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Subject:
From:
Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 9 Feb 2001 17:16:51 +0100
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Michael,

 > I didn't explain clearly. What we have now is that
 >
 > (a) For people with GUI interface like Scientific Word, the software has
 > to deal with the ambiguity as best it can.

and what I am saying is that they can't, really, deal with it. they have to
provide a math markup and there is no way to identify something as "this
should be math" automatically. so there is no real solution to the problem
that people by mistake leave the needed markup out.

 > In other words currently it is easy for people in case (a) to make those
 > markup errors, and the proposal under discussion would extend this so
 > that it is easier for all users. It's not clear that this is progress.
 > :-)

it is not and i agree with you on that but i also think that for situations
like writing in a cyrillic languages where i want to use both in text as in
math cyrillic letters (comparable to the use of latin letters in math as far
as i understand) it seems appropriate to provide the same type of ambiguity we
currently have with latin in that we should say "the variable $x$ has the ..."
with the danger of having users type "the variable x has the ...".

why appropriate because it is a horrible scenario if you would have to write

 $(\matha + \mathb)^\mathtwo = \matha^\mathtwo +
                    \mathtwo\matha\mathb + \mathb^\mathtwo$

wouldn't it?

And that is essentially what people in Russia have to face, isn't it?


Still, i would like to have this additional ambiguity being added to the
document as a concious act and not by default. Ie the standard input encodings
should be in my opinion mapping to text only ie use \DeclareInputText only

frank

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