Hi,There have been some mails about punctuation spacing and a fix was added to the engine that related to that. As tests showed it to be okay so we made an update. It took a bit longer than normal because we were in the middle of some other math stuff: additional fonts and extensibles.
Daniel Flipo maintains a few math fonts (like concrete, xcharter, erewhon, kp, euler) and the last few weeks more extensive support for extensibles was added and concrete became quite nice too, so these fonts make a nice benchmark. As they are part of the lmtx install and we made sure to support them.
In the process we adapted our 2023 roadmap of which part is attached (we included an example end then decided to show of concrete).
When we go through the process of 'upgrading' we noticed some interesting names for symbols and 'constructs'. Quite some come from plain and/or amsmath (in the past taco and aditya did some porting to context) and we're not always sure if something is really used (or even what it was intended for) so if you notice something weird or missing, let us know. Examples are welcome too. It might also be that something can go away because it's obsolete or never needed (so far we could resist te kick-out-symbole-name temptation when it comes to symbol names that we think no sane user can remember or imagine to be there).
When often add extra tests to the test suite (math subsection). Hans & Mikaelps. Alan and I are still messing around with some cross referencing. That code is still experimental and can have issues that we're looking at but hard to nail down (huge complex cross-referencing documents). More about that later.
================================== We added the tex of the pdf below ====== extract from roadmap ====== \usemodule[article-basic,abbreviations-logos] \setupbodyfont[concrete] \starttext \startsubject[title=Math in \CONTEXT\ roadmap] \startitemize[n] \startitemAfter playing with math support for more than a year, we have come to the
conclusion that it is time to move on. We have already discarded italic
correction and now are replacing rules with extensibles. Much was
already in
place (and applied) but experiences with type one antykwas made us
review
some \OPENTYPE\ fonts. Not using rules makes some of them look
better. The
effect is subtle and probably not \AMS\ compliant, but we think
that it will
work out well for simple math like fractions of decimal numbers.
Consequently, we have added to our shrinking to-do list the burden to
investigate whether we can remove those obsolete code paths from
the engine.
After all, who needs italic correction, who prefers ugly rules to
beautiful
glyphs, and who understands all these font parameters? Furthermore,
after all
these years, we don't expect \OPENTYPE\ font and \UNICODE\ math
technologies
to improve much; we don't know if \MICROSOFT\ is developing their
technology
further at all. Therefore, we are confident that what we are doing
is the way
it should have been done when math was upgraded. Hopefully users
will notice
the improvements.
\stopitem
\startitem
Math also means physics and units (that topic was brought up
recently on the
list by Gavin). Therefore, because we're in cleanup mode, we decided to
eliminate some more. With \ISO\ now in place for a long time, we
are going to
ignore the existence of the inch as unit from now on. The unit will
probably
remain in the engine for nostalgic reasons, but it will no be
accepted in
MWE. Instead, we will provide some more modern, culturally correct,
kid-friendly units that we will use in examples, manuals and such.
Because
the four-person strong team dealing with this wants to avoid making
mistakes,
we will go through a careful and scientifically sound process of
calibration
first, using a selected tex savvy audience. We expect these new
units to be
stable a month from now. Believe it or not, in the process of
documenting all
this, we found a buglet in the new math dimension spacing, so it
has already
paid off. Expect to hear more in a month or so, and enjoy your
inches as long
as you still can. In case you wonder how this relates to math other
than
mentioned: the math subsystem has 'mu' as adaptive unit, and that
inspired is
to come up with one for text (in addition to two new more or less fixed
units).
\stopitem
\startitem
The math family model is a fundamental concept in \TEX\ but we
think we can
do without. First of all, \OPENTYPE\ math fonts have (design)
script and
scriptscript sizes built in, so for that we have one family.
Second, only
full bold (heavy) makes sense as companion for regular math which is
something that in practice we can support otherwise. So, this makes us
consider dropping families altogether which then provides (mem)
space for
even more classes or dictionaries. If we nevertheless decide to keep
families, we can certainly go with less than we have now, maybe two
(or four
if we want to be generous and also resemble original tex) of them
is enough.
We cannot imagine users wanting more. As a side note: completely
divorcing
families could make the math engine a bit leaner. It is hard to
explain and
users only care about the outcome. So more on this later.
\stopitem
\startitem
Another path to explore is to identify the few building blocks that are
needed for typesetting math, and then doing a bit more at the tex
end. Of
course that would nil quite some earlier effort, which is a bit
frustrating,
but still \unknown\ maybe the math engine can be reduced to a
fraction of
what is is now.
\stopitem
\startitem
When we look at the math fonts and some characters in there, we
sometimes
wonder what makes sense. For some, searching in e.g. arXiv brings
no hit.
Basically we have obsolete math symbols and currently used one.
That made us
think about ancient math versus modern math, just like there is
ancient greek
and modern greek. Because math is a script one can wonder about
obsolete math
dialects with symbols just like there are plenty deal scripts in
\UNICODE. We
already are working on dictionaries but another axis is useability.
\stopitem
\startitem
We no longer have the small / large extensible family model so we can
simplify delimiters in the engine. Not something users should worry
about.
\stopitem
\startitem
We're not sure why math is considered stable because everything moved
forward. Therefore we're preparing a bid for extra math symbols as
needed in
modern explorative and daring math thesis. When symbols are really
used, and
we have proof of that, it should be possible to get them un
\UNICODE, just
like all these emoji. We welcome input and as an example of
currently faked
symbols we added some to the distribution as easter eggs. One example:
Mikael got contacted by a stressed student working on a thesis on
probability. This student needed to typeset the characteristic
function of a
random variable \im {X} with density function \im {f_{X}}, and it was
insisted to use another notation than the (wide) hat, that was
already used
for something else. For this reason the \tex {widerandomhat} was
introduced,
\useMPlibrary[newmath]
\startformula
E[\ee^{\ii tX}] = \widerandomhat{f_{X}}(t)\mtp{,}
E[\ee^{\ii t(X_1+X_2)}] = \widerandomhat{f_{X_1} \ast
f_{X_2}}(t)\mtp{.}
\stopformula
Naturally, it is automatically scaled, just like the ordinary wide hat
\startformula
\widehat{a+b+c+d+e+f} \neq \widerandomhat{a+b+c+d+e+f}
\stopformula
Once the thesis is printed, we will contact the \UNICODE\ Consortium to
suggest that it gets a slot.
\stopitem
\startitem
Our most ambitious project is a reverse engineering one, which is
why it is
conducted at the engineering faculty of the Dnul university (we cannot
reveal the real name yet). In math articles one can find
visualizing like
$x\leftarrow x$ and there are plenty of \TEX\ commands that have
arrow or
hook in their names. If you look at the names of math symbols plenty
are kind of weird. We think it is not natural and are considering a
\quote
{natural language math input} project, where you tell what it is
and get the
symbols you expect. For that we need to analyze typeset math and
from the
context as well as visualization derive a dataset that we can feed
into a
machine learning subsystem that then can be used to turn input into
type. We
have several stages in mind spanning years but it can be fun. Think
of it
like \quote {untagged math} which then of course results in \quote
{untagged
pdf}, but better!
\stopitem
\stopitemize
Mikael & Hans
\stopsubject
\stoptext
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Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl
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