On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 07:31:54AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
Jan Hidders wrote:
Note that I was talking about math *expressions*
and not about simple
variable names! For simple variable names the required knowledge of LaTeX is
going to be near zero.
And are they going to know that if we tell them that $$ invokes LaTeX?
They'll know if we tell them to put $$ around variable names.
People don't read manuals, they first look in other articles how it is done
there.
I would even
argue that always using the TeX markup
makes things simpler there. An example in your notation:
.. let $$v<sub>1</sub>$$, ...,
$$v<sub>n</sub>$$ be a finite list ..
There are many versions of "my notation" around, but this is none of them.
This is how the mark-up you suggested could be used. Perhaps it is not how you
would like it to be used, but it's still your notatation. But whether you
want people to write $$x$$<sub>$$n$$</sub> or $$x<sub>n</sub>$$ is
not
really to the point anyway.
.. let
<var>v</var><sub>1</sub>, ...,
<var>v</var><sub><var>n</var></sub> be a finite
list ..
This is what I write now, and the HTML that we should produce.
Says who? I don't agree, even apart from the question whether we should
support <var> at all (<var> was not included in HTML to write mathematical
variables), but since it is not relevant for this discussion I'm
going to save that for later.
The question is, how do we tell people to write like
that?
We can't say "Put [$ and $] around math expressions.",
because it isn't that simple, and things won't come out right.
Yes we can, yes it is, and yes they will. As I already explained and Lee
also suggested we can analyze what is between the [$ and $] and check which
browser is looking and then decide what we are going to output. We could
even do a little experimenting and see what looks best.
We can't say "Put [$ and $] around a math
expression to call LaTeX.",
because it isn't that difficult, and people won't want to try it.
I assume "difficult" -> "simple"? For simple math you only need to
know
what [$ x_n $] does and maybe not even that if you don't use subscripts.
Do you want to write up all of the LaTeX that we use?
No, I don't intend to do that all by myself. :-) The request for LaTeX is an
old one and has been made several times. I know several people who write
mathematics in Wikipedia who cannot wait to get their hands on this. There's
no doubt that it will be used.
-- Jan Hidders