A couple of eqn translation problems
RobertGoulding opened this issue · 5 comments
The first problem (and I don't know whether pandoc or texmath is at fault here). Minus signs in math expressions are translated into groff Unicode characters. So, the minimal file
$a - b$
when passed through pandoc -t ms comes out as
.LP
@a \[u2212] b@
instead of the correct eqn expression a-b. This makes a difference in spacing in the final output, because eqn does not recognize \[u2212] as a binary operator.
The other problem is with the TeX expression \cdots. The minimal file
a+b+\cdots
when processed gives:
.LP
@a + b + \[u22EF]@
And when this is passed through groff, using the standard fonts, the character \[u22EF] is not found and is left blank in the output. But GNU eqn has the operator cdots which can be used here. The correct eqn output should be
.LP
@a + b + cdots@
Thanks. These are easy to fix.
Might there be similar issues with plus or times?
What about e.g. - x where - is unary? Does that work too or should we use the unicode there?
I believe those should be fixed, too, as GNU eqn won't put the proper spacing in for the Unicode character code.
In actual fact, I don't see any difference between the way groff renders @ -c @ and @ \[u2212] c @. Is there some reason that it is better to keep the unicode character rather than the ascii hyphen (which eqn renders as a correct minus character anyway)?
Oh, and $a \times b$ in markdown correctly translates to the eqn @ a times b @, with all spacing correctly rendered. And markdown $a+b$ translates to @ a + b @, again correct. The only problem is with minus.
ok, great, thanks.