Probably some people are wondering why they might consider β simpler than \beta in a plain text environment. Many editors have shortcuts for entering a wide ra

Probably some people are wondering why they might consider β simpler than \beta in a plain text environment. Many editors have shortcuts for entering a wide range of Unicode characters. For example with Vim digraphs[1], you can type β <C-k>b*. Then you get the benefit of reading the actual character, not the LaTeX command. [1] :help digraph