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From: golding@neon.Stanford.EDU (Andy Golding)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Followup: how to format -1.23e-4 ?
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.000445.15014@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 18 Jun 91 00:04:45 GMT
References: <1991Jun17.163146.19921@midway.uchicago.edu> <1991Jun17.173625.24274@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Ca , USA
Lines: 33



First I wrote:

> I was wondering what is the preferred way of formatting
> numbers in exponential notation, e.g., -1.23e-4

Then I wrote:

> ... the most esthetically pleasing choice is
>
>	$-1.23 \times 10^{-4}$
>
> implemented by:
>
>	\newcommand\expnum[2]{\mbox{$#1 \times 10^{#2}$}}
>	\expnum{-1.23}{-4}
>
> The only drawback is readability of the source file --
> it's awkward having \expnum macros sprinkled in it --
> but I can certainly live with that.

Now I write:

The readability is easily fixed in Plain TeX with:

	\def\enum#1{\enumparse#1!}
	\def\enumparse#1e#2!{\mbox{$#1 \times 10^{#2}$}}
	\enum{-1.23e-4}

Now I am truly happy.  Thanks to Raymond Chen for this fine solution.

Andy