# [texhax] Math notation

Victor Ivrii vivrii at gmail.com
Thu May 11 12:38:30 CEST 2006

On 5/11/06, Philip G. Ratcliffe <philip.ratcliffe at uninsubria.it> wrote:
> > > I had not been aware that there is an ISO Standard.  Thanks for the
> > > hint.
> > >
> > > The \textrm{d}x notation is used in Germany for decades.  There are
> > > *very* few exceptions.  However I've *never* seen this notation in any
> > > book written in English.
>
> You don't read physics books then; I just picked up the first two on my disk
> and both use it.  The class file distributed by Elsevier for their journals
> and proceedings contains the following two lines:
>
>   \if at symbold\else\def\d{\,\mathrm{d}}\fi
>   \def\e{\mathop{\mathrm{e}}\nolimits}
>
> of course, that's probably not a good idea since it overwrites the LaTeX
> definition of \d (which is an "under dot").
>
> > > Lars, maybe it looks annatural for you because you are not accustomed
> > > to it (yet).  To me, the American notation looks unnatural.
> > >
> >
> > so it's acultural thing then
>
> Indeed (although I suppose you meant to type "a cultural" and not
> "acultural", which might have certain appeal, depending on the side of the
> Atlantic to which you belong ;-), the American Institute of Physics style
> manual seems to prefer an italic "d" and does explicitly mention italics for
> "e".
>
> > since it's not widely used here, I do not promote the notation in
> > my LaTeX
> > book.
>
> Cheers,  Phil
>
> P.S.  I personally always use the upright form for "d", "e" and "i" (except
> when American journals force me to do otherwise) and so avoid Michale Doob's
> wonderful little typographical problem.
>

I consider idea that \mathrm{d} could be used with d and also with
\mathsf{d} denoting different objects really wonderful solving
problems of insufficient number of the letters.
Also one can consider different fonts and colors. Actually then may be
a single letter d would be sufficient for all the mathematical
notations in the really big article :-)

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Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto