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UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

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Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#51

Post by rbonvall »

guipsp wrote: post #16
enriquto wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I know is that LaTEX is much, much easier to manage than this jumbled mess... LaTeX is beautiful and powerful, but mixed with unicode (in the right doses) it becomes astonishingly more powerful. For example, you can keep the block constructors {} _ and ^, but use unicode symbols such as α, ∂, ∫, instead of \alpha, \partial, \int

But you can't type α, ∂, or ∫ in a standard keyboard.

Vim digraph feature (ctrl-k) is very convenient for this. Digraphs are two-character mnemonics for symbols. They tend to be easy to remember and they are standardized in RFC 1345 [1].

Greek letters are always a latin letter followed by an asterisk. Arrows and comparison operators are what one would guess. Mathematical symbols generally make some sense:

     a *     α
     F *     Φ

     = >     ⇒
     - >     →
     > =     ≥

     0 0     ∞
     d P     ∂
     I n     ∫
[1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1345

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#52

Post by [deleted] »

ygra wrote: post #23
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #7

What I would like is a set of characters and a font that I could use to enter immediately readable math formulae into my text editor, so that I can take quick notes at a conference, or whenever. I can already do it, to some extent, for instance, this is the summation equation from page 5 in the pdf above: ₙ ⎛n⎞ (a + b)ⁿ = ∑ ⎜ ⎟ aᵏbⁿ⁻ᵏ ᵏ⁼⁰ ⎝k⎠ But, the scale is off (the summation is too small) and the characters are a…

> They're all markups, so they all require at least some mental rendering. Unicode maintains the position that plain text is unsuitable for this sort of thing and markup languages are preferred. That's also why there are no "formatting" modifiers except in cases where the result actually has different semantics that are important to distinguish (cf. RTL and LTR override). Overall I'd say Unicode does a fairly good jo…

[deleted]

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#53

Post by mrmyers »

joppy wrote: post #30
guipsp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't type α, ∂, or ∫ in a standard keyboard.

I feel like this is the sweet spot for the editor to do some of the heavy lifting, for example being able to type "\alpha" and have the editor automatically transform it into the symbol α. I write a lot of LaTeX, and I would absolutely love an editor which could just transparently deal with all of the underlying mathematics markup so I would never have to see it again, and just directly edit the damn equations. Seria…

Emacs already has you covered. Good old C-x RET C-\ TeX will switch your input method to TeX, converting \alpha etc to unicode alpha, etc for most math symbols. Additionally, ^[char] or _[char] will become superscript/subscript unicode chars.

Once you've done that once in the session, you can just hit C-\ to toggle it on and off (C-x RET C-\ [input method] actually lets you select from a wide variety of input methods, and C-\ toggles on and off the most recently selected input method).

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#54

Post by mrmyers »

ygra wrote: post #23
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #7

What I would like is a set of characters and a font that I could use to enter immediately readable math formulae into my text editor, so that I can take quick notes at a conference, or whenever. I can already do it, to some extent, for instance, this is the summation equation from page 5 in the pdf above: ₙ ⎛n⎞ (a + b)ⁿ = ∑ ⎜ ⎟ aᵏbⁿ⁻ᵏ ᵏ⁼⁰ ⎝k⎠ But, the scale is off (the summation is too small) and the characters are a…

> They're all markups, so they all require at least some mental rendering. Unicode maintains the position that plain text is unsuitable for this sort of thing and markup languages are preferred. That's also why there are no "formatting" modifiers except in cases where the result actually has different semantics that are important to distinguish (cf. RTL and LTR override). Overall I'd say Unicode does a fairly good jo…

Eh, I do still wish super/subscript characters in unicode were a bit more thorough. Several times a day I randomly remember the fact that every lowercase letter in the English alphabet except q has a unicode superscript character, and every single time it ruins my day.

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#55

Post by Technetium_Hat »

enriquto wrote: post #26
guipsp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't type α, ∂, or ∫ in a standard keyboard.

> But you can't type α, ∂, or ∫ in a standard keyboard. I have a standard keyboard and I type greek letters easily. ALTGR+a, and so on. If somebody is not able to configure their keyboard to do this they are not probably writing LaTeX, either.

Unfortunately ANSI (US layout) keyboards make this much more difficult.

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#56

Post by ygra »

cedex12 wrote: post #44
ygra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambria. Personally I don't like it much, although I don't hate it as much as Computer Modern or Times. The main reason here is most likely that Cambria is also Microsoft's primary math typeface and having the body text and math use the same typeface is IMHO preferable. Constantia pairs fairly well with Cambria as well, though.

> I don't hate it as much as Computer Modern or Times. What (latex compatible) fonts do you like/recommend then? In my opinion, it's kind of sad to see how strongly Computer Modern dominates the font choices in latex (and more generally the latex monoculture).

Well, this is personal preference and aesthetics, so I'm not sure others would have to follow. Palatino is nice, though and has a package where it's also the math font (mathpazo). That was as far as I got with fonts for plain old LaTeX.

Otherwise I'm currently using XeLaTeX (if I use LaTeX at all), so I'm not limited to compatible fonts and anything that's OpenType works.

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#57

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

ygra wrote: post #23
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #7

What I would like is a set of characters and a font that I could use to enter immediately readable math formulae into my text editor, so that I can take quick notes at a conference, or whenever. I can already do it, to some extent, for instance, this is the summation equation from page 5 in the pdf above: ₙ ⎛n⎞ (a + b)ⁿ = ∑ ⎜ ⎟ aᵏbⁿ⁻ᵏ ᵏ⁼⁰ ⎝k⎠ But, the scale is off (the summation is too small) and the characters are a…

> They're all markups, so they all require at least some mental rendering. Unicode maintains the position that plain text is unsuitable for this sort of thing and markup languages are preferred. That's also why there are no "formatting" modifiers except in cases where the result actually has different semantics that are important to distinguish (cf. RTL and LTR override). Overall I'd say Unicode does a fairly good jo…

>> Unicode maintains the position that plain text is unsuitable for this sort of thing and markup languages are preferred.

Well, I think that's an unreasonable position. The most intuitive way to enter mathematical text with a keyboard is to enter the symbols you want to enter, directly, as characters. I mean, nobody asks me, as a Greek speaker, to enter (hypothetical markup) \{greek_letter_xi} for χ or \{greek_letter_ypsilon} for υ, etc, thank the gods. Why do I have to use markup for the simplest things, like fractions and exponentials?

All symbols for math may be in Unicode, but there is no font supporting all of them. It's not Unicode that's at fault here, of course.

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#58

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

mrmyers wrote: post #54
ygra wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're all markups, so they all require at least some mental rendering. Unicode maintains the position that plain text is unsuitable for this sort of thing and markup languages are preferred. That's also why there are no "formatting" modifiers except in cases where the result actually has different semantics that are important to distinguish (cf. RTL and LTR override). Overall I'd say Unicode does a fairly good jo…

Eh, I do still wish super/subscript characters in unicode were a bit more thorough. Several times a day I randomly remember the fact that every lowercase letter in the English alphabet except q has a unicode superscript character, and every single time it ruins my day.

My problem is still with the fonts- I can't find one that even has all of (i,j,k,x,y,m,n,p,q,r) as both super- and sub-scripts. I end up either using capitals or just sucking it up and writing X_i^r or something.

Re: UnicodeMath – A Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics (2016) [pdf]

#59

Post by slrz »

guipsp wrote: post #18
knolan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can on a Mac. Holding the option key allows typing a whole host of symbols. https://beebom.com/how-type-hidden-mac-keyboard-symbols/

Right, and you can do the same on linux with the compose key. But it isn't very intuitive, discoverable or rememberable.

Badly discoverable? Sure. You can vastly improve the remembering part by picking appropriate mnemonics. The Plan 9 keyboard file is a nice start, I think.

It follows a set of rules so you don't have to remember a large number of sequences but can often guess the right one intuitively.

    ASCII digraphs for mathematical operators give the corresponding operator, e.g.,
https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/master/lib/keyboard

https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man7/keyboard.html

There's a program (mklatinkbd) to convert it to a format usable with X11.

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