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Date:         Mon, 5 May 1997 16:20:02 +0200
From: Matthias Clasen <mclasen@SUN2.MATHEMATIK.UNI-FREIBURG.DE>
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Subject:      Re: Semantical writing (was: logical markup)
Status: R

Hans Aberg writes:

[...]

>   The idea is to sort out the names into different boxes, or modules, so
> that they do not conflict. By the scheme, one can classify glyph renderings
> and symbol semantics independently, and then link them together as an
> independent step.
>

It is very clear that one can construct a macro layer over the actual
font encodings to enable semantic tagging (I always thought most people
would write their math in that way - at least I do).

My question was strictly on the font encoding issue wether a new math
font encoding standard should force font designers (always in the hope
that there will be people designing new math fonts in the future)
to design one glyph which is suitable as \setminus *and* as \backslash
or if they should have the freedom to design different glyphs for the
two different concepts.

But I think it is clear that there will always be an element of compromise
since there are infinitely many mathematical concepts which have to be
mapped onto finitely many available glyphs. A guiding principle might be
to provide two separate slots if the two concepts are likely to appear in
the same context, so that giving them different glyphs might help to ease
reading.

Matthias