On 01/21/2018 02:27 PM, Frédéric Grosshans wrote:
Le 21/01/2018 à 07:15, David Melik via Unicode a écrit :
I don't know if this was discussed, but it'd help
scientists/mathematicians if all Greek and Hebrew were available as
superscript & subscript. Mathematicians use certain such letters in
standard notation of important expressions/formulae (superscript π in
Euler's Identity, subscript base π, superscript א in cardinality of
real numbers, etc.)... actually we use all Greek letters, and since a
few Hebrew (since 1800s) have standard mathematical meanings, more
are >>used for variables. After any such alphabets' letters are used,
the >>rest are considered normal/standard to use in standard script,
>>superscript, and subscript, for any educational usage, and future
>>standard notation.
Mathematics superscript and substript are supposed to be rich text,
not plain text. Furthermore, “completing the set of mathematical
superscripts” is an impossible task, since one would need double
superscripts for e^(-x²) and even more exotic combinations for stuff
as >common as e^x₁
On 01/22/2018 01:20 PM, Murray Sargent wrote:
Subscripts and superscripts are more complicated in mathematics than
in ordinary text in that they can be nested and can include arbitrary
operators, e.g., a superscripted superscript as in e^(-x^2).
Accordingly, encoding more Unicode subscripts and superscripts for
mathematics isn't general enough to be worthwhile and it can
complicate >math input methods. In plain text, one can use a linear
format such as >LaTeX or UnicodeMath. Ideally these formats can drive
math display >engines that display elegant mathematical typography with
arbitrary >combinations of subscripts, superscripts and other
mathematical >constructs.
‘The intended use was to allow chemical and algebra formulas to be
written without
markup’--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_superscripts.
Unless wrong, apart from disagreement, it's clear mathematics word
processing software is useful, but not a reason to not finish
almost-complete set of basic superscripts & subscripts
((super|sub)scripts) for relevant alphabets used (English, Greek,
perhaps Hebrew, latter two which were in my original post subject line,
but I likely accidentally used link I received to delete pre-moderated
post.) Before rich-text, people used plain-text centuries, still do,
such as plain-text files that may be about simpler topics, or
informal/notes, and Internet areas predating all websites, such as
standard (such as this non-HTML) email, NNTP/Usenet (still hundreds of
mathematics posts/day,) Internet Relay Chat (IRC, still dozens of
science & mathematics rooms, one math one with around 1000 people, busy
all the time) etc., but the latter at least has Unicode (none are
rich-text.)
This shows how much of English has superscripts, and which letter
doesn't: ᵃᵇᶜᵈᵉᶠᵍʰⁱʲᵏˡᵐⁿᵒᵖqʳˢᵗᵘᵛʷˣʸᶻ. However, there are simple
mathematics situations people use any/every letter, lowercase &
uppercase, superscript & subscript (not sure about ‘overscript.’)
It's up to each science/math fan, student, writer, instructor what
type of text they want (not just what you say is ‘supposed to be,’ ‘can
complicate.’) I never said
make Unicode like super-complicated stuff math formatting software...
only a small percentage of where people write math, which of course,
writing isn't just advanced books, but also simple & informal/notes, and
plain-text isn't just in text-editors, but also graphics editors.
If not clearer now, all I was requesting was adding/completing
Greek (super|sub)scripts, though had forgotten not all English ones
exist, so those too, and I was suggesting Hebrew (super|sub)scripts...
never mentioned supersuperscripts & subsubscripts, etc., which one of
you showed then argued against (doesn't refute what I actually said.)
I'm just talking about completing relevant alphabets for usage described
‘chemical and algebra formulas,’ which as I took algebra before high
school, wasn't seeing super-complicated stuff that may or not be in
college/university algebra texts, or are in derived fields with some
algebra-type formulae. I'm only talking about simple, one-level
(super|sub)scripts for largest variety of simple formulae, not
‘completing the set’ (in relation to all math) nor
(super|sub)(super|sub)scripts as in replies with mixed style.
The biggest problem for me is Euler's Formula & Identity, which
through high school math of analysis/calculus (and on through several
years to applied & abstract analysis) are usually considered the most
important & beautiful formula & identity in mathematics (the formula
modelling basis of all current physics, and the identity having the most
important numbers, symbols/operations in math.) It's easy to write his
formula plain-text, as below.
eⁱˣ=cos x+i sin x
Almost every day in my plain-text notes/to-do-list, I read these, and
