I've been using Unicode with FriCAS on http://axiom-wiki.newsynthesis.org for some time now and (much to my surprise) I actually REALY like it. It is surprising because of have often thought of Unicode support as essentially "cosmetic". But I find that even moderate selective use of Unicode symbols together with macros makes a lot of difference. Keying Unicode characters (or more often selecting them from a palette) is a bit of a pain but there are some nice tools on modern desktop and a few tricks help.
One trick I want to mention right away is unicodeIt http://www.svenkreiss.com/UnicodeIt This is a very easy way to get Unicode characters if you are already familar with the LaTeX equivalents. Just key the LaTeX names in something you are typing, e.g. \alpha and then when you are done, select the part of the text containing the symbols that you want in Unicode (or the whole thing) and hit a hot key like Ctrl+Alt+u to replace the LaTeX names with Unicode symbols. For example: from \vec{\apha} you get α⃗ etc. Are you reading this email in a email reader or web browser that supports Unicode? If so, pretty neat, eh? If not, too bad... I didn't even know there was such a Unicode character! ㋡ Already we can make pretty good use of Unicode symbols in FriCAS with just macros like: (1) -> macro Σ(x) == reduce(+,x)) Type: Void (1) ->Σ [1,2,3]] (1) 6 With Unicode it is possible to go way beyond the 8 letter upper case abbreviations assigned to FriCAS types. E.g. ℤ Integer ℂ Complex ℚ Fraction Integer etc. Many common functions also have associated symbols ℛ real ℑ imag etc. Anyway now that I decided I like it, I want to discuss what might be done to extend this beyond macros. I think there are some things that can and should be done now to support common symbols for FriCAS-specific syntax - especially when this involves symbols that FriCAS does not classify as "letters". E.g. → -> ↦ +-> ≠ ~= ≤ <= ≥ >= → => ⇒ ==> etc. Of course there might be several possible choice here. I guess what I am thinking is that if would be a good idea to standardize on a specific set of names for FriCAS. Unicode is huge and the options are many. Maybe also ← := etc. It wouldn't take long to write up a much larger list for discussion. One thing that amuses me is that when playing with this I recall all the "fun" I had learning and using APL. In retrospect maybe it wasn't so bad - just way before it's time ... Some of these are defiinitely cosmetic but another thing that surprised me was how much I was affected by such "cosmetics". I guess that saying is true that a large part of mathematics is finding the right notation. In mathematics and in other mathematics intensive subjects like theoretical physics there are a very large number of shared conventions when it comes to notation. One thing that definitely makes computer algebra seem a little "backward" to the novice user is the seeming necessity to "return to the stone ages" when doing some computation on a computer. I used to think it was enough that we could display results of calculations in reasonably nice mathematics using LaTeX (or other tools like TeXmacs etc. But entering FriCAS commands in a rich character set *does* make a difference. It's not that hard to over come the barriers that make inserting rich characters a bit of a pain. I think the gain makes it worth it. What do you think? Regards, Bill Page. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FriCAS - computer algebra system" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fricas-devel?hl=en.
