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From: dvjm@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (David Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex,mail.uktex
Subject: Font selection in AMSLaTeX 1.0
Message-ID: <7014@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Nov 90 14:48:55 GMT
Reply-To: dvjm@cs.glasgow.ac.uk ()
Organization: The Kidlington Continuum
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A gripe about AMSLaTeX 1.0;

	In the old days of TeX 2.95, one could use the
AMS symbols in LaTeX by merely including AMSsymbols.sty.
Now we have AMSLaTeX, and several problems;

	(1) There seems to be no way to use the ams fonts
easily without including amstex.sty. One certainly cannot
just include the new amssymbols.sty in a latex document.

	(2) AMSLaTeX, which we are forced to use if we 
want the symbols, has a really stupid notion of math
character selection build in, at least from the CS point
of view. In CS we have long variable names, not single
characters, so I don't want to type \bf{t}\bf{r}\bf{u}\bf{e}
instead of {\bf true}. Moreover, math italic is, as we
have already pointed out here, unsuitable for use with
long variable names. It would be nice to make mathitalic
*by default* textitalic. I don't want to have to say
\textitalic{blah} everytime. 

Any help much appreciated.


David Murphy,               | JANET: dvjm@uk.ac.glasgow.cs
Dept. of Computing Science, | UUCP:  ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.glasgow.cs!dvjm
University of Glasgow,      | ARPA:  dvjm%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND   | Little men with bits of lead are better
-- 
David Murphy,               | JANET: dvjm@uk.ac.glasgow.cs
Dept. of Computing Science, | UUCP:  ..!mcsun!ukc!uk.ac.glasgow.cs!dvjm
University of Glasgow,      | ARPA:  dvjm%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND   + Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows