Formatting - bold characters as variables?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg111924] Formatting - bold characters as variables?
- From: telefunkenvf14 <rgorka at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:20:58 -0400 (EDT)
Group: What follows is a suggestion. Maybe someone can explain a way to implement it in v7. Otherwise, consider it an idea for future versions of Mathematica. In economics, we commonly use subscripted variables to refer to, say, the ith individual or jth firm, etc. (BTW, wish it was easier to use subscripted variables, but thats not the main issue I want to address.) To minimize notational clutter, it's common to then use *bold* fonts to indicate vectors of these variables---this is what I'd like to be able to do in Mathematica. Based on my current understanding, this may NOT be very straightforward to implement... As we all know, the front end displays code in bold by default. But (of course) these bolded characters aren't represented as fundamentally different raw characters, which means a bold variable is the same to Mathematica as its unbolded counterpart. Would it be feasible to define a new, expanded character set that includes bolded character codes? Assuming the default display options are in effect, the front end would then need to double-bold their appearance. (don't know if there is such a term as 'double bold', but you get the idea) -RG PS -- I know I'll get suggestions to use the double-struck or fancy scripted characters. While useful at times, I find that referring to different characters makes lecture notes, etc., more of a pain to write-up and less clear (when trying to explain results from a textbook). IMO, *bold* is just easier.