On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 12:41:02PM +0200, Radovan Garabik wrote: > > How can this person tell which kind of boldness is in use? > > mathematical symbols could use different typesetting convention > (see latex)
But this should depend on mathematical context, not code point. Or are you suggesting that latex shouldn't render ascii characters using mathematical typesetting conventions? > > Let's imagine that a person is actually reading this document. What > > difference does it make to this person that the Unicode Consortium > > has named the code point using the word MATHEMATICAL? How would the > > person even find out about this? > > decent html browser would render mathematical symbols differently. > But, of course, it need not, depeding on font used. Again, this should depend on whether a mathematical context is in use (e.g. mathematical equation). Unless (to use the same example again) you wish to prohibit the use of ascii characters in mathematical equations. > > expression? If there was surrounding text describing the character of the > > variables x, y, and z, would you insist on this contrived intepretation > > of yours? > > I do not insist on it... but as you can see, without a context > anything can be misinterpreted, and special symbols are just a tad > helpful. I'll agree that context is important. I'll agree that special symbols are important. I disagree with the idea that special symbols may only be used in certain contexts. That's like saying that HTML should only be used to describe the structure of a document and not its appearance -- fine language from a standards body, but with little to do with how the standard is actually used. > > If we assume that the user is using debian software which merely > > displays the characters (and doesn't actually inform the user of > > the unicode names for the underlying code points), would there be > > any particular reason for the user to interpret some characters as > > algebraic variables and others as word forming characters in some > > unknown programming language (for some reason other than knowledge > > of the unicode code point numbers)? > > this is just nitpicking... unicode is full of characters having the > same glyphs how do you distinguish between LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, > CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A, GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA ? they look > the same in upright font, but if you select cursive font to view the > document, they will look differently. The same with mathematical > symbols... they might look the same with one font, but if you prefer > slanted font, you suddenly see a difference... (or vice versa). Exactly. Thanks, -- Raul