TeX Stack Exchange: preview-latex does not function

I have previously mentioned Preview-Latex and AUCTeX. I was trying to set it up on the work computer, but the previews weren’t showing up properly. I thought I had had the problem before, but it was a different problem. This TeX Stack Exchange question had the answer, though: disable SAFER for Ghostscript. I do not know why this works.

Allow me to recommend latex-diff and latexbatchdiff

I do almost all of my technical writing in LaTeX, and I do revision control on everything with git. Unfortunately, tracking changes in revisions is very difficult in LaTeX. Maybe I make a change to a single word in a paragraph: a naive diff on the .tex file shows the entire line as being changed, and, even worse, then I just have the diff as plaintext, not something I could show a non-LaTeX user.

latexdiff is able to overcome this, automatically generating indications of changes, like Word’s change tracking system: new words show up as blue and underlined, deleted text is red and crossed-out. (How the changes are indicated is configurable, with several default styles to try.) latexdiff has two shortcomings, though. First, if I’m using version control to manage revisions, I have to manually save old .tex files off to the side so that latexdiff can find them. Second, latexdiff only works on single-file LaTeX documents. I like to put each section in its own file.

latexbatchdiff fixes both of these things. I just typed,

latexdiff-git 1ca0 head.tex abstract.tex acknowledgments.tex\
    introduction.tex methods.tex results.tex conclusion.tex

and it generated a marked-up PDF. (1ca0 is the start of a SHA for a previous revision.) It’s fantastic.

On “Antedisciplinary” Science

In PLoS Computational Biology, Sean R. Eddy wrote a Perspective, ["Antedisciplinary" Science](http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010006), on how to think about emerging interdisciplinary fields in science. In particular, he is concerned with the rising expectation that research groups have members from distinct disciplines, say a team with a biologist, a computer scientist, and a physicist. He contends that, in many cases, it is more effective to have teams of generalists. This is important to me because I feel like my job is a combination of numerical analysis, mechanics, computer programming, and biology: I think this is awesome. I get bored easily, and I'm delighted that I have a job in which I get to do a lot of complementary things.

Allow me to recommend AUCTeX, preview-latex, and Vincent Goulet's Emacs for OS X Modified

I am wanting to start typesetting my articles in LaTeX rather than using Pages+Endnote+Mathtype or, worse, Word. I don't like the LaTeX writing process of write, run LaTeX, run LaTeX again a couple of times to get the equation numbering correct, convert the dvi to a pdf, open the pdf, find a typo in an equation, cry, go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea, write some more. AUCTeX is a package for Emacs that makes it easier to write LaTeX with handy keyboard shortcuts and syntax highlighting, for example. Most notably, AUCTeX comes bundled with a tool, preview-latex, which presents rendered math equations in-line.

This requires a GUI-enabled Emacs. On the Mac, Cocoa Emacs is the most current. Vincent Goulet has prepared a special build of Cocoa Emacs, Emacs for OS X Modified, which includes AUCTeX as well as ESS and psvn if you're interested in those, too.

I don't know if this is a common problem, but for my installation, preview-latex didn't work properly until I disabled TeX-PDF-mode by C-c C-t C-p or adding (TeX-PDF-mode nil) to my .emacs file. I got the idea from this mailing list discussion.

Allow me to recommend Cyberduck

Price: Free

Cyberduck is a reliable, easy-to-use FTP, SFTP, S3, etc. browser for OSX. And you get a cute rubber duckie in your dock! I used to use Fugu, and I find Cyberduck to be much more pleasant.

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Most confusing chart of the day

The most confusing chart of the day award goes to:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

from Ide and Ophir. Orientation development in thermotropic liquid crystal polymers. Polymer Engineering and Science (2004) vol. 23 (5) pp. 261-265. Depicted are three values (tensile modulus, tensile strength, and area reduction) for five datapoints. Three scales appear on two y-axes. I think that this plot means that the tensile modulus for the extrudate decreases with increasing shear rate; I'm not sure why I should care about the other two variables because they don't look like they change very much, but it's hard to tell, because they are also on a smaller visual scale than the tensile modulus.