I have a need to include the mathematical constant e, 2.71828..., the
base of the natural logarithms, in a book I'm writing. According to
the Unicode folks, they have no special character for this and none
is needed. I should just use the normal ASCII e. That's simple enough.
In typesetting a mathematical constant of this nature is normally
italicized so it's not just plain text. How should I represent this
in DocBook?
<inlineequation>e</inlineequation> is not valid because the
inlineequation element can't contain PCDATA.
The best I can figure is
<inlineequation>
<inlinemediaobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>e</phrase>
</textobject>
</inlinemediaobject>
</inlineequation>
which really seems excessively complicated. Going to MathML seems
even worse. Is this really the best I can do?
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/ |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ |
| Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ |
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