Mark Davis ☕, Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:35:10 -0700: > The main point is that asserting a general preference in an > annotation for ∶ to express a ratio, as Asmus had in his formulation, > is simply wrong and counterproductive. (We are not going to change > the world's usage from : to ∶ by fiat; and and the glyphic difference > is quite subtle, and missing in a great many fonts. Compare that with > the difference between hyphen-minus and minus, which is much more > pronounced, and much better carried across fonts.)
Roughly ASCII has become some sort of MarkDown. > The most that we could say is that in certain mathematical contexts ∶ > is preferred to : for expressing ratios, not that it is generally > preferred. > By the way, here's your list with visible characters instead of the U+'s. When I switch my mail program to use Times New Roman, then all variants are distinguishable, though the asterisks are a little hard to separate. > - HYPHEN-MINUS > − MINUS SIGN > > / SOLIDUS (Unicode 1.0 called it "SLASH") > ∕ DIVISION SLASH > > \ REVERSE SOLIDUS (Unicode 1.0 called it "BACKSLASH") > ∖ SET MINUS > > * ASTERISK // you had U+003A = : instead of *. > ∗ ASTERISK OPERATOR > > ◦ WHITE BULLET > ∘ RING OPERATOR > > • BULLET > ∙ BULLET OPERATOR > > | VERTICAL BAR > ∣ DIVIDES > > ‖ DOUBLE VERTICAL BAR > ∥ PARALLEL TO > > : COLON > ∶ RATIO > > ~ TILDE > ∼ TILDE OPERATOR > > · MIDDLE DOT > ⋅ DOT OPERATOR -- Leif H Silli
