What I would like is a set of characters and a font that I could use to enter
immediately readable math formulae into my text editor, so that I can take
quick notes at a conference, or whenever.
I can already do it, to some extent, for instance, this is the summation
equation from page 5 in the pdf above:
ₙ ⎛n⎞
(a + b)ⁿ = ∑ ⎜ ⎟ aᵏbⁿ⁻ᵏ
ᵏ⁼⁰ ⎝k⎠
But, the scale is off (the summation is too small) and the characters are a
mix of sub- and super-scripts and modifiers (in other cases, diacriticals),
and multiple characters in the case of the long parentheses. I have to go
hunting each of those characters down every time I want to use them, because
I'm never sure exactly what characters are available. And even when I do, I
still have to look them up most of the time, because of course I can't
remember the unicode number for Modifier Letter Small k off the top of my head
every time I need it (although by now I've learned the ones for
super/subscript i and n by heart, mostly)
Worse, there is basically only one free monospaced font that will display
all of those characters (DejaVu Sans Mono) and even that doesn't cover all the
symbols I might want to use. For instance, I use the "entails" symbol a lot
and that renders as a ⊨ in DejaVu Sans Mono, so I have to put it togehter with
what I got: |= or \= for the negative.
Each of the methods discussed in the pdf above (as far as I've read in it,
which is not too far) are far from ideal. They're all markups, so they all
require at least some mental rendering. Why can't I have a script that lets me
write each special symbol as one character, or at worse, a few of them like
for the large parens, above?
____________________
Edit: And you'll need to set your broswer's font to a monospaced font to see the equation above properly :/
I can already do it, to some extent, for instance, this is the summation equation from page 5 in the pdf above:
But, the scale is off (the summation is too small) and the characters are a mix of sub- and super-scripts and modifiers (in other cases, diacriticals), and multiple characters in the case of the long parentheses. I have to go hunting each of those characters down every time I want to use them, because I'm never sure exactly what characters are available. And even when I do, I still have to look them up most of the time, because of course I can't remember the unicode number for Modifier Letter Small k off the top of my head every time I need it (although by now I've learned the ones for super/subscript i and n by heart, mostly)Worse, there is basically only one free monospaced font that will display all of those characters (DejaVu Sans Mono) and even that doesn't cover all the symbols I might want to use. For instance, I use the "entails" symbol a lot and that renders as a ⊨ in DejaVu Sans Mono, so I have to put it togehter with what I got: |= or \= for the negative.
Each of the methods discussed in the pdf above (as far as I've read in it, which is not too far) are far from ideal. They're all markups, so they all require at least some mental rendering. Why can't I have a script that lets me write each special symbol as one character, or at worse, a few of them like for the large parens, above?
____________________
Edit: And you'll need to set your broswer's font to a monospaced font to see the equation above properly :/