@AlanMunn Is there any reason not to use unicode symbols ? Except that it is still experimental. I find it strange that most mathematicians aren't using it. Are is this only because it is so new ?

I mean using unicode symbols instead of macros. I feel like the code is staying much more clean and readable like this.

@KasperPeulen I'm not the best person to ask about this, not being a mathematician. My impression, though, is that for people who have been using TeX for many years, it's almost as readable as the math itself, and they are very used to entering the markup. And I think that given the broad range of symbols and constructs needed, many find inputting the math directly to be more cumbersome. I encounter a similar issue when I type phonetic symbols.

On the one hand, entering the unicode symbols directly makes for readable code, but on the other hand, inputting them is much slower than typing markup for them. Since I don't use phonetics much in my work, I tend to type the characters, but if I was using it a lot, I don't know what I would do.

This question hints at some of the problems.

@KasperPeulen Just barging in here ... I'm a mathematician and I've recently started using unicode. Partly as an experiment to see just how usable it is. I've been using unicode-math for a longer but until recently just using normal LaTeX mathematical macros, so \alpha for α and so forth.

The problem with using unicode directly is simply how to input all those symbols. My keyboard is fairly standard which means that it has far fewer keys than there are symbols in the unicode character set. So when writing α, I have to use more than one keypress to do so. There are a variety of methods I could use.

1. Drop down list from somewhere. Then I have to be continually switching between the keyboard and a mouse/trackpad. That interrupts the flow of typing (I touch-type).

2. Have "hot keys". But these are usually bound to meta keys (ctrl, meta, alt, and so forth). Actually typing a combination can involve quite convoluted key combinations, leading to RSI and similar complications (I have a severely modified keyboard to put the normal LaTeX symbols somewhere more sensible).

3. Have some input scheme whereby certain strings get automatically converted to unicode characters. So, for example, I could type α and it got changed to an α, or ᏾ and it got changed to whatever-that-was. But here to be useful it needs to be a system where I can easily find out what the correct input is for a particular character. I use a lot of different characters and remembering the right input for each would be difficult if they weren't mnemonic in some fashion.

So α would be okay, but ᏾ wouldn't.

This last is what I do, except that as I've years of experience of typing LaTeX macros and zilch of typing HTML entities, I use the LaTeX macro name as the code for the unicode character. So in my editor (which happens to be emacs), when I type \alpha then it gets converted to α.

The irony is that for some of these symbols, TeX converts them back to their macro before processing them!

So in terms of actually writing my document, there is no gain at all from using unicode (in fact, there's a slight detriment). In terms of reading the source code then there is gain. Quite apart from the mathematics, things like Fr\'echet look right (and spell-check correctly).

@AndrewStacey I wouldn't go for continually switching between keyboard and mouse/trackpad as well, but why don't you go for shorter strings that get automatically converted to characters ? I've never really used the macros of Latex, so I just go for the things as short as possible. I use some of those hotstrings (autohotkey file):

They are not really ordered systematically, I just put in new symbols everytime I use them in Latex

etc.

@KasperPeulen You've answered your own question: "I've never really used the macros of Latex", whereas I - on the other hand - have used them a lot so the LaTeX macro for a symbol is deeply ingrained in my head and learning any other system would be painful. Moreover, I hinted that my keyboard is set up for LaTeX, so let's take one of your hot-keys and count keystrokes.

Let's take the one for alpha. You have: ::a?. To type that on my system, I need to do shift+; shift+; a shift+/. With my adapted keyboard, I type: ; a l p h a (the ; is mapped to the backslash). So in yours, I do four keystrokes but three of them are shift+keystroke and I'd rate that worth at least two keystrokes if not more. In mine, six keystrokes.

no you only have to type a?

@KasperPeulen So what if I literally want to type a??

if it is in a word, it won't go to α

so da? doesnt go to α but the letter α goes

So your "hot strings" have to be preceded by a non-word character.

not all of them, some I let always go to what I want, I don't think I'll ever write E?

and if want to write that, you can press downarrow before you press ? and the hotstring doesn't work

But I haven't work enough with it to say, what is most usefull for me. I think what is best depends on what you're typing on regular basis. But autohotkeys can be customized to personal taste.

I never write words in capital letters preceded with a question mark, so things like TASTE? that go to TAST∃ I'll never see.

Not sure I completely follow, but I don't think I need to know the intricacies of your system to know that it wouldn't suit me (which isn't to say that it isn't a good system, just that mine fits me better). What I like is: easy to remember and easy to type. So I prefer a system where it is the actual name that is used, thus \alpha instead of \a, and where it is a name not a symbol, thus \to not ->.

Regardless, these are features of editors not of LaTeX itself! Thus a good editor (aka Emacs) will let you configure it how you like. I could set up Emacs to use your system with no difficulty and then I could type a LaTeX document using your hotkeys (were I so inclined) and LaTeX would be none the wiser how I'd actually typed all those weird unicode symbols.

@AndrewStacey Yeah agree, but I like to have my hotstrings editor independent. With autohotkeys I can use those hotkeys in chrome,word,texworks,notepad or whatever editor I want. And I can install those hotkeys on every pc (even public pc's) in an instant.

So even I want to chat with you about ε and δ, I can do it right now ;)

@AndrewStacey Yeah I always used ->, on facebook chats with friends about math :P, so for me that much more natural than \to, but that's just personal preference

But this is more about how to type unicode symbols in an convenient way, than about latex. Having an math keyboard would also be a really cool solution.

@KasperPeulen Exactly - this is orthogonal to LaTeX.

(Oh, and ... to continue the game of oneupmanship ... I don't even need to install my shortcut keys. I have a web site that translates my shortcuts for me so all I need is an internet connection and my shortcuts are available to me.)

But to get back on topic. The point is that LaTeX can accept unicode input and you are free to use whatever method you like to generate it.

@AndrewStacey Maybe a bit off-topic, but I woud really like to know how this works.

@KasperPeulen To be honest, I was exaggerating ever so slightly. It only works on single substitutions, so it does \'e but not Fr\'echet - not that it wouldn't be hard to extend but I've never needed to do so. It's a simple PHP look-up. You can see it in action at math.ntnu.no/~stacey/code/latexToUTF/utf.php to get the code itself, go to math.ntnu.no/~stacey/code/latexToUTF