chess diagrams on A6 cards using LaTeX - 2/2
December 4th, 2009In the first part I wrote: “put to a template in your favourite text processor”. Attached is a template (class-file) for LaTeX and an example, the explanations are below.
In the first part I wrote: “put to a template in your favourite text processor”. Attached is a template (class-file) for LaTeX and an example, the explanations are below.
As a part of improvement in chess, it is often recommended to analyze positions. The idea is good, but how to find time to do it? One option is to use otherwise unproductive time: walking, in bus, queues etc. I have printed positions with me, and always can analyze something.
Bug (?) report: “after switching from LaTeX(pdflatex) to XeTeX(xelatex) as the PDF generator something has ceased to work. Mathematical operators given as unicode characters in math formulas do not show up in the final document.ยดยด
I purchased “Fritz und Fertig: Schach lernen und trainieren (”Fritz and Chesster: learn to play chess“, other languages also available). My opinion is simple: it’s a masterpiece and the best ever computer game for children.
Unfortunately, I got technical problems. Fortunately, solved them.
I’m experimenting with LaTeX and chess. As there is no “for dummies” information in internet, my notes (even if incorrect) could be useful for beginners.
So, the step 1. Print some game or some position.
To put an image to a document, LaTeX provides the command “\includegraphics“. As it often happens, due to LaTeX was designed for manual typesetting, this command is a nightmare for automatic generation. For a long time, I use a wrapper to solve 99% of the problems.
I need to reuse a function in a file. The usual way is just to import this file as a module. But what to do if the name is “bad”? The following doesn’t work:
import foo-bar as foo_bar
foo_bar.callme()
After trials and errors, the desired magic found:
Yes, one installs and configures Samba. All I need is to access a big folder in the read-only mode. The quick and dirty solution is:
Consider ‘main.bat‘
call child1.bat
call child2.bat
What happens after ‘child1.bat‘ is finished?
Extending a virtual disk in vmware
1. Backup!
2. Somewhere in the vmware installation directory, there is a tool named “vmware-vdiskmanager.exe“. There is a lot of options, for resize use “-x“:
vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 8Gb ...path.to.vm..../vm_disk.vmdk
(hint: type the command manually, do not copy/paste from web. Otherwise you can get typographical spaces or minuses instead of the usual ones.)
After a small system upgrade an application started to crash with the message:
*** glibc detected *** sylpheed: double free or corruption (out): 0x0839e818 ***
The right thing is to trace the application and submit a bug report to the author, but I found a fast workaround. Set an environment variable before running the program:
export MALLOC_CHECK_=0
Upgrading a macports (darwinports) package is not as easy as
$ sudo port upgrade something
In many cases I need the following command:
In addition to the conference checklist, I now need a checklist for local chess tournaments.
For development purposes, I’d like to run a rsync server on a Mac.
People in forums recommend to avoid the default system rsync, which is accused of being buggy. Instead, they recommend RSyncX.
It’s quite easy to create a local MacPorts repository. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t say how to share the repository with others. After trials, errors and reading the source code, I’ve found the answer: the only way is rsync.
I’ve noticed that headers and footers of the documents, generated by XeLaTeX, use some other font instead of Helvetica. After digging into the LaTeX code, the problem is solved.
Do you generate [La]TeX files using Python? If yes, do you escape the special characters. Haven’t you forgotten to escape also empty strings?
To avoid reinventing the wheel, I tried to use TeXML libraries. This is the right choice, but one has to use a little trick.
ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. The system can forward ALSA sound to PulseAudio.
PulseAudio is a sound server. Applications feed music to PulseAudio, and PulseAudio decides what to do with it. For example, it can send the sound over network.
When I tried to use this feature for the first time, I failed. Therefore, I experimented with a more user friendly software (see multimedia over network I, and the second attempt was successful.
I need to get utf-8 (unicode) data instead of 8-bit from a Microsoft Access database (ODBC connection). It seems I’ve finally found the answer:
It’s impossible.