Virtual coffee stains, in LaTeX and stock photos

May 16, 2020 11:30 AM

This package provides an essential feature to LaTeX that has been missing for too long. It adds a coffee stain to your documents. A lot of time can be saved by printing stains directly on the page rather than adding it manually. LaTeX Coffee Stains is over a decade old, but perhaps of increased use as more people learn to work from home. Probably easier than making your own, but if you'd like variety, here are some free stock images (and some that aren't free).
posted by filthy light thief (13 comments total)

LaTeX Coffee Stains come to ya via Mltshp.

Want to find out what character you want in LaTeX? Try detexify (previously) and roughly of the same (2009!) vintage, but still very much working.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:32 AM on May 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

LaTeX Coffee Stains

...is, incidentally, the name of my new band.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:14 PM on May 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

Saw the headline and instinctively pushed reply.

“BUT I PUT THOSE IN MY DISSERTATION 7 YEARS AGO!!1”

Then I realized that certain things are both timeless AND of the moment.
posted by apathy at 12:20 PM on May 16, 2020

Hanno Rein and I were gradstudents together when he made this, so it's wonderful to see his work pop up yet again! He also created the wonderful exoplanet app.
posted by honest knave at 12:38 PM on May 16, 2020 [7 favorites]

This seems ripe for a thread on the grey: show us you best coffee stain (tea allowed)
posted by sammyo at 1:28 PM on May 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

\usepackage[comments]{metafilter}
\setcommentuser{GCU Sweet and Full of Grace}
\setcommentlink{}
\setcommenttypeface{normal}
\setcommentsnarklevel{3}{7}
\begin{document}
\begin{comment}
Neat!
\end{comment}
\end{document}
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:12 PM on May 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

thanks for the via, flt!

If Hanno's still at UTSC, he's likely a near(ish) neighbour of mine. To give the link its props, I found it on Nick Higham's blog. Nick's a numerical analysis professor with an endlessly informative and entertaining blog. Everything from “What Is” primers in numerical concepts (such as What Is Floating-Point Arithmetic?: you will learn something from this, even if it's just that floating point has holes), Commodore 64 one-liners, extreme stationery geekery and how I first found out about him, typewriter art.
posted by scruss at 3:43 PM on May 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is so funny. Perhaps this is what my students need for their quizzes.
posted by leahwrenn at 6:50 PM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Some scientists got intrigued by coffee stains and how they always have an accented outline. It turns out that coffee does not flow or dry up like a normal liquid because of the nano particles of ground coffee, and the research led to improved ways of coating lenses and cleaning solar panels.
posted by w0mbat at 7:10 PM on May 16, 2020 [11 favorites]

IMO, this is a lovely example of MetaFilter: people sharing additional details, including adjacent science :)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:14 PM on May 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

Usually just my hbox overfloweth, but I suppose sometimes my coffee cup does too.
posted by nat at 12:46 AM on May 17, 2020 [7 favorites]

Thanks for the legacy stains. They are sorely needed for my documents since I stopped drinking so much coffee. Water stains are just not getting the job done.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:28 AM on May 17, 2020

(tea allowed)

The hell it is.
posted by Tehhund at 12:13 PM on May 17, 2020