3 ms·

Unfortunately, typesetting the equations directly is often the wrong way. It might sometimes work for lecture notes, but when you develop your own scientific wo

Unfortunately, typesetting the equations directly is often the wrong way. It might sometimes work for lecture notes, but when you develop your own scientific work, your notation is often still fluid. In such a case it is sensible to express your mathematics with a domain-specific notation. Then you can later a) change your notation and b) understand your source code. As an example, instead of writing \(G = (V,E)\) directly you might want to write \(\graph{} = (\nodes{},\edges{})\)

JadeNB 7y ago
> In such a case it is sensible to express your mathematics with a domain-specific notation. > As an example, instead of writing \(G = (V,E)\) directly you might want to write \(\graph{} = (\nodes{},\edges{})\) This can be great for personal use, but it can be very bad for communicating with others; (a) you won't be able to write a paper with a co-author unless you agree on your domain-specific abbreviations in advance (and, if you think that's easy, then I say from experience that it isn't), and (b) most journals prefer a minimal number of custom commands, and some forbid custom commands entirely. Even if journals permit custom commands, the more you define, the more likely you are to conflict in some baroque way with their own style files. EDIT: Also, even if you do this only for personal use, it can be very hard to go back from it (just search for TSE questions on macro-expanders; there are plenty, but all of them that I know of assume some well formedness constraints that make sense to their authors but will almost inevitably conflict with one's own ad hoc conventions).
- Ar-Curunir 7y ago
  Eh? I use tons of macros in my papers with 5+ coauthors all the time; it's preferable to random per-person notation that is inconsistent over the paper. In fact it's the only way to scale a paper across tens of pages and over multiple people
- choeger 7y ago
  I must say I never had difficulties to get to a common notation. If all authors agree that such a thing matters, that is. If authors don't care much, they are sloppy anyways. I also can't tell much about the ways of journals as I mostly published for conferences that worked with PDFs from a style file.

JadeNB 7y ago

> In such a case it is sensible to express your mathematics with a domain-specific notation. > As an example, instead of writing \(G = (V,E)\) directly you might want to write \(\graph{} = (\nodes{},\edges{})\) This can be great for personal use, but it can be very bad for communicating with others; (a) you won't be able to write a paper with a co-author unless you agree on your domain-specific abbreviations in advance (and, if you think that's easy, then I say from experience that it isn't), and (b) most journals prefer a minimal number of custom commands, and some forbid custom commands entirely. Even if journals permit custom commands, the more you define, the more likely you are to conflict in some baroque way with their own style files. EDIT: Also, even if you do this only for personal use, it can be very hard to go back from it (just search for TSE questions on macro-expanders; there are plenty, but all of them that I know of assume some well formedness constraints that make sense to their authors but will almost inevitably conflict with one's own ad hoc conventions).

Ar-Curunir 7y ago
Eh? I use tons of macros in my papers with 5+ coauthors all the time; it's preferable to random per-person notation that is inconsistent over the paper. In fact it's the only way to scale a paper across tens of pages and over multiple people
choeger 7y ago
I must say I never had difficulties to get to a common notation. If all authors agree that such a thing matters, that is. If authors don't care much, they are sloppy anyways. I also can't tell much about the ways of journals as I mostly published for conferences that worked with PDFs from a style file.