# Re: Semantical writing (was: logical markup)

• To: math-font-discuss@cogs.susx.ac.uk
• Subject: Re: Semantical writing (was: logical markup)
• From: haberg@matematik.su.se (Hans Aberg)
• Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 18:59:07 +0200

At 17:16 97/05/05, Ulrik Vieth wrote:
>Hans Aberg:
>
>>   One can classify symbols according to different principles, according
>> rendering (looks), and according to semantics (meaning). One can combine
>> the two by ideas of "object oriented programming" (OOP), as follows:
>
>>   Set the catcode of "/" to letter. Then \Laplace is a mathematical
>> concept, so we could give it the command (say)
>>     \math/Laplace
>> and \Delta and \triangle are symbols, so we could give them names
>>     \symb/Delta
>>     \symb/triangle
>> Then we could have different renderings of the Laplace symbol, say for
>> mathematicians and physicists, so we could call those
>>     \math/Laplace/math
>>     \math/Laplace/phys
>> These could have default renderings, defined by say
>>     \let\math/Laplace/math=\symb/triangle
>>     \let\math/Laplace/phys=\symb/Delta
>>     \def\math/Laplace{\math/Laplace/math}
>
>Sure, you can do this.  But the problem is that there isn't such a
>clear distinction between "math" and "phys", but rather that each
>publisher of physics journals may have a different opinion as to which
>rules to follow.  Even worse, as long as there isn't a standardized
>interface for the concepts, most authors tend to refer directly to the
>symbols, which obviously makes it unnecessarily difficult to convert
>between the different publisher's conventions.
>
>Thus, in addition to developing a new font encding, it would seem like
>a worthwhile goal to develop a consistent markup syntax catering for
>the concepts needed in various fields, not only for the symbols.
>Perhaps we need something along the lines of
>
>  \usepackage[itgreekcaps,boldvec,sanstens,triangleLaplace,...]{physmath}

Actually, by the stuff I indicated (fully developed), one gets a sequence
of substructures, and a user can specialize by going in and alter a
suitable substructure. (Which could just be altering just one glyph, or set
the tensors package to physics style, and then alter some substructures of
that back to the math style, and so on.)

Hans Aberg