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Re: Forcing Mathematica to use standard fonts

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg111380] Re: Forcing Mathematica to use standard fonts
  • From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
  • Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:45:19 -0400 (EDT)
  • Organization: Stanford University
  • References: <i2ok7k$808$1@smc.vnet.net>

In article <i2ok7k$808$1 at smc.vnet.net>, John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com> 
wrote:

> 
> If you have embedded math, but still don't want to use the Mathematica fonts,
> you can use the "OperatorSubstitution" option, which I've mentioned a few 
> times
> before in this group:
> 
> Graphics[{Style[Text["The (quick+brown) fox == the lazy-dog", {0, 0}],
>    FontFamily -> "Times",
>    PrivateFontOptions -> {"OperatorSubstitution" -> False}]}]
> 
> In both cases, Mathematica fonts will still be used for things like Greek
> characters and special mathematical symbols, but they won't be used for 
> routine
> operators such as (){}[]#+==-*/, which I think is what you're mainly 
> interested
> in.
> 

John, 

A secondary but nonetheless significant part of your (very helpful) 
reply above is the parenthetical comment, "which I've mentioned before a 
few times in this group".

Try pretending that you're an ordinary or occasional user of Mathematica 
(i.e. not a Mathematica programmer by trade) who reads the above reply 
(or one of your earlier mentions); makes a mental note of it but fails 
to capture and file it; sometime later runs into the particular (and 
admittedly fairly minor) "gotcha" that the default behavior of 
OperatorSubstitution creates; and attempts to bring back this 
information.

OperatorSubstitution is a moderately arcane term in Mathematica's 
immense vocabulary, and easily forgotten; PrivateFontOptions even more 
so.  You can't search the Mathematica documentation for terms you can't 
remember -- and I believe those two terms are essentially unmentioned 
anywhere in the Mathematica documentation outside their own definitions. 

It could help a lot to add just some brief mentions or pointers to these 
terms in the definitions or tutorials for Style[],  Text[], various 
Font-related commands, Export[], and elsewhere.

It might even be argued that the default value of OperatorSubstitution 
ought to be False -- but I doubt that's likely at this point.

   --AES


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