The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[xxx]

I use:
- a pro one,
- a personal one linked to my ISP (which my wife also uses...),
- a gmail one,
- and lots of disposables...

[Ares Land]

A few days ago, I spent several minutes frantically wondering what was wrong with my computer's screen, until I figured out that I accidentally pushed the on/off button while dusting it off.

Unrelated: I have one email address that is connected to my cellphone's OS, one email address that I use for exchanging emails with people I know in real life - though that happens almost never these days - one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that don't involve money - that's the one connected to my account here - and one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that do involve money.

How about you?

Besides work, I use two personal addresses. One I've used for ages; the other I created mostly to test an encrypted email provider and ended up using a bit with some contacts.
I have a few old email accounts I don't even check anymore.

[Raphael]

Is there some kind of software tools that allows you to start out with a chart that shows several blocks, kind of like this:



and then grab the individual blocks with your mouse and move them into different orders, so that you can get some idea of how they might look like in different orders?

I'm asking because I'm currently working on a writing project, and with many of the individual pieces of that writing project, I'm not at all sure into which order I eventually want to put them yet.

[bradrn]

I'm asking because I'm currently working on a writing project, and with many of the individual pieces of that writing project, I'm not at all sure into which order I eventually want to put them yet.

In that case, you might want to search for outlining software. I like Emacs org-mode, but a quick search online turns up plenty of alternatives.

[Raphael]

I'm asking because I'm currently working on a writing project, and with many of the individual pieces of that writing project, I'm not at all sure into which order I eventually want to put them yet.

In that case, you might want to search for outlining software. I like Emacs org-mode, but a quick search online turns up plenty of alternatives.

Thank you!

[Raphael]

I think I might be, slowly, getting the hang of the basics of Inkscape. At first I had absolutely no idea what any of the tools were supposed to be good for, how to get any of them to do anything useful, or how to use any of them to do any of the things I might want to do, but now that I've read some step-by-step instructions for some specific tasks, I think that once you sort of understand the basics, it can be a very powerful tool.

[Raphael]

For some reason, every single one of the attempted spam comments I got on my blog so far has been for one and the same post, a post from 2019. None of my later posts ever got any attempted spam.

[Raphael]

Microsoft Outlook question: My Mom uses Microsoft Outlook. Shortly ago, all the emails she gets from one of her regular email contacts - only that one - started to be shown with a black background. There's no way to turn it off. The email contact in question says that he didn't change anything about his emails, and other people who also sometimes get emails from that guy say that his emails still look fine for them.

Any ideas?

[Raphael]

On my smallest and oldest notebook, which I only occasionally take out of storage and turn on to download and install updates, one update has had the status of 0 percent installed for, I think, at least half an hour now.

[Raphael]

Interesting little technology-related anecdote from Mastodon:

https://infosec.exchange/@hacks4pancake ... 9675550782

[Raphael]

I think I finally got not just the Linux and Android versions, but also the Windows version of KDE Connect to work on the various computers in this apartment. Phew. That took a lot of fiddling with settings.

[Raphael]

I have absolutely no idea by which logic my feed reader app (Akregator) sorts the feeds in the part of the window that lists the feeds I subscribe to. It's not by name, it's not by website, it's not by date of most recent post, it's not by date of oldest available archived post, and it's not by date when I started subscribing to each feed, either.

[Raphael]

Is there some way in Lyx to have the chapter numbering start at 0 instead of 1? Various places on the internet say that I can do that by simply adding

Code: Select all

\setcounter{chapter}{3}

to the preamble. But as far as I can tell, that simply doesn't work. I write it into the preamble, I click Apply, I click Save, I close the document, I open it again, and the numbering still starts at 1. Putting it into an ERT before the first chapter title doesn't work, either.

[bradrn]

Is there some way in Lyx to have the chapter numbering start at 0 instead of 1? Various places on the internet say that I can do that by simply adding

Code: Select all

\setcounter{chapter}{3}

to the preamble. But as far as I can tell, that simply doesn't work. I write it into the preamble, I click Apply, I click Save, I close the document, I open it again, and the numbering still starts at 1. Putting it into an ERT before the first chapter title doesn't work, either.

\setcounter{chapter}{0} should work just fine in LaTeX. I don’t know how LyX renders things; maybe it just doesn’t recognise that command. You could try exporting to PDF to check if it at least works in the final version (which it should, since IIRC LyX calls out to LaTeX for that).

[Raphael]

\setcounter{chapter}{0} should work just fine in LaTeX. I don’t know how LyX renders things; maybe it just doesn’t recognise that command. You could try exporting to PDF to check if it at least works in the final version (which it should, since IIRC LyX calls out to LaTeX for that).

Exporting it directly to pdf results in a chapter list starting at 1. Exporting it to plain Latex, and then using some other tool to convert that to pdf, results in chapters with no numbers whatsoever.

[bradrn]

\setcounter{chapter}{0} should work just fine in LaTeX. I don’t know how LyX renders things; maybe it just doesn’t recognise that command. You could try exporting to PDF to check if it at least works in the final version (which it should, since IIRC LyX calls out to LaTeX for that).

Exporting it directly to pdf results in a chapter list starting at 1. Exporting it to plain Latex, and then using some other tool to convert that to pdf, results in chapters with no numbers whatsoever.

Could you upload the LaTeX document somewhere where I can view it? (Or post it here if it’s short enough.)

[Raphael]

Could you upload the LaTeX document somewhere where I can view it? (Or post it here if it’s short enough.)

Would it be ok if I reduced all chapter and section titles as well as all regular text passages to their first letters, for privacy reasons?

[bradrn]

Could you upload the LaTeX document somewhere where I can view it? (Or post it here if it’s short enough.)

Would it be ok if I reduced all chapter and section titles as well as all regular text passages to their first letters, for privacy reasons?

Sure, as long as it can replicate the issue.

[Raphael]

Could you upload the LaTeX document somewhere where I can view it? (Or post it here if it’s short enough.)

Would it be ok if I reduced all chapter and section titles as well as all regular text passages to their first letters, for privacy reasons?

Sure, as long as it can replicate the issue.

The attached zip file contains the stripped down lyx file ("dummy.lyx"), the tex file I get if I use lyx to export to plain Latex ("dummy.tex"), and the pdf file I get when I use pdflatex on the tex file ("dummy.pdf"). The pdf now has chapters numbers, but starting at 1.

[bradrn]

Oh, apparently you need \setcounter{section}{-1}, because \chapter starts by incrementing the counter (source). This works for me with your document.