<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">Peter Constable wrote:<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> Doug Ewell responded:<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> > an image of mathematical or engineering equations wouldn’t<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> > exactly be the best supporting evidence for encoding them in plain text.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> <o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> Not only would it not be the best supporting evidence, it wouldn’t be<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> considered supporting evidence _at all_ since math formula layout is not plain text.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">Says who? There is no law of nature (or of omputing) that says that math expressions<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">must be non-plain text. Just because all of neqn/eqn, (La)TeX, MathML, OMML, and indeed<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">UnicodeMath are representations of math expressions that are *not* plain text does not<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">mean that math expressions must be expressed by a higher level protocol. I.e. it could<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">very well be a text level protocol (where the ”math controls” are not expressed as</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">printable text, but as control codes).</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">Further, if some symbol/letter for some reason only ever occurred in superscript<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">position in math expressions, such examples would still be supporting evidence for<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">that symbol/letter. The closest practical example I can think of is the degree sign, which</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">in origin </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">is a superscript 0.</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">Asmus Freytag wrote:<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> I[n] mathematical typesetting what is superscripted is not the individual<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> letter, but the expression. In principle, the superscripted expression<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> is arbitrarily complex and thus the superscript is fully recursive.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">><o:p class=""> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> This is precisely the kind of situation where hardcoding anything is not<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">> helpful.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">I would go even further than that, and say that with very few exceptions,<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">characters that have a compatibility decomposition have no business in a<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">math expression.</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">In my little project "math anywhere" (ok, I just thought of that name, and no,<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">of course I cannot implement it everywhere) I'm proposing a plain text format for<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">math expressions. Plus a version that is compatible with HTML and SVG. And also a<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">version that one can be best described as a "mark-down" version that is (relatively)<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">easy to input via a keyboard; all equivalent in what can be expressed. </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">See </span><a href="https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/math-layout-controls-2023-A.pdf" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/math-layout-controls-2023-A.pdf</span></a><span lang="EN-GB" class="">.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">The plain text </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">format for math expressions can well represent math expressions in an</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">otherwise </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">plain </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">text context. Whether you want to see the math expression themselves</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">as plain text is </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">very much in the eye of the beholder. The HTML/SVG compatible version</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">does not </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">have "clay feet”. The price for that is that additional parsing is needed. Unusual</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">in </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">that that parsing must work on the DOM, but otherwise nothing strange and basically</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">the same parsing as for the ”plain text” version (where the parsing of course works</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">on the text). This (or these, considering the three variants) is also the only format for</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="">math </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">expression representation that can handle RTL math expressions reasonably.</span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">/Kent K</div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>