From: Alan BRASLAU <alan.braslau@cea.fr>
To: Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>
Cc: ntg-context@ntg.nl
Subject: Re: strange output in math display mode
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2015 11:04:59 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20151223110459.7b457de5@cea.fr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <567AC336.5080004@wxs.nl>
On Wed, 23 Dec 2015 16:52:22 +0100
Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:
> > Of course, Donald Knuth disagrees with \frac from the point of view
> > of the aesthetics of the syntax.
>
> Are you sure he disagrees? For instance \frac {12} {34} is less code
> than { {12} \over {34} } and all over the texbook (and web code)
> shortcuts are used. Afaik his idea of TeX is that users should do
> what they like best.
The issue, which has been largely discussed elsewhere, is that what
Knuth had in mind is for the source code to be as readable as the
formatted result in some sense. I'm sure, Hans, that you agree with
this philosophy.
{12 \over 34} (no inner grouping should be necessary?) reads as we (or
a mathematician) would think, whereas \frac{12}{34} reads as a computer
programmer might think. This last construct is simply UGLY (maybe
"geeks" might disagree).
A computer program should have an elegant syntax, and the syntax should
not be dictated by the implementation but should be coherent with
itself. This is one of the attractions of lua as a language, for it is
quite elegant. Another choice of ours is MetaPost, which is quite
beautiful (much, much more than pgf/TiKz that it inspired), but perhaps
a bit too subtle and somewhat quirky for many users.
I believe that there is a certain lore around the amsmath/LaTeX
\frac{}{} that is not justified, nor should we really be promoting it.
If there is indeed some penalty in handling the primitives \over, etc.
in luatex, then this should eventually be fixed (but I do not believe,
nor do I know, that there is, in practice).
Alan
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prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-12-23 18:04 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-12-21 13:01 Jeong Dal
2015-12-21 13:14 ` Otared Kavian
2015-12-21 14:17 ` Wolfgang Schuster
2015-12-22 19:24 ` Alan BRASLAU
2015-12-22 22:30 ` Aditya Mahajan
2015-12-23 2:19 ` Alan BRASLAU
2015-12-23 9:17 ` Hans Hagen
2015-12-23 15:16 ` Wolfgang Schuster
2015-12-23 9:13 ` Hans Hagen
2015-12-23 15:52 ` Hans Hagen
2015-12-23 18:04 ` Alan BRASLAU [this message]
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