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Re: Binary Relations, draft 1



Thierry Bouche wrote --

> » On the Greek style fonts used in math, I figure they should come in four
> » different variations: Upright/italics and non-bold/bold.
> » 
> » The thing is that an empirical "standard" or general principle for
> » typesetting pure math seems to be this:
> »    Entities that are considered constant should be typeset upright.
> »    Entities that are considered variable should be typeset slanted/italics.
> » 
> 
> yes, absolutely yes.

No, but not absolutely (nothing is on this side of the channel).

> 
> Indeed, it is an injury caused by TeX that this usage has been lost. 

There is nothing wrong with this convention (indeed, it may be
excleent) but it is certainly not current in the UK, nor I belive in
the US.  I do not think that it ever was used in pure maths but I know
from personal experience that it was not something that was changed by
TeX in either the UK or the US for pure maths.

> BTW, these are more or less codified by an ISO standard about math
> notations (published in France by AFNOR, the upright for constants is
> explicit in the AFNOR version, i'm not sure about the ISO) -- whose
> reference i can't find right now.

If you want a useful (ie non-ISO:-) standard for pure maths in France
then, uniquely in the world, you have one!


chris