entity references, mathematical formulae

HTML 4.01 includes two mathematical entity references from within the 
ASCII character set the greater than and less than symbol, which must 
be escaped because of their use as tag delimiters. However, at  
present, there exists no entity references for the 'greater than or 
equal to' and the 'less than or equal to' entities. While their meaning 
can be constructed by a composite of the greater than (or less than) 
entities immediately followed by the equal sign (>=, <=) as is done in 
higher level scripting and programming languages, I find this 
problematic in that, well, it doesn't look right. Most Western fonts 
include these characters in their extended character set, along with 
several other important, non-text entities, such as the Union, 
Intersection, and Subset set notation entities, the Integral entity, 
and the Infinity entity.

Some simplistic suggestions:
<!ENTITY    gteq           --greater than or equal to     -->
<!ENTITY    lteq             --less than or equal to          -->
<!ENTITY    union         --union set notation               -->
<!ENTITY    intersect     --subset set notation            -->
<!ENTITY    subset        --subset set notation            -->
<!ENTITY    integral       --integration symbol            -->
<!ENTITY    infinity         --infinity symbol                    -->

I apologize if there already exists a discussion regarding this/these 
topic(s), but i was unable to locate any within the archives.

Received on Friday, 26 December 2003 06:36:53 UTC