h a l f b a k e r yThis is what happens when one confuses "random" with "profound."
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First of all, i really, really like the layout of the HB. The frames, windowing, fancy crashy doobries and excessive use of Flash and Java in other places really annoys me and i love that this place is a haven of sanity among all that.
I also note that i am a lowly herbalist and philosophical counsellor
who know little or nothing of web design or anything else, and that i'm getting this all for free.
It's all good stuff.
However, one thing about the text on here does make me sad. People sometimes refer to chemical formulæ on here, and when they do they often end up typing something like "CO2" or "H2O2", neither of which look right.
If, however, users could use a <sub> tag, they would then be able to choose to use subscript numbers if they wanted.
Superscript is not so important because we can use a caret and that's a recognised way of showing raising to a power.
I also realise that since i never type Arabic numerals, this would make no difference to what i would do at all, and i also recognise the problem of creeping featurism, so not doing this might also be a good idea.
Just a thought.
[link]
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I think, you can squeeze in some non-standard text - but I'm not sure what's available - you can, for example put in °, ², ³, Œ etc - Maybe that's not so useful here (H²O - is that OK in superscript?) it would be good to know what else was possible glyph-wise - if anyone knows, I'd be happy to put up a webpage with a table of allowable symbols for copy/paste purposes. |
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Aha, so only the first 255 then. |
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if you're gonna do sub/superscripts you might as well do the whole shebang, full TeX or something, and that would be a pita. Personally I usually bleep over formulae anyways unless a result feels wrong. |
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[vvv] i'm guessing that's not what you meant to do |
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[FlyingToaster] ... was throwing the whole UTF-8 codeset at it to see what stuck. Results are in previous message† - note some of the latter ones are unexpected‡. |
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† The one higher up. ‡ such as the useful inclusion of ƒ and ¡ |
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//full TeX or something// - probably a better idea - just write LaTeX equation blocks and we can render them mentally. |
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I have no issue with mathematical stuff, because i'm used to seeing a circumflex/caret/whatever you want to call it before digits, and to something like "SQRT" instead of a square root sign, but does LaTeX do chemical formulæ? Presumably you use whatever you do for subscripts in maths. What about MathML? Is that pasée now?
I'd find superscripts for chemistry just as irritating as big digits, and there's ambiguity if you want to mark isotopes. |
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OK then, [ tex]C_{3}H_{3}N[\tex] . Is that the kind of thing you mean? Also, is it well-formed? I use LaTeX but not for chemistry. |
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Right, i'm now using Lynx. I've found that the ASCII stuff goes wonky at the end and that there are weird characters. I was initially doing the Lynx thing to make a point, but it's just occurred to me that subscripts wouldn't work on this browser anyway.
Back to Firefox. I dunno, i like the images we have, but i don't know if i'd want any more. |
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I can only imagine [jutta]'s secret horror.... |
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//small grayscale images// That's how the tex/mathml rendering in Wikipedia works {such things would not be necessary if browsers didn't suck}. |
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I mean, sometimes I think I'd like italics and bold, but
these are style things (except for generic and specific
names, like Homo sapiens). |
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However, super- and sub-scripts are a formal requirement
in many contexts, and so I think there's a justification for
having them - the language is incomplete without them. I
can live without them, but I think they would be good
(rather than nice). |
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I don't even know what this is about. |
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[19thly] is suggesting accomodation be made for writing subscripts so chemical formulae look right. |
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"TeX" is a popular, pervasive typesetting program, "LaTeX" is the add-on to it which lets you do all sorts of math formula symbols and positioning which makes it look professional like you'd find in a math textbook or paper (mostly because it's the program that's most commonly used to produce said books and papers)... so far nobody's mentioned the in-place bleedin' obvious step of doing it yourself and <link>ing an image. :) ... back to you Dave with the Sports. |
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Well, you could link an image, but if you're just typing, say, the empirical formula for carbon dioxide as a form of shorthand, that would rather defeat the object. |
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If you got used to 2^2 = 4, maybe you can get used to Hv2O = Water? |
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Because it's more open to misinterpretation. When i see a "v", i think of it as a Boolean and/or, and there's a risk of confusing O with zero. To a lesser extent, there's the ambiguity of isotope number and number of atoms. Also, i've had time to get used to the superscript replacement, but not the subscript. I can't think of an elegant solution.
I suspect that one reason is that there isn't enough space between the lines and possibly the resolution of the font is too low at this side. |
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I'm sure that would be very funny if i understood it. Web Tools Platform? |
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wtp = "what's the problem." It would've upset the brevity of the post if I had explained it right there. |
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IIRC, when i read wtp i thought wtf? |
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It's a slightly elegant solution. |
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Offhand, this is what i originally thought:
H<sub>2</sub>O.
I would of course call it dihydrogen monoxide. |
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Thankyou [vince³]. I have pasted that text block into my user page so I will always have it handy. It's also nice to know that "œB" is a legal formation |
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[zentom] // (H²O - is that OK in superscript?) //
No - that would be deuterium - the H isotope with two neutrons. And an impossible molecule - with a single H, there's an electron astray somewhere |
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