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Re: e 2.71828



Is this the point where some ignorant soul asks why there isn't a MathML 
way of correctly inserting a mathematical constant into DocBook documents? 
I believe MathML is at minimum a switch that can be turned on with the db 
distribution? Is correct?

thanks.                 ...edN

At 06:15 AM 09/04/2002 -0700, Zack Brown wrote:
>On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 10:33:00AM -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> > I have a need to include the mathematical constant e, 2.71828..., the
> > base of the natural logarithms, in a book I'm writing. According to
> > the Unicode folks, they have no special character for this and none
> > is needed. I should just use the normal ASCII e. That's simple enough.
> >
> > In typesetting a mathematical constant of this nature is normally
> > italicized so it's not just plain text. How should I represent this
> > in DocBook?
> >
> > <inlineequation>e</inlineequation> is not valid because the
> > inlineequation element can't contain PCDATA.
> >
> > The best I can figure is
> >
> > <inlineequation>
> >   <inlinemediaobject>
> >     <textobject>
> >       <phrase>e</phrase>
> >     </textobject>
> >   </inlinemediaobject>
> > </inlineequation>
> >
> > which really seems excessively complicated.
>
>Couldn't you just define an entity that would include all that markup for
>you without all the noise?
>
> > Going to MathML seems
> > even worse. Is this really the best I can do?
> > --
> >
> > +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> > | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
> > +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> > |          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
> > |             http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/              |
> > |   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
> > +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
> > |  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
> > |  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
> > +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
>
>--
>Zack Brown




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