Re: [NTG-context] \Asterisk

28 May 2008


      On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Aditya Mahajan  wrote:
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On Wed, 28 May 2008, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
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On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 12:11 AM, Aditya Mahajan  wrote:
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On Fri, 23 May 2008, Jesse Alama wrote:
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I was working on a document in which I wanted use a symbol that,
acording to the Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List, goes by the name of
\Asterisk or \bigast (see p. 22).  I saw, though, that this seems to be
missing in ConTeXt.  Might it be tucked away in some module, or is it
just absent?  If it's really not there, what would it take to add it?
The latex symbol list says that these are from the mathabx font. AFAIK,
this font is not currently supported by ConTeXt. Adding support should be
doable, but I am not sure what is the best way to support it. I do
not know if this family is a complete replacement for CM (and LM) fonts,
or only some symbols are provided.
I am travelling right now, and I can play around with these fonts sometime
next week. The font claims to provide plain tex support, so it should be
usable out of the box. You can try
\input mathabx
$\Asterix$
What is with Obelix?
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and see if this works with plain tex and ConTeXt.
Only the metafont files are available, I do not know if someone
has created a type1 version.
Why so complicated, * did also work with Latin Modern and the other fonts.
I prefer \definesymbol [asterisk] [\char"2A\relax] and \symbol{asterisk},
you're way is also possible but
\startencoding[default]
\definecharacter Asterisk \char"2A
\stopencoding
is also possible.
Asterix is like a big asterix (similar to \bigstar vs \star, and \bigtimes
vs \times, maybe it shold be called \bigasterix)
I found \asterisk and \Asterisk in the manual but no \Asterix.
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The unicode chart show a few more asterisk variatione in the dingbats section:
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2700.pdf
I will check that.
The chart contains only dingbats symbols but there is also a mathematical
asterisk in the next chart.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2200.pdf --> 2217

Wolfgang