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Re: BBB versus Fractur



BBB versus Fraktur

What a question... how can you compare completely different things? Blackboard
is needed for special sets of numbers: natural, rational, real, complex,
\Bbb P for projective spaces, \Bbb H for quaternions and \Bbb O for Cayley's
octaves. BTW have you thought of \Bbb digits? we absolutely need \Bbb 1 for
unitary matrices.

On the other hand, Fraktur is used for many many purposes. Algebraists use
it for ideals, differential topologistsfor foliations and and and. But these
notiations do not have the rigidity of the one of Blackboard letters.

So it really dependes on the branch. A book on rings may use Fraktur all of
the time and never Blackboard; a book on projective geometry only Blackboard.

Speaking of styles: I have a complaint with CMMI and I know many mathematicians
agree with me: the \Cal letters are not calligraphic enough. We need *real*
script characters (like the Flemish script font). Is there any room for that?
(I realize that we can't simply replace the \Cal characters by something else
but maybe we can leave 26 empty slots and a macro for this? as for the MF code,
I wuld gladly prepare it [it won't have too much metaness anyway] if you give
me let's say six months).

Yannis