackage{mwe}        % furnishes example-image-a4-numbered.pdf
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{ocgx2}      % furnishes the ocg environment (PDF layers, but not really needed for this demo)
\us
  

When I receive a non-English document, I scan it and run OCR (Tesseract). Then use pdftotext to dump the text to a text file and run Argos Translate (a locally installed translation app). That gives me the text in English without a cloud dependency. What next?

Up until now, I save the file as (original basename)_en.txt. Then when I want to read the doc in the future I open that text file in emacs. But that’s not enough. I still want to see the original letter, so I open the PDF (or DjVu) file anyway.

That workflow is a bit cumbersome. So another option: use pdfjam --no-tidy to import the PDF into the skeleton of LaTeX code, then modify the LaTeX to add a \pdfcomment which then puts the English text in an annotation. Then the PDF merely needs to be opened and mousing over the annotation icon shows the English. This is labor intensive up front but it can be scripted.

Works great until pdf2djvu runs on it. Both evince and djview render the document with annotation icons s

It would sometimes be useful to write conditional code that depends on boolean values defined in a parent package. E.g. the \pdfcomment package has the boolean “final”, which disables all PDF annotations in the document (\usepackage[final]{pdfcomment}). There is some other logic in my document that should also be disabled when that boolean is true. I tried simply using:

 undefined

    
\ifpc@gopt@final\else%
…code that should not run when final is true…
\fi


  

pdflatex gives: “Undefined control sequence”

More generally, many draft options are often useful for controlling logic within the document for which a parent uses a draft option. Also when defining a custom letterhead in the scrlttr2 class there are booleans for many items that may or may not be wanted in the letterhead.

Has anyone managed to read a parent boolean?

(update) [This thread](https://ove

Some might find it useful to import a text file and put the contents into a PDF annotation. E.g. a PDF is in language A and you want to make a translation available in language B, in a PDF annotation.

Here’s how:

 undefined

    
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{mwe}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{newfile}
\usepackage{xstring}
\usepackage{catchfile}

% heredoc holding text that normally breaks the \pdfcomment command:
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname_sample.txt}
line one

line two
tricky symbols: _&%
\end{filecontents*}

% normally the above file is whatever you supply to be imported into the PDF annotation. The heredoc is just to provide a self-contained sample.

% Create \pdfcommentfile, which is a version of \pdfcomment that can read from a file:
\makeatletter
\gdef\pdfcommentfile#1{%
  \begingroup
  \everyeof{\noexpand}%
  \long\edef\temp{\noexpand\pdfcomment{\@@input{#1}}}%
  \temp
  \endgroup
}%
\makeatother

\CatchFileDef{\cfile}{\jobname_sample.txt}{} % side-
  

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/363360

I am trying to do some simple character replacements on an input file and writing it to a file. The output produced by \StrSubstitute is quite bizarre. Here is a MWE:

 undefined

    
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{newfile}      % furnishes \newoutputstream
\usepackage{catchfile}    % furnishes \CatchFileDef
\usepackage{xstring}      % furnishes \StrSubstitute
\usepackage{stringstrings}% furnishes \convertword (a \StrSubstitute alternative)

% heredoc that creates source input file
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname_sample.txt}
line one

line two
tricky symbols: _&%
\end{filecontents*}

\CatchFileDef{\cfile}{\jobname_sample.txt}{}

\begin{document}

% Replacements needed:
%   & → \&
%   % → \%
%   _ → \_
%   \newline\newline → \textLF (replace blank lines)
%
\StrSubstitute{\cfile}{&}{\&}[\mystring]
\StrSubstitute{\mystring}{\%}{\%}[\mystring]
\StrSubstitute{\mystring}{_}{\_}[\myst
  

Suppose you resist a bank that forces you to access your account exclusively via some shitty phone app, which also requires you to buy a new smartphone. And suppose you refuse, so your only access to the bank account is via the card.

What happens when the time comes that (e.g.) the gov or a creditor demands a payment by credit transfer, not by card? Are you consequently forced by your obligation to make a payment to then buy a phone? Or do you have a right to manually order a payment from your bank by sending a written letter or something?

There is this law but I’m not sure it’s applicable:

REGULATION (EU) No 260/2012, Art.4: Interoperability
…
3. The processing of credit transfers and direct debits shall not be hindered by technical obstacles.

I think that law was really intended for the bank-to-bank segment of the transaction, not consumer to bank. I get the impression we have no codefied rights, just [recommendations to lawmakers](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/Reg

I somewhat urgently need a map, but for the past day or two there are no maps in #OSMand available for download. Can anyone confirm or deny this problem?

Is this related to the OSM outtage 6 days ago, which was supposedly resolved?

(edit) workaround -- download maps manually and side-load them. The maps are here:

https://osmand.net/list.php

Next question: how do you know which files cover a particular city if it’s not obvious from the filename?

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something w

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something w

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something w

TL;DR → The main problem is coming up with a way to reorder an array non-randomly but without introducing bulky code. Like the effect of shuffling a deck of cards in a deterministic cheating way.

Full background:

I would like to generate reference numbers for letters sent via postal mail. An sqlite db is used to track the sequence numbers (but not the reference numbers). This is the bash code I have so far:

 undefined

    
typeset -a symbolset=(a b c d e f g h   j k   m n   p q r s t u v w x y z     2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)
ln_symbolset=${#symbolset[@]}; # 41 is the answer, not 42
itemseq=$(sqlite3 ltr_tracking.db "select max(counter) from $tbl;")
printf '%s\n' "next letter reference number is: $(date +%Y)-${symbolset[$((itemseq / ln_symbolset))]}${symbolset[$((itemseq % ln_symbolset))]}"

  

An array is defined with alphanumeric symbols, taking care to eliminate symbols that humans struggle to distinguish (e.g. 1l0o). Then integer div and mod operations produce a two character number which is the

I was thinking about the problem with JavaScript and the misery it brings to people. I think I’ve pinned it down to a conflict of interest.

Software is supposed to serve the user who runs it. That’s the expectation, and rightfully so. It’s not supposed to serve anyone else. Free software is true to this principle, loosely under the FSF “freedom 0” principle.

Non-free software is problematic because the user cannot see the code. The code only has to pretend to serve the user while in reality it serves the real master (the corporation who profits from it).

JavaScript has a similar conflict of interest. It’s distributed by the same entity who operates API services -- a stakeholder. Regardless of whether the JS is free software or not, there is an inherent conflict of interest whereby the JS is produced by a non-user party to the digital transactions. This means the software is not working for the user. It’s only pretending to.

I just started using the LaTeX community ([email protected]). Sad to see it go.

update

Just noticed it’s back up, but there are no communities. That’s bizarre. So if someone not on lemmy.sdfeu.org were to post to [email protected], I guess it’d still be like a ghost node because the post would have nowhere to go on the hosting node.

This is the sample code (for LuaTeX or XeTeX):

 undefined

    
\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage[svgnames,rgb]{xcolor}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}
\usepackage{amssymb,amsmath,array,bm}
\usepackage{courier}
\usepackage{calligra,mathptmx,helvet,concmath}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{fontspec} % used to access system fonts like Lucida Fax

\begin{document}

\defineavatar{standard}{height=10mm,width=15cm,type=freetext,color=white,fontsize=20pt,fontcolor=blue}%,voffset=-4.8cm,hoffset=-3.2cm}%

\noindent%
Fonts from the pdfcomment example document:\\[10mm]
\pdffreetextcomment[avatar=standard]{This font is Helvetica (the default)}\\[6mm]
\pdffreetextcomment[avatar=standard,font=LucidaConsole]{This font is LucidaConsole}\\[6mm]
\pdffreetextcomment[avatar=standard,font=Georgia]{This font is Georgia}\\[6mm]
\pdffreetextcomment[avatar=standard,font=P