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Re: Suggestions on how to use standard engineering symbols

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg104118] Re: Suggestions on how to use standard engineering symbols
• From: "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma at 12000.org>
• Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:50:42 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200910180922.FAA16997@smc.vnet.net> <hbhhgg$21d$1@smc.vnet.net>

Thanks for everyone for their input. I received interesting ones here and in 
email, so thanks again for all.

I settled down on using, in Mathematica 7, the Palettes->Special Characters. 
In there I see many uppercase (and lowercase) letters that look almost 
exactly like the standard letters, but do not conflict with ones used by 
Mathematics such as E and I etc... For example I use now CapitalIota  for 
"I" and CapitalEpsilon for "E" etc..

The main advantage of this is that the input and output look the same, and 
easier to debug code this way. But I have to have the special character 
palettes open all the time, or learn how to enter these using short key 
sequences.

Actually, even for one upper case letters which is not yet reserved by 
Mathematica for its own use, I will start using the special characters. For 
example, engineers use "A" allot for the cross sectional area, and even 
though "A" is at this time is not used by Mathemetica, I thought it would be 
better to use the special character "A" instead. Who knows, may be someone 
in the future with a last name that starts with "A" will invent a famous 
constant and this will be called the "A" constant, and then Mathematica will 
start using in its future releases and this will cause a problem with my 
code then. I assume that Mathematica can reserve for its own use and word or 
letter which starts with Uppercase.

So, for all one letter variables (specially the Uppercase ones), I will use 
the special characters only from now on.

Problem solved.

thanks,
--Nasser 

• References:
  • Suggestions on how to use standard engineering symbols in Mathematica which conflict with Mathematica own symbols?
    • From: "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>