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Date:         Tue, 27 Feb 90 19:18:14 CET
Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@unido.bitnet>
Sender: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@unido.bitnet>
From: bbeeton <BNB@MATH.AMS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Suggestions from Utrecht (IV)
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
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X-UID: 36

frank and rainer have been doing more work on font selection, with
specific reqests from the math society to support an amstex substyle
of latex fed into the idea mill.  there's an article going into
tugboat 11#1 about this, and if frank and rainer want me to, i'll
be happy to forward it to the list.
i won't belabor the general matter, but would like to address the
matter of vector.  \vec is now assigned (in plain, i believe) to the
little arrow "accent" that is used in mathematics journals to denote
a vector.  the practice in physics is to use a boldface letter to
denote the same concept.  i suspect, but have no proof, that a
context in which boldface is used to denote vector will contain no
instances of the arrow accent.  (can anyone give a counterexample?
note that i did not say that boldface letters (used for other purposes)
and arrow accents would not appear in the same context; i think that
they may very well -- mathematicians are quite devious when it comes
to devising notation, and i don't suspect physicists of being any less
so.)  under the circumstances, what i suggest is a reasonable approach
is to have \vec redefined in the document-specific style file to produce
a boldface letter if that is the publisher's style, and an arrow
otherwise.  then the recommendation to authors to use \vec to denote
a vector (and let the style file decide) would have to be well publicized.
of course, since \vec is a plain command, then perhaps \Vec would be a
reasonable alternative.  i think that this is a case where the principles
of logical markup should be carried just a bit further than they are
usually.  also, this is a decision that almost has to be made by the
author, and not a keyboarder, even a skilled one, employed by the
publisher.  (a copyeditor with sufficient background in the field could
probably make the decision though; depends on the publisher's policy.)
note that systems like mathematica require that the meanings of variables
be clear for proper symbolic processing to take place; with the wider
adoption of such systems for symbolic manipulation, this sort of
thinking should become more natural to authors, and appearance of the
marks on the page should then be secondary, and more easily assigned a
particular publishing style at the design level.  i think it should
also be our goal here to encourage such thinking patterns, as opposed
to wysiwyg.  it may be more demanding, but you get a lot more from it.
                                                -- bb
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