[texhax] Math notation

[Lars Madsen]

E. Krishnan :

> On Tue, 9 May 2006, Lars Madsen wrote:
>
>> From my knowlage it is mostly in physics those ISO specifications are
>> widely used. To a mathematician (I have a degree in math) it just looks
>> unnatural.
>
> Sure it does, since we've been seeing the whole "dx" in italics for all
> these years. But from a strictly notational point of view, it is
> equivalent to the product of the variables "d" and "x". So, a striaght "d"
> and a slanted "x"  seems to be a more consistent notation, emphasizing the
> fact that "d" is an operator and "x" is a variable. Remains to be seen if
> this finds acceptance among mathematicians. In the history of mathematical
> symbols, we've quite a few instances of innovations losing out.
>

we had a discusion about it once, and came to the conclusion that the only 
reason for having 'd' upright was that then one could use d as the 
variable as well.


/daleif

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