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Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Date:         Mon, 14 Apr 1997 12:18:11 +0200
From: Hans Aberg <haberg@MATEMATIK.SU.SE>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: math fonts, etc
Status: R

  [Frank Mittelbach assures that the proposal covers all the features I was
worried about.]

Frank Mittelbach wrote:

> > >well, restricted or not this is right now what a few million papers do
> > >use :-) anyway, if you look closely at the draft proposal (p33) then
> > >you see that MSP contains a full upper and lowercase script/cal
> > >alphabet
> >
> >   In fact, one can write mathematical manucripts using only a typewriter,
> > and in fact some very good mathematicians do (or did) just that. So what
> > people actually do use and get along with is not a good indicator for what
> > to include in a typesetting program of the future.
>
>have you overlooked the smiley? what's the saying: a million flies
>can't err?  all i was commenting on here is that it isn't as bad as in
>the days of typewriter and i think we can agree on that.

  My comment was not intended as polemics. As a matter of fact, several
mathematicians I know refuse to use LaTeX, because it cannot provide the
mathematical typesetting they think are needed. The situation improved with
the apperance of AMS-LaTeX, and I switched to using LaTeX when that got
better (less buggy) in 1993.

>if you read carefully you find MS1 (point 14 page 35) Alan's arrow
>construction set as a possible suggestion for inclusion

  If one reads this line carefully, it says

      For fun if there is place to spare:
    14. Alan's arrow construction set: ?

 Will this comment reassure the guy, who do not use LaTeX for the lack of
proper mathematical typesetting, and just need to quickly knock out a
mathematical manuscript with say a few classical commutative diagrams (whic
surely is not for fun)?

  No, I do not think so. The impression from this line is rather the
opposite. :-)

At 09:41 97-04-14, J%org Knappen, Mainz wrote:

>This is specially to Hans Aberg:
>
>Please look thru the archives of math-font-discuss *now*. It will prevent
>you from repeating old arguments and may enable you to contribute something
>really new -- I don't pretend to know everything, but hearing old
>discussions anew is quite boring.

  So, even if the math-font-discuss archives already knows-it-all, as far
as the discussions conducted here, how can we assure that the hitherto
disappointing LaTeX track-record in this area will not continue?

  Hans Aberg