It can be handled at a different level; when one types 3:5 in a Unicode-complient TeX engine, what gets output to the output file is the ratio not the colon, and colon gets output with 3\colon{}5.
Regards, Khaled On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 06:00:24PM -0700, Mark Davis ☕ wrote: > That is, they may be spaced differently (depending on the font and > environment). > > I'm not against pointing to RATIO for specific math contexts, but to tell Joe > Smith that he should be using a different character to say that "the ratio of > gravel to sand should be 3:1" is artificial and pointless. > > ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ > Mark > > — Il meglio è l’inimico del bene — > > > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Khaled Hosny <khaledho...@eglug.org> wrote: > > They are spaced differently. Attached how they are rendered by TeX, > using its default spacing rules, the first is the ratio (which is spaced > as a relational symbol) and the second is the colon (which is spaced as > punctuation mark), both in math mode, and the last one is the colon in > text mode. > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 04:22:06PM -0700, Mark Davis ☕ wrote: > > I would disagree about the preference for ratio; I think it is a > historical > > accident in Unicode. > > > > What people use and have used for ratio is simply a colon. One writes > 3:5, and > > I doubt that there was a well-established visual difference that > demanded > a > > separate code for it, so someone would need to write 3∶5 instead. > > > > Mark > > > > — Il meglio è l’inimico del bene — > > > > > > > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Asmus Freytag <asm...@ix.netcom.com> > wrote: > > > > U+2236 RATIO > > * Used in preference to 003A : to denote division or scale > > > > > >