LATEX-L Archives

Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project

LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Hans Aberg <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 9 Feb 2001 15:26:37 +0100
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (56 lines)
>> I tend to think that there in a text mode for natural language alone, there
>> should be no numbers allowed, only letters and punctuation marks.
 Oops. I stepped on a touchy point, it seems.

At 13:05 +0100 2001/02/09, Karsten Tinnefeld wrote:
>Our (that is, German syntax) rules state that text mode numbers should ouly
>be written out as number words up to twelve. But there are text mode
>numbers which are definitely not maths, as in
>
>        ``in the summer of '69''
>        ``they were not only pirates, they were The Wild 13''
>        (The number of the beast is $666$? I don't think so.)

>Also, I tend to treat enumeration numbers (\thesection, \itemize-items)
>as text number's, raising them to the third makes to sense.

At 12:14 +0000 2001/02/09, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>not to mention telephone numbers

Do you mean from a logical point of view or a rendering point of view? --
From the logical point of view, those are all enumerations, standard math
objects.

At 13:44 +0100 2001/02/09, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
>i don't quite agree. there are certainly schools that would like to bann
>numbers in a context like this but even if you spell out all such number as
>text you still have the problem that you have to allow textual number, or are
>you really proposing that a reference to a page or a figure or heading has to
>be as "see figure seven.three"?

This is not really what I said; if only math mode is available, one should
either write "see figure seven.three" or "see figure $7.3$", but not simply
"see figure 7.3", as the last is both logically wrong, and invites to
making mistakes in markup.

However, stepping into the question of renderings, one should in this case
have a special label environment, that makes the labels appear
consistently, both logically and in rendering. Again, it should not be
possible to write "see figure 7.3".

>and depending on the design such number might get  quite a different treatment
>to those being part of a math formula (eg they might be in old style or they
>might be in the text font family or ...)

So then they should be put in special environments, separating them from
the text.

>so there are "textual digits" and there are "mathematical digits".

I think that your "textual digits" only arise in the absence of proper
markup, just as it is common to have other symbols sprayed into the text,
in the absence of a proper symbol environments.


  Hans Aberg

ATOM RSS1 RSS2