4 ms·

Most of this is good advice, but I don't see the \mathbbm vs. \mathbb distinction as anything other than subjective taste. Also, I use things like \newcomma

Most of this is good advice, but I don't see the \mathbbm vs. \mathbb distinction as anything other than subjective taste. Also, I use things like \newcommand{\abs}[1]{\left| #1 \right|} in the preamble. This way, I can use \abs{...} without any asterisks, and it automatically adjusts its size. In the 1% situations where I don't want it to adjust the size, I write the delimiters manually. Making maths look good in LaTeX is pretty well-understood these days; authors who don't are usually just being lazy. The big undocumented mess with LaTeX is making bibliographies work correctly. The "standard" bibtex workflow is broken in many ways, and I have never seen a tutorial on how to fix it. With bibliographies being such a minuscule part of a mathematical paper, I'm not surprised that no one cares, but the result is lots of references that are imprecise, missing important info or plain wrong.

enriquto 4y ago
Both mathbbm and mathbb are wrong for number sets. These fonts look like the blackboard hack that you use to simulate boldface using chalk. On a computer you don't have this problem and you can simply use mathbf (actual boldface).
- fanpu 4y ago
  Interesting explanation on how it developed historically. I've seen mathbf used in some books, but I guess old conventions are hard to change.
- generationP 4y ago
  It might have originated as a hack, but now it's a font in its own right. Why not use it? It's quite common to see \mathbb{R} used for the actual set of reals, while \mathbf{R} means a totally ordered field (i.e., an abstract object behaving somewhat like \mathbb{R}). The distinction is deliberate and the notation is good.
  - enriquto 4y ago
    > Why not use it? Better question: why use it, when you can use the real thing? Mathematicians concerned by typography universally use real boldface. For example: Terrence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth, Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and the famous journal "Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS" which is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography. They use real boldface for the number sets N, Z, Q, T, R, C. I've never seen a boldface R to mean a set different than the real numbers. Maybe this is some fringe custom in model theory, but in mainstream mathematics it has a clear and standard meaning. Can you point me to a paper where they use a boldface R with such a meaning (i.e., different than the reals). I'm sure that this usage would always be accompanied by a clarification to avoid any confusion.
    - generationP 4y ago
      Huh, it appears a lot less frequent than I thought. I had misremembered some \mathrm{R}'s as \mathbf{R}'s. That said, I still feel that I've seen every \mathbf letter used for something other than a standard number set somewhere. But probably not in the mainstream.
    - Skeime 4y ago
      True boldface has a much darker type color than blackboard bold, thus drawing your eyes to it. But usually, the occurrences of, say, the real numbers are not the most interesting or important part on the page and they thus don’t deserve that emphasis. (Also, admittedly, I like the look of these letters.)
    - danbruc 4y ago
      In his papers Terence Tao is inconsistent [1][2][3], maybe because of formatting requirements? But boy is real boldface ugly [3] and sticks out like some tomato ketchup on a white wedding dress. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf [2] https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-v167-n2-p03.pdf https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf
    - orlp 4y ago
- layer8 4y ago
  How about using the Unicode characters ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ, ℂ, etc.?
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  That would be going against the near-universal custom of using actual mathbb. They don't look like a hack to mathematicians because they are used everywhere and most people like them. Mathbf is rare and I don't recommend it.
ilayn 4y ago
Use `DeclarePairedDelimiter` from `mathtools`. The rule of TeX is that anything that is written in TeX is instantly old. Because people don't read what Knuth had in mind. TeX was the prototype not the production grade product. Still people refuse to get the message.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  Well, Knuth still writes all his stuff using "plain" TeX. For example, the source of the TeXbook and the METAFONTbook are both TeX, not LaTeX or whatnot. Granted, he did create TeX, so he's probably more comfortable with it.
  - ilayn 4y ago
    Pure TeXnicians are a thing. Besides, what do you expect him to use? it's his creation. The point is he created TeX for himself and expected others to supercede it with a proper implementation. Didn't happen though.
BrandonS113 4y ago
This is the first time I have seen such a complaint against bibtex. Yes bib files are finicky to write correctly, and bibtex can be a pain to use. But bibliographies are never "imprecise, missing important info or plain wrong." I've written 100s of pieces with latex+bibtex, papers, websites, reports, books. bibtex always makes citations and bib entries look like what I or the publisher need. If something is missing, then one is using the wrong style.
- generationP 4y ago
  I have seen very few fully correct bibliographies written with bibtex in the wild. Not everything wrong with bibtex is a bug; the big problem is that bibtex is not adapted to its modern usage. A non-comprehensive list of problems: 1. Does anyone run bibtex directly from the command line? No, it's an extra step and the syntax is hard to memorize (should it run on the tex or the bib, and with or without the extension?). Instead, everyone eventually uses some form of script that does "pdflatex; bibtex; pdflatex; pdflatex" or something like this. Nice and slick; unfortunately it means that all warnings get hidden from view. A common mistake (particularly when copypasting) is accidentally having two AUTHOR fields in a bibitem, which causes the second to be ignored. No way you'll notice until you look carefully at the bibliography or read the bibtex log. It doesn't help that many of the warnings are false alarms. 2. Writing bibitems is probably as painless as it could be, but still painful enough that most people have "wandering" bib files that move from project to project. Unfortunately, this creates lots of problems: 2A. A book gets a reedition, or an arXiv preprint gets updated. You just update the reference, right? Wrong, of course, because your old references now lead to the wrong pages, sections, theorems. 2B. There are bibliography styles that print DOI fields but not URLs. There are ones that print URLs but not DOIs. There are some that print both, which is redundant. With a wandering bib file, which ones do you cater to? No way to do right by them all. 2C. With grey literature, a URL is often necessary, but many bibliography styles don't print URLs. So you end up including it in a NOTE field, which of course gets it duplicated in those styles that do print URLs. 3. Too many foot-guns. 3A. Bibtex (or most styles) automatically removes capitalization in titles ("Generalizations of dyck words"). Why? Why??? Yes, you can fix it by putting the {C}apital letters in braces. But why should you? 3B. You cannot use the packages or macros from your tex file in your bib file, as it's a separate file. Of course... but that makes you wonder why it should be a separate file to begin with. 3C. Yes, you heard it right: no package, in particular no unicode support. 3D. Basically every bibtex tutorial tells you to not trust bibitem-generating services, even the most official ones (IEEE, ACM). But no one has the time to do this on their own, and it stands to reason that there should be a common source at least for everything that is published and indexed. We got ORCID and DOI; is this that much harder?
gnull 4y ago
\DeclarePairedDelimiter\abs{\lvert}{\rvert} Isn't this better than newcommand? This makes both \abs{x} and \abs*{x} valid.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
I use Zotero with the better bibtex addon. Works great. When I first started using zotero, I imported my existing bibtex library, so all my existing bibtex keys all worked. I use zotero as my library for everything and add bibtex keys to things I cite. https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/

enriquto 4y ago

Both mathbbm and mathbb are wrong for number sets. These fonts look like the blackboard hack that you use to simulate boldface using chalk. On a computer you don't have this problem and you can simply use mathbf (actual boldface).

fanpu 4y ago
Interesting explanation on how it developed historically. I've seen mathbf used in some books, but I guess old conventions are hard to change.
generationP 4y ago
It might have originated as a hack, but now it's a font in its own right. Why not use it? It's quite common to see \mathbb{R} used for the actual set of reals, while \mathbf{R} means a totally ordered field (i.e., an abstract object behaving somewhat like \mathbb{R}). The distinction is deliberate and the notation is good.
- enriquto 4y ago
  > Why not use it? Better question: why use it, when you can use the real thing? Mathematicians concerned by typography universally use real boldface. For example: Terrence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth, Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and the famous journal "Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS" which is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography. They use real boldface for the number sets N, Z, Q, T, R, C. I've never seen a boldface R to mean a set different than the real numbers. Maybe this is some fringe custom in model theory, but in mainstream mathematics it has a clear and standard meaning. Can you point me to a paper where they use a boldface R with such a meaning (i.e., different than the reals). I'm sure that this usage would always be accompanied by a clarification to avoid any confusion.
  - generationP 4y ago
    Huh, it appears a lot less frequent than I thought. I had misremembered some \mathrm{R}'s as \mathbf{R}'s. That said, I still feel that I've seen every \mathbf letter used for something other than a standard number set somewhere. But probably not in the mainstream.
  - Skeime 4y ago
    True boldface has a much darker type color than blackboard bold, thus drawing your eyes to it. But usually, the occurrences of, say, the real numbers are not the most interesting or important part on the page and they thus don’t deserve that emphasis. (Also, admittedly, I like the look of these letters.)
  - danbruc 4y ago
    In his papers Terence Tao is inconsistent [1][2][3], maybe because of formatting requirements? But boy is real boldface ugly [3] and sticks out like some tomato ketchup on a white wedding dress. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.07441.pdf [2] https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-v167-n2-p03.pdf https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0512114.pdf
  - orlp 4y ago
layer8 4y ago
How about using the Unicode characters ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ, ℂ, etc.?
vouaobrasil 4y ago
That would be going against the near-universal custom of using actual mathbb. They don't look like a hack to mathematicians because they are used everywhere and most people like them. Mathbf is rare and I don't recommend it.

ilayn 4y ago

Use `DeclarePairedDelimiter` from `mathtools`. The rule of TeX is that anything that is written in TeX is instantly old. Because people don't read what Knuth had in mind. TeX was the prototype not the production grade product. Still people refuse to get the message.

colejohnson66 4y ago
Well, Knuth still writes all his stuff using "plain" TeX. For example, the source of the TeXbook and the METAFONTbook are both TeX, not LaTeX or whatnot. Granted, he did create TeX, so he's probably more comfortable with it.
- ilayn 4y ago
  Pure TeXnicians are a thing. Besides, what do you expect him to use? it's his creation. The point is he created TeX for himself and expected others to supercede it with a proper implementation. Didn't happen though.

BrandonS113 4y ago

This is the first time I have seen such a complaint against bibtex. Yes bib files are finicky to write correctly, and bibtex can be a pain to use. But bibliographies are never "imprecise, missing important info or plain wrong." I've written 100s of pieces with latex+bibtex, papers, websites, reports, books. bibtex always makes citations and bib entries look like what I or the publisher need. If something is missing, then one is using the wrong style.

generationP 4y ago
I have seen very few fully correct bibliographies written with bibtex in the wild. Not everything wrong with bibtex is a bug; the big problem is that bibtex is not adapted to its modern usage. A non-comprehensive list of problems: 1. Does anyone run bibtex directly from the command line? No, it's an extra step and the syntax is hard to memorize (should it run on the tex or the bib, and with or without the extension?). Instead, everyone eventually uses some form of script that does "pdflatex; bibtex; pdflatex; pdflatex" or something like this. Nice and slick; unfortunately it means that all warnings get hidden from view. A common mistake (particularly when copypasting) is accidentally having two AUTHOR fields in a bibitem, which causes the second to be ignored. No way you'll notice until you look carefully at the bibliography or read the bibtex log. It doesn't help that many of the warnings are false alarms. 2. Writing bibitems is probably as painless as it could be, but still painful enough that most people have "wandering" bib files that move from project to project. Unfortunately, this creates lots of problems: 2A. A book gets a reedition, or an arXiv preprint gets updated. You just update the reference, right? Wrong, of course, because your old references now lead to the wrong pages, sections, theorems. 2B. There are bibliography styles that print DOI fields but not URLs. There are ones that print URLs but not DOIs. There are some that print both, which is redundant. With a wandering bib file, which ones do you cater to? No way to do right by them all. 2C. With grey literature, a URL is often necessary, but many bibliography styles don't print URLs. So you end up including it in a NOTE field, which of course gets it duplicated in those styles that do print URLs. 3. Too many foot-guns. 3A. Bibtex (or most styles) automatically removes capitalization in titles ("Generalizations of dyck words"). Why? Why??? Yes, you can fix it by putting the {C}apital letters in braces. But why should you? 3B. You cannot use the packages or macros from your tex file in your bib file, as it's a separate file. Of course... but that makes you wonder why it should be a separate file to begin with. 3C. Yes, you heard it right: no package, in particular no unicode support. 3D. Basically every bibtex tutorial tells you to not trust bibitem-generating services, even the most official ones (IEEE, ACM). But no one has the time to do this on their own, and it stands to reason that there should be a common source at least for everything that is published and indexed. We got ORCID and DOI; is this that much harder?

gnull 4y ago

\DeclarePairedDelimiter\abs{\lvert}{\rvert} Isn't this better than newcommand? This makes both \abs{x} and \abs*{x} valid.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

I use Zotero with the better bibtex addon. Works great. When I first started using zotero, I imported my existing bibtex library, so all my existing bibtex keys all worked. I use zotero as my library for everything and add bibtex keys to things I cite. https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/