Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!otc!metro!basser!elecvax!agsm!bobm
From: bobm@agsm.unsw.oz (Robert Marks)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: troff query: tilde and ~ in eqn with .tr ~
Message-ID: <563@agsm.unsw.oz>
Date: 8 Mar 88 14:24:18 GMT
Organization: Australian Graduate School of Management
Lines: 27
Summary: with .tr ~ we find that !x tilde! doesn't work

To get the diacritical tilde in troff's equation preprocessor eqn,
the correct call is !X tilde!, where ! is the eqn delimiter.
This results in something like
	~
	X
Now, the ~ symbol is used in the INPUT of equations as an unpaddable output
space (spaces themselves are internal delimiters), and users soon
become used to typing !X~Y!, say, when they want to keep X and Y
separate in the equation output. (The ^ symbol gives output spaces
half the width of those associated with ~ .)
	For the reason of the association of ~ with spaces in equations,
it seems natural to use .tr ~ to allow ~ to translate to an unpaddable
output space in ordinary, non-eqn text, tables, etc.
But we've found that, with .tr ~, the eqn tilde diacritical construct
!X tilde! doesn't produce the desired result:  the tilde seems to be
translated to a blank.
	Have others found a way around this?  Thanks,

Robert MARKS, Australian Graduate School of Management, University of
              New South Wales, PO Box 1, Kensington, NSW 2033, Australia.

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