From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/189 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Taco Hoekwater Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: sqrt Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 10:09:31 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time) Sender: owner-ntg-context@let.uu.nl Message-ID: <13866.62395.750000.399541@PC709> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035391057 21910 80.91.224.250 (23 Oct 2002 16:37:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 16:37:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Hans Hagen , NTG-CONTEXT Original-To: Tobias Burnus Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:189 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:189 >>>>> "TB" == Tobias Burnus writes: TB> Hi Hans, >> I've been giving this \sqrt some thinking. >> >> (1) I think \root ... \of ... is not that bad at all. It follows the >> flow of thinking. TB> It does. But {a \over b} does as well and we have also \fraction{a}{b} TB> defined in ConTeXt; moreover it is easier to remember \sqrt{x} and TB> \sqrt[3]{x} than TB> having \sqrt{x} and \root3\of x agree. >> (2) \sqrt is a plain tex macro, which we cannot simply redefine. TB> Agreed. agree. >> (3) Personally I always think of sqrt as being the root 2 of something, >> and therefore \sqrt[x]{} is (correct me if I'm wrong) a rather strange >> one. TB> {\root3\of{}} is but {\root3\of x} isn't that strange. TB> [I wrongly wrote \sqrt[n]{x} = \root x\of n in a privious mail, it's in TB> LaTeX of cause: \sqrt{x} = \sqrt{x} and \sqrt[n]{x} = {\root n\of x} A short explanation, in reply to something Hans wrote earlier: Taco, is there really no way to determine the local math style? No. And that is principally caused by \over, which is why it has to go away in a future version of NTS. For the sake of consistency, it makes sense to remove the other infix notations (like \root \of) as well. Consider this: $$ {a \over b} \over c$$ When TeX scans this (and expanding the macros along the way), it first sees an $a$, in displaystyle. Next it sees $\over$, which switches the $a$ to scriptstyle (at least). now it also finds and $b$ in scriptstyle, closes the subform and moves on. Yet another \over!. So *all* of the preceding material moves into scriptscriptstyle. This is why you can't get at the current math style: Knuth decided not to have unreliable information available to the macro programmer. >> On the other hand, I like the idea of a more verbose syntax. Maybe Taco >> has some ideas on this, especially when we look at math ML and the >> possibility to map tex on MML vise vera. TB> Agreed. But we should also look at AMSTeX/AMSLaTeX, but I'm sure Taco TB> will do so anyway. Of course. Greetings, Taco -- Taco Hoekwater taco.hoekwater@wkap.nl Kluwer Academic Publishers -- Pre Press -- Achterom 119, 3311 KB Dordrecht, The Netherlands tel. 31-78-6392550 ---------------------------------------------------------------------