h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please post your ideas for on Guide mathematical notation below. The notation should work well for both the edited Guide and for forums. It should be quick to type and easy to read with minimum of training (we want to encourage mathematicians after all ).

I favour a modified TeX. Any thoughts?

Why not use BASIC or FORTAN keywords? Or is that what TeX is?

I can see you would want some fresh ones for operators that are not part of these languages, but one could construct them around a BASIC-like structure, eg

DERIV(y,x) or INT(F, LOWER, UPPER).

Hope this helps.

I'm not so sure.

TeX uses a style as follows; /frac{dy}{dx} = 2x^{y+1}

It splits the code into more human mind orientated groupings. I was hoping to make this even more logical and the BASIC system is quite cumbersome.

Format the following TeX into BASIC: /integral sec^{2} x dx = tan x + C

Pseudo BASIC could read:
INT((SEC(X)^2),X,0,X))=TAN(X)+C
where 1st argument is the function (option to convert to actual BASIC keywords where available, ie (COS(X))^(-2)),
2nd argument is what it's being integrated with respect to
3rd is lower limit of integration
4th is upper limit

Obviously a lot longer than yours but I don't think you could write a compiler to unambiguously interpret your code. On the other hand that's not the point here is it? You presumably expect your readers to use their nous and intuition much as if one were speaking the line. If that were really the case though, why bother putting the exponent in brackets?

What's that funny symbol to the left of the operators. It looks a bit like an integral sign. You can probably tell I've no idea what TeX is.

/ is the TeX (and laTeX, and Postscript) escape symbol. It denotes macros or internal TeX functions. TeX itself is a scientific typesetting system designed to be compiled into device independent page images (DVIs) by a TeX compiler.

It is all machine read... and explicit. The entire system is unambiguous.

Question is, it is still rather cumbersome at times. How do we improve it to make it easy for a beginner to pick up and yet not so far from conventional laTeX to make the code inconvertable.

Umm... one possibility would be to drop the '\' -- it would make the code slightly more readable... (though not _machine_-readable necessarily)...

Otherwise, just plain pseudo-TeX (i.e. TeX / LaTeX without the cumbersome headers and footers) is pretty much _THE_ standard elsewhere on the net... I'm in favour of it!

// Mikael Johansson

I thought I had already replied to this thread and shared my opinion, but then I remembered that I didn't have time to post my (rather lengthy) reply before the computer I was writing it on crashed.
Oh well, I'll write something shorter now...can't be bothered to try to remember the whole thing.

My opinion is the following: LaTeX inline-math ($expression$) and, where needed, displaymath ($$longer, often multiline, expression$$). No modifications. Why? Because it is, as Exile pointed out, _THE_ standard. We might face a problem when rendering the images, however, as I believe approved GuideML has no support for inline GIFs. This might be something to take up with the Editors.
It's really a huge shame (for more than one reason) that Eric Weissman's MathWorld has been taken down (due to his publishers suing him for copyright infringement on his own work), or else that could have served as a brilliant example.

Those who aren't all that handy with LaTeX can always ask for help from those of us who are. Maybe we could even write an entry on basic LaTeX commands? But on the other hand, that'd be rather redundant, as the Not-so-short Introduction to LaTeX 2e is a great document.

Oh, and I really feel the need to be picky right now (please forgive me =): The expression
/integral sec^{2} x dx = tan x + C
should've read
\int\sec^{2} x dx = \tan x + C
The {}'s around the 2 (and some of the whitespaces) are actually not necessary, but it's a good custom to use them anyway (though I must admit I dont't). Further, some people prefer an upright "dx" to the default italic font used in mathematical expressions, ie place dx within a \mathrm{}.

Why not lobby H2G2 Towers for some Maths based smilies ? (if you see what I mean ?)(if you don't then what I mean is math symbols that work the same way smilies do)

I shall put up a page with the system I think should be used for now and will drop a link on the MI home.

I think the symbol font works well enough for the mathematical symbols (and it is the standard according to W3C) so that is probably how it will go.

The system I propose requires the writer to run each TeX equation expression through TtH (TeX to HTML) on the TtH live demo site. The output is as a table that should be included in the article at the appropriate point with the TeX version underneath for the editors.

That way we will be able to read the expressions smoothly, write them smoothly and edite them smoothly.

Any thoughts?

I belive you are talking about using the MathML standard (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-MathML/) - be carful as I belive support or this is patchy in browsers at the moment and will stay that way until version 6 browsers are available.

MathML is to be implememented as part of XHTML. The W3C released a standard for mathematical formatting inside HTML4 documents. That is what I am referring to.

That the thing, as I said be warned - implementation in browsers is patchy at the moment as far as i understand.

The final link on the MI home notation section is the demonstration. Some of the aligning is slightly off but at least it fits in with the rest of the text formatting and size even if overriden by the browser.

I will say that LaTeX will be a good solution, it's also the standard at many educations facilities. Tek is also good because it's the result (the finish look) that counts (in my opinion).

Please go & read & comment over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F80650?thread=155526&skip=0&show=20 on the future of maths support in the guide.