RE: Mathematical Greek Alphanumeric Symbols

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Sat May 14 2005 - 17:33:06 CDT

  • Next message: Philippe VERDY: "Re: Mathematical Greek Alphanumeric Symbols"

    At 13:51 -0700 2005/05/14, Murray Sargent wrote:
    >The STIX committee (see http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr25/ for
    >references) chose the sets of mathematical alphanumerics. I agree with
    >you that sans-serif characters in general are rarely used in
    >mathematics, at least in the mathematics of physics. My guess is that
    >the STIX committee didn't find enough mathematical usage for sans-serif
    >upright and italic Greek characters to justify including them. One can
    >always resort back to higher-level character formatting to render such
    >characters, but then the sans-serif distinction is lost on export to
    >plain text. Such loss would imply a change in semantics. But so far,
    >anyhow, we haven't seen a need for mathematical sans-serif and
    >sans-serif italic Greek sets.

    Based on the character semantics principle, the sans-serif forms
    should probably not have been added. But now, when they are added,
    and cannot be removed, the lack of the Greek sans-serif forms looks
    as an anomaly. I will probably stick to the serif forms, and not use
    the non-serif ones. So it will not be a big issue to myself. I think
    most mathematicians will do likewise.

    -- 
       Hans Aberg
    


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