- From: William F. Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
- Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 18:04:58 -0400 (EDT)
- To: jsdevitt@radicalflow.com
- Cc: www-math@w3.org
> The capability seems to be present.
Yes. I was writing about using TeX-like author markup as close as
possible to tradition to create content-sound SGML suitable for
translation to MathML.
I had suggested that given (with simplified typing)
> > \declaremathsymbol{D}{operator}
> > \declaremathsymbol{y}{function}
the expression D^2 y would be adequate author markup.
You wrote:
> D^2 ( y ) could equally well mean D(y) * D(y)
While both of these two expressions are consistent with the types, the
second is more naturally indicated with (D y)^2, which requires parentheses
in order to distinguish it from D (y^2), while parentheses in the
expression D^2 (y) do not serve to distinguish it from D^2 y .
If a parser were to infer D(y)*D(y) from D^2 y , then wouldn't it be
via an earlier inference of (D y)^2 from D^2 y ? But doesn't
convention dictate that exponents bind more tightly than
juxtapositions? Aside from that one reaches (D y)^2 only after
reversing the order of '2' and 'y' in the parse. (The interpretation
D^(2y) is eliminated out by the TeX rule that a superscript of more
than two markup characters must be braced and also, without more
context, precluded by the types.)
-- Bill
Received on Wednesday, 12 April 2000 18:05:31 UTC