[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: More on subscripts and superscripts



Fortunately in almost all countries math is written more or less the same
way. In Russian books you will never find Russian letters as math symbols,
neither in Chinese ones. Even elementary functions such as sin, cos, exp,
log, are written in Latin. In Greece we write sigma-upsilon-nu for cos,
eta-mu for sin, epsilon-fi for tan, lambda-omikron-gamma for log and so on,
of course in text type. So it would be nice if macros \sin, \cos, and so on
can be changed when the text language changes [this is rather work of the
twgmlc].

However, one country where things are quite different is Iraq: all math is
written in Arabic, except the big Sigma for the sum and the big Pi for
product. And guess what, the big Sigma is going right-to-left. I'm trying for
years now to convince Alaaddin Al-Dhahir to wite a paper on this... it must
be fascinating. In other Arab countries, in particular in Northern Africa
things are written like in Europe.

We shouldn't go too far in allowing extravagancies since after all, math
should be like music: the notation should be universal world-wide. Style can
differ (I like Breitkopf & Haertel better than Peters) but the core of the
notation should be the same.

Just in case something may be missing, I will make a call to arms on the
twgmlc list to see if there are any particular mathematical tidbits for their
languages/countries, missing in CM.

Cheers
Yannis