User talk:Jakob.scholbach/Archives/2007/May

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Mathematics markup

Greetings, and welcome to Wikipedia.

You asked a question about a subtle point of wiki markup. Looking over projective space, I thought I should explain a less subtle point. In wiki syntax, bracketing something with two single-quotation marks on either side, as in

''text''
→
text

means to italicize the material inside, nothing more. In particular, it has nothing to do with indicating mathematics. The <math> tags do indicate a pseudo-TeX format, but we discourage their use in-line at the moment. (In future, the clash of formats may subside.) Another in-line convention is to use simple bold for "blackboard bold"; thus in-line:

A sentence in running text says '''R''' is the [[reals]].
→
A sentence in running text says Q denotes the rationals.

versus displayed formula.

<math>\forall q \in \mathbb{Q}, q^2 \ge 0 . \,\!</math>
→
\forall q \in \mathbb{Q}, q^2 \ge 0 . \,\!

An explanation of that mysterious "\,\!" at the end, and much other guidance, can be found at Help:Formula. Ask Fropuff if you need help with commutative diagrams, and see Wikipedia:How to create graphs for Wikipedia articles if you want to make your own graphs (otherwise, visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Graphics). More generally, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Editor resources. Not all of the guidance is current and correct, but you'll find a great deal of helpful information there.

I keep a personal page of mathematics characters which you may wish to use for two purposes: to check your browser and font settings to be sure you can see most of them, and to copy ones you want to use in an article. --KSmrqT 19:22, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. Thanks also for this symbol page, which is probably my mostly frequented Wikipedia page. I think I know mostly how to get a reasonably looking formatting. I agree that (for example) parentheses should not be italicized, but sometimes I may not pay enough attention to these minute details. In real LateX-typed papers, I also tend to use non-italic style for mathematical entities which are not considered to be a variable, such as the "H" for a cohomology group. But as far as I see, there are much more obvious and sometimes annoying differences in editors formatting ideas than these ones.
Another point is that the typing experience, at least for me personally, is really odd. I wish there would be a real WYSIWYG-type editor, with spell-checker, easy formatting, easy pasting of symbols etc. etc. (Currently I use WikEd, but it is only half of a solution).Jakob.scholbach 19:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
A common misuse of TeX is when we see
sin(x) \,\!
instead of
\sin(x) , \,\!
and similarly for multiletter names which are not predefined. Depending on exactly what's needed, solutions include \text{foo}, \mathrm{foo}, and \operatorname{foo}.
\operatorname{H}_{\mathrm{dR}}^k(M) \cong \operatorname{H}^k(M;\R) \qquad \text{de Rham and singular cohomology}
Mathematics has long been considered "penalty copy" among typesetters. I doubt non-mathematics editors realize just how much of a pain it is with the jumble of styles and lack of tools we must confront. Which means it will be slow to change. Ironically, we have a solution to the jumble already programmed, if only it would be adopted: blahtex. Ah well, Wikipedia is still young, as is the Web. --KSmrqT 21:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)