On 2/18/2016 12:40 AM, Pablo Rodriguez wrote:
On 02/17/2016 11:18 PM, Alan BRASLAU wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 20:08:31 +0100 Hans Hagen wrote:
you're an american citizen who likes $x^2$ but to call if beautiful ... €x^2€ nor £x^2£ (in 8 bit encodings / local keyboards times) all look bad ...
Hans, you forgot: ¥x^2¥, ₽x^2₽, ₱x^2₱, ₹x^2₹, ... Besides, U+0024 comes from ASCII and all programmers know that it is a perfectly valid and useful character.
Of course, and even ₧x²₧ or even ₯x²₯...
we need a proper begin/end symbol ..
Too bad Knuth did not choose ¡x^2!
Excuse me, Alan, this is exclamation in Spanish (and only in Spanish).
Just out of curiosity, why do you think he should have chosen that?
because # & % were taken and ^ _ were needed for scripts and [] () | = + - are also quite mathematical .. .that doesn't leave much @x^2@ could have worked also, DEK used a keyboard with some special characters (probably dating from those assembler like computer languages) which is why the plain tex format has: \mathcode`\^^@="2201 % \cdot \mathcode`\^^A="3223 % \downarrow \mathcode`\^^B="010B % \alpha \mathcode`\^^C="010C % \beta \mathcode`\^^D="225E % \land \mathcode`\^^E="023A % \lnot \mathcode`\^^F="3232 % \in \mathcode`\^^G="0119 % \pi \mathcode`\^^H="0115 % \lambda \mathcode`\^^I="010D % \gamma \mathcode`\^^J="010E % \delta \mathcode`\^^K="3222 % \uparrow \mathcode`\^^L="2206 % \pm \mathcode`\^^M="2208 % \oplus \mathcode`\^^N="0231 % \infty \mathcode`\^^O="0140 % \partial \mathcode`\^^P="321A % \subset \mathcode`\^^Q="321B % \supset \mathcode`\^^R="225C % \cap \mathcode`\^^S="225B % \cup \mathcode`\^^T="0238 % \forall \mathcode`\^^U="0239 % \exists \mathcode`\^^V="220A % \otimes \mathcode`\^^W="3224 % \leftrightarrow \mathcode`\^^X="3220 % \leftarrow \mathcode`\^^Y="3221 % \rightarrow \mathcode`\^^Z="8000 % \ne \mathcode`\^^[="2205 % \diamond \mathcode`\^^\="3214 % \le \mathcode`\^^]="3215 % \ge \mathcode`\^^^="3211 % \equiv \mathcode`\^^_="225F % \lor i wonder if anyone ever used that Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------