On Wed, 4 May 2005, Raymond Toy wrote:
> o tex(x_1) => $$x\__1$$
>
> Is that what we want? Doesn't that get set as x_ with a subscript
> of 1?
Yes it does.
> o tex(x1) => $$x_1$$
>
> I think this is not what we want. At least not what I would want.
Unfortunately, maxima does this from t=-\infty. I dislike this behaviour
very much, because x[1] also produces $$x_1$$. But I didn't do radical
changes in the way tex behaves, according to my personal tastes; I only
tried to fix bugs. One of these bugs (reported in the bug database at
sourceforge) was
tex(x_1) => $$x__1$$
and this is an illegal TeX. So, I fixed it. $$x\__1$$ is the only thing
which is correct, and agrees with the long-standing tradition.
> o I think some of the greek letters are confused:
>
> tex(omega) => $$\\Omega$$
> tex(pi) => $$\\Pi$$
> tex(gamma) => $$\\Gamma$$
This is very strange, and should be corrected. Sorry, I haven't checked
this thoroughly enough.
There are several separate issues here.
1. Let's take omega. maxtex with my patch contains
(defprop $omega "\\omega" texword)
(defprop $Omega "\\Omega" texword)
I thought that the maxima variable omega corresponds to the lisp variable
$omega, and tex() will convert it into \omega; the maxima variable Omega
corresponds to the lisp variable $Omega, and tex() will convert it into
\Omega. Now I see (experimentally) that this is wrong: tex(omega) produces
\Omega. But why??? Does the maxima variable omega correspond to the lisp
variable $Omega??? What are the exact rules of this game? Experimentally,
tex(Omega) => $$Omega$$, so, the maxima variable Omega does not correspond
to the lisp variable $Omega. To what does it correspond???
2. gamma means Gamma-function in maxima.
tex(gamma(x)) => \Gamma(x)
and this is, I think, The Right Thing. Unfortunately. Unless we want to
rename the Gamma-function to be Gamma(x), and we probably don't want: this
would break a lot of code.
tex(%gamma) => \gamma
and this is also, I thing, The Right Thing. Unfortunately, this means that
a user who input the greek letter \gamma in the TeXmacs interface, gets
%gamma, the Euler constant. Not a very intuitive thing: somebody may want
to call his coefficients by just the greek letters \alpha, \beta, \gamma,
without thinking about the Euler constant.
3. Should tex(pi) produce \pi or not? In the pre-case-sensitive era, it
did. I don't like this behaviour, but I cannot decide to break this long
tradition without a wider discussion. By the way, inputting the greek
letter \pi in the TeXmacs interface always produces %pi, not pi.
> Also, Barton Willis has some comments about mactex, from 2002-08-19.
> We should look into that as well.
Where can I find them?
Many thanks for testing the code,
Andrey