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Re: Math Arrows and Harpoons

At 14:35 +0000 1998/11/13, David Carlisle wrote:
>If you say so, then I am sure that acurately reflects the current
>unicode rules but if so, then at least as far as Mathematics is
>concerned the rules are just plain wrong. If you have to assign spurious
>meanings to characters in order to slip this stuff past the unicode
>consortium, then I suppose you have to, but you can not expect that the
>symbols will then be used that way in real mathematical documents.

  I think this pinpoints the problem as accurately as it can: If something
has to be passed past the Unicode or ISO consortium, then one must comply
with the rules they have: This will help the spread of mathematics somewhat.

  But when working with developing encoding and typesetting of real
mathematics, one must do it on the conditions of these problems. Unicode
and ISO standards may provide an input, but no more.

  With respect to the encoding names, as far as I am concerned, it is
acceptable to name it by the looks of the components, and not by its
intended use, as one in TeX anyhow will use macros for renaming the symbol.

  So, for example, => could be named "double-shaft-right-head", and not
"implies". And <= could be named "left-head-double-shaft".

  Perhaps one should go further, accepting that an arrow has a beginning, a
middle, and an end, and name them in that order. Then => could be named
"none-double-head", and <= could be named "head-double-none". The arrow
    ^
    |
could be named "up-none-single-head" or "down-head-single-none".

  One then ends up with a classification of arrows into their components,
and a naming convention to describe those components.

  Hans Aberg
                  * Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:haberg@member.ams.org>
                  * Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/>
                  * AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>