Message-Id: <9211111856.AA18694@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Wed, 11 Nov 92 13:48:13 EST
From: Michael Barr <barr@TRIPLES.MATH.MCGILL.CA>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re:  \lim, \max, etc
Status: R


> I was surprised to find recently that \max, \min, \lim, \limsup, etc
> are set in plain TeX and LaTeX without limits in text maths mode.
> Not having been on an analysis course for some years, I was unaware of
> this fact until now.
>
> Are there ANY mathematicians who would place {n\to\infty} as a
> SUBSCRIPT on \lim? I would be very surprised. Similarly for \max.
>
>
> Mike Piff

The answer is yes.  I checked three calculus books and two did it as
a subscript and the third put it under even when not displayed.  The
latter looks awful since it makes the line separation very large.
Of the two books who did it with subscripts, one I happen to know
was set in TeX and the second was printed in 1969!  I think Knuth
followed observable practice in this regard.  Obviously, a sample of
three is not significant, but it does suggest that there is a
reasonable presumption that Knuth got it right.

All three books tended to mostly display lim anyway.  That avoids
the problem.

Michael Barr