Message-Id: <9311232315.AA23969@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Wed, 24 Nov 93 00:14:25 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>
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: changing math symbols
Status: R


> Subj:	RE: NFSS2: how do I change symbol position in the middle

hope you don't mind if i point out that this is:

> From:	VZDMZA::IN%"<@MVS.GSI.DE:LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>"  "Mailing list for the
>  LaTeX3 project"

it is not really the right list to ask how to hack NFSS2 :-)

to finish latex2e in the promised time schedule this is the last of
such messages i'm going to answer for a while.

> But, now, I would like to do the following:
> I want to switch between two math versions which do not have
> all symbols at the same location, that is, with different encodings.
> (maybe I should not do something like that, but it's not really
> the point here).

it is the point, nfss was specially designed to make use of standard
TeX features in a controlled way, thus if \foo is pointing to a symbol
it should work whenever you use it. the only safe way to do this is to
enforce the same encoding for all versions of a symbol font.

thus your virtual idea might be the best solution.

however the removal of all the DeclareMath... stuff is basically done
for saving (normally) unnecessarily used up macro space and only as a
second reason to guide the casual user not to misuse such features in
the middle of their documents since that can easily backfire.
However, i already thought of making such macros available to package
writers for special applications even after the document.

> I switch to the tt version of the `operators' and `letters'
> and I *try* to redefine the character location
> of a few symbols. And now I'm stuck because I cannot execute
> \DeclareMathSymbol out of the preamble.

for the moment you could help yourself by putting saved versions of
the necessary macros into a style file it shouln't be too difficult to
find out what macros are necessary.

frank