I have spent a lit­tle time on rst2pdf these last few days. It does­n't look too bad, con­sid­er­ing the long ne­glec­t, but there is some break­age.

Af­ter go­ing over al­most 300 in­te­gra­tion tests by hand, I iden­ti­fied a few re­gres­sions (and a cou­ple of bugs that fixed them­selves, yay).

So, in or­der to do a re­lease, I am hop­ing to fix the­se:

• Is­­sue 289: bro­ken bul­let cus­­tomiza­­­tion

• Is­­sue 310: Line num­bers when in­­­clud­ing sources in code­blocks are wrong

• Is­­sue 337: Lay­out er­ror of in­­­line im­ages in a ta­ble

• Is­­sue 483: Stylesheet In­­­cludes seem bro­ken

• Is­­sue 374: Some­­times lit­er­al blocks are bro­ken in two or more pieces

• Is­­sue 482: Line blocks with in­­­den­t­ed parts get ex­­tra­ne­ous spac­ing

• Is­­sue 484: Deeply nest­ed lists break spac­ing

• Is­­sue 478: Nest­ed/­­var­i­able span ta­ble widths are in­­­cor­rect

• Is­­sue 470: Links on fig­ures

I prob­a­bly will not fix them al­l, and trunk works much bet­ter for many cas­es than 0.92 so I should not block a re­lease on any of the­se, re­al­ly. I will give my­self a cou­ple of weeks to see how many (if any) I can get done.

On the oth­er hand, if any­one read­ing this feels ad­ven­tur­ous, and wants to lend a hand, help is al­ways wel­come.

In the mean­time, this is a list of what's changed in trunk from ver­sion 0.92:

• Sup­­port rst2pdf [inf [out­f]] syn­­tax to be more com­­pat­i­ble with rst2*

• Im­­ple­­men­t­ed Is­­sue 389: New --strip-ele­­men­t-with­­-­­class op­­tion

• Fixed Is­­sue 474: Cel­l­Style1 is not there in re­­port­lab 2.6

• Re­­moved de­­fault pad­d­ing from De­layedTable, which looked bad on head­­er­s/­­foot­er­s.

• Im­prove­­ments to the math di­rec­­tive (font col­or and size)

• Bet­ter sup­­port for styling lit­er­al­s.

• Fixed Is­­sue 454 (S­­plit­t­ing fail­ure)

• Switched from svglib to svg2rlg

• Re­­moved uni­­con­ver­­tor sup­­port

• Fixed Is­­sue 477: Sink foot­note sep­a­ra­­tor (patch by aser­­max)

• Fixed Is­­sue 473: Sup­­port "code" di­rec­­tive like an alias of code-block.

• Fixed Is­­sue 472: Im­­ple­­men­t­ed My­Im­age._un­Re­stric­t­­Size

• Fixed Is­­sue 471: Re­spect class in lineblock­­s.

• Fixed Is­­sue 455: New pisa/x­ht­m­l2pdf has very dif­fer­­ent im­­ports

• Marked Is­­sue 358 as fixed (L­it­er­al blocks ren­dered with large bot­­tom margin)

• Fixed Is­­sue 410: al­ways in­­­clude full lines in code-blocks (m­­mueller patch)

It does­n't mat­ter what I am do­ing, be it work, a hob­by, or just talk­ing, I have a con­stant fear, in the back­ground pro­cess­es of my mind, that I will be dis­cov­ered, that I will be found to be a hack, a fraud, a con­man.

It does­n't mat­ter if I am ac­tu­al­ly a hack at what I am do­ing at the time, or if it's some­thing I am re­al­ly good at, or if it's some­thing that's im­pos­si­ble to be a fraud at. That lit­tle voice of in­se­cu­ri­ty is there, all the time, say­ing "they'll fig­ure you out, they'll know, they'll re­al­ize you are full of crap".

I know, ra­tio­nal­ly, that I don't re­al­ly suck at most of the things I do, and those I suck at, I could do bet­ter, be­cause I al­so have this oth­er ir­ra­tional voice telling me I can do pret­ty much ev­ery­thing. I won­der if those voic­es are the same thing, or if they are like the dev­il and an­gel in my shoul­der­s.

Be­ing an in­tro­vert means I don't want to be shown as a hack, so I try to do things well, so I am not re­al­ly a hack, so I am not shown as a hack. If I am con­sis­tent­ly not a hack, I get in­sane­ly con­fi­dent that I can do stuff I re­al­ly can't do, be­cause I am a hack at those.

I speak in con­fer­ences, which for an in­tro­vert is dif­fi­cult, but since I don't want to be a hack, I try to fig­ure out how to do it, and it seems I am not bad at it, but be­fore I do it, ev­ery time, I feel like a hack, I know I should have done my slides ear­lier, I should have re­hearsed, I should know what I am go­ing to say, and I did­n't, could­n't, don't.

When­ev­er I have a prob­lem and google and see my own ear­li­er fum­blings ap­pear as re­sult­s, I won­der if that's ac­tu­al­ly the lev­el of knowl­edge out there, if ev­ery­one else is as much of a hack as I am, and I de­spair. Then I try to fig­ure things out and do it bet­ter, and prob­a­bly stop be­ing a hack for a lit­tle bit.

I am an en­gine fu­eled by in­se­cu­ri­ty and neu­ro­sis. It's ex­haust­ing. It's a lot of fun.

First new fea­ture in rst2pdf in a long long time, but it was easy to do, and there was an ac­tu­al us­er need­ing it.

This ex­pos­es func­tion­al­i­ty rst2html al­ready had, so that's prob­a­bly why it was easy to do ;-)

In any case, what is it and what is it good for?

If you mark some­thing with a class, you can now omit it from the out­put:

.. class:: ignored

This will not be in the output if you use --strip-elements-with-class=ignored

And it's use­ful, for ex­am­ple, so you can keep slides and pre­sen­ta­tion notes in the same file. You just put your notes in a class you strip when pro­duc­ing the slides.

Since some class­es are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­signed for ad­mo­ni­tion­s, this is ex­tra sim­ple:

.. note:: This is a note admonition.

   Note admonitions always have the note class. So you can strip them easily.

And if you don't strip them, they will look pret­ty.

Last night they were play­ing "X-­Men: First class" on TV, and I once again saw this:

And of course, there are a few de­tails wrong with that pic­ture:

No­tice any dif­fer­ences?

So, al­ways re­mem­ber: movies lie to you about ev­ery­thing, even if there's no need, be­cause they are en­ter­tain­men­t.

Pasé el fin de se­m­ana en el cam­po, en Cruz del Eje, y char­lé con mucha gente que veo muy de vez en cuan­do. Supong­amos que uno de el­los se lla­ma Ger­mán Javurek (porque así se lla­ma), el her­mano de la mu­jer de mi sue­gro (y no, no hay man­era mas cor­ta de ex­plicar es­o), un tipa­zo, que me cae muy bi­en.

Char­lan­do con él y mi cuña­di­ta Lau­ra, el­la le re­cuer­da la vez que le habló de la difer­en­cia en­tre es­tar vesti­do de gau­cho y dis­fraza­do de gau­cho. Le di­go a Lau­ra que por ejem­plo, si Ger­mán tiene pues­ta ropa de gau­cho, él es­tá vesti­do, si me las vé pues­tas a mí, es­toy dis­fraza­do. [1]

Eso llevó la char­la a la defini­ción de Ger­mán de sí mis­mo co­mo "un tradi­cional­is­ta". Eso hace que su ap­ero sea de de­ter­mi­na­da man­er­a, su ves­ti­men­ta de gau­cho sea de una de­ter­mi­na­da man­er­a, ya que él es cor­dobés, y a que use tien­tos en vez de cuer­das, y así suce­si­va­mente.

In­clu­sive has­ta un co­men­tario es­ti­lo "a lo que ha lle­ga­do el mundo", ac­er­ca de gru­pos de gau­chos que us­an mon­tu­ra chile­na, here­jía in­imag­in­able para un tradi­cional­is­ta, o bo­ca­do de ny­lon, y a su "así en­tien­do yo lo que es ser un tradi­cional­is­ta, los demás que ha­gan lo que quier­an, pero yo lo en­tien­do así"

Y ... yo no lo en­tien­do así :-)

No me puse a dis­cu­tir, porque ... ¡Para qué me voy a pon­er a dis­cu­tir en el cumple de se­ten­ta de mi sue­gro con un tipo que veo dos ve­ces al año y enci­ma me caen bi­en él y to­da su fa­mil­i­a!

Pero yo me imag­i­no que si a un gau­cho de 1830 le mostra­bas un bo­ca­do de ny­lon, y du­ra más, o una mon­tu­ra chile­na y le parecía más prác­ti­ca, los adopt­a­ba. Porque habrá si­do un gau­cho, pero la tradi­ción del gau­cho no la for­ma el gau­cho, la for­ma el tipo que ex­traña al gau­cho, o el tipo que vió al gau­cho de chico, o el tipo que es­cribió so­bre el gau­cho.

Un gau­cho us­a­ba el ap­ero que le vendían o el que sabía hac­erse, o se copi­a­ba del ve­ci­no. No tenía prob­le­mas en us­ar revólveres france­ses, o telas in­gle­sas para la ropa (el prob­le­ma es que era caro).

No me imag­i­no a un gau­cho cor­dobés cagán­dose de frío pero no us­an­do un pocho salteño porque no cor­re­spondiera a la ves­ti­men­ta ade­cua­da para el gau­cho cor­dobés. Des­de ya que puedo es­tar com­ple­ta­mente equiv­o­ca­do y ca­da zona es­ta­ba llena de gau­chos fetichis­tas de la mo­da que aho­ra es­tarían to­dos us­an­do chupines y an­teo­jos ne­gros de mar­co grue­so, pero no me sue­na co­mo al­go que haría el gau­cho, de acuer­do a lo que he leí­do, al ru­mor, a la leyen­da del gau­cho. El gau­cho era un tipo prác­ti­co.

En­ton­ces, si al gau­cho mis­mo no le im­porta­ba... ¿qué tradi­ción es ésa? ¿Habrá den­tro de cien años una agru­pación tradi­cional­ista del flog­ger del Abas­to? ¿Dis­cu­tirán ac­er­ca de si ll­ev­a­ban el fle­qui­l­lo a la derecha o la izquier­da? ¿Ac­er­ca de la mar­ca cor­rec­ta de za­p­atil­las para el rolin­ga de Morón?

Yo sé que cor­ro con muchas desven­ta­jas en es­ta dis­cusión, ya que mi opinión no le im­por­ta un cara­jo a nadie, que soy to­tal­mente de afuer­a, er­go soy de palo, y que tienen, has­ta cier­to pun­to, razón, los gau­chos cor­dobe­ses se vestían dis­tin­to de los salteños, y el­los de los sureños, y así.

Pero no veo que la difer­en­cia sea im­por­tante. Veo que si querés hom­e­na­jear al gau­cho, fi­játe las cosas que les im­porta­ban a el­los, no las que les im­porta­ban a los que los veían de afuer­a, lo su­per­fi­cial, el col­or del pon­cho, el ma­te­ri­al del bo­cado, el dis­eño de la mon­tu­ra.

Porque im­i­tar las de­scrip­ciones de los gau­chos que hacían los tur­is­tas, es­o, señores, es dis­frazarse de gau­cho.