On 20/05/2014 15:04, Ulrike Fischer wrote: > Am Tue, 20 May 2014 11:39:35 +0930 schrieb Will Robertson: > > >> 3. To get proper bold symbols, including Greek, we'll need a whole new set >> of commands. These will need sensible names of some sort. Below I've chosen >> \symbf, etc., which doesn't look too bad to me. >> used for bold math identifiers that aren't real single-letter symbols -- in >> such cases it would surely be sensible to use (perhaps a variation on) >> \textbf. > > Imho math fonts should be fix fonts, they should not like \textbf > switch one aspect of the "current" font but always to a fix, well > defined font. > > Also chars should not only look ok but in the days of unicode also > have the code point with the correct meaning. That means that a bold > "T" in math should if possible be the one from the math plane in > unicode and not a bold "T" from some textfont -- even if they look > the same. That would be good to have but may be hard with currently available fonts. If you want \mathbf{Var} to "look OK" then you need to kern the V and a and that means (as far as I understand the current situation) either using a text bold font or having tables somewhere in the macro layer and inserting kerns "by hand", that is: make the macros iterate over every character inserting kerns where needed. (but maybe luatex and or xetex can modify the font metrics at font loading time? > > So in my opinion the current \mathbf-etc setup in unicode-math > actually did the right thing and improved the standard > \math-commands. I wouldn't like to loose this completly. If \mathbf > pointed to a textfont then everyone who wants the real math symbols > would have to replace \mathbf in their code by \symbf. And back > again if he wants to use a text font. > > Wouldn't it be possible to have a "\usetextfontasmathbf..." command > which disables the mapping to the math plane? So that one doesn't > have to switch between \symbf and \mathbf depending on the font > setup of a document? > > Yes as I said in my reply to Will I can't see anyone is going to want \mathbf and \symbf in the same document so I would expect that the document markup was always \mathxx with that being one definition or the other depending on document wide settings: either package options or a package for a particular font family just making a choice of definition to get the best coverage for that family. David