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[Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>]

Am Dienstag, 19. August 2003 17:05 schrieb David Allouche:
> Having such a long name in a symbol menu would be ugly. But then, it
> should indeed be visible. Maybe some icon meaning "invisible"... Any
> idea of a picture conveying the idea of something that is invisible
> but meaningful?

Something like a thin, dotted rectangle? Maybe even gray, as far as colors 
are 
possible?

> > Well - it is a dirty hack far from any sematic meaning of the bar-symbol.
> > Anyway, I have no idea what a cleaner solution might look like.
>
> That is an interesting topic of discussion...

The real question is:
* Should the size of an automatic right delimiter be dependant on its 
adjacent 
indices? Should this happen generally? Only for vertical bars? Or by some 
optional switch?
or:
* Should the substitution-operator be a postfix-big-operator, conceptually 
distinct from from a vertical-bar-right-delimiter big enough for indices and 
behaving similar to the prefix-big-operators?

I have the feeling the second is overkill that won't be correctly understood 
by most users.

The first, though, will probably only shift the problem to other cases that 
will suddenly look strange.

Therefore, I would suggest leaving it as it is for the moment and document 
the 
trick somewhere. (Is there a section "assorted bits'n'pieces"?...)

When it comes to semantics, the correct thing to do in the long run would be, 
to have opening and closing delimiter as parts of one entity containing 
everything in between. The menu would then not contain single delimiters at 
all, but a selection of common pairs (matching delimiters and pairs like 
"left-invisible-delimiter <-> right-bar-delimiter") and an additional option 
of custom-made-pairs. Typing a single opening delimiter would then 
automatically create a matched pair, which should be correct behaviour in 
99.9% of the cases. Of course, that's a major change - no idea whether it 
would be worth the hassle?

Ciao,
Nobbi

-- 
______________________Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>

    Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
    Institut für Theoretische Physik III
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