From: Jungshik Shin (jshin@mailaps.org)
Date: Sat Apr 26 2003 - 01:42:42 EDT
On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> Jungshik asked:
>
> The following suggestions are being salted away as possible
> updates for Unicode 4.1 (or whatever the next opportunity turns
> out to be).
Thank you for salting them away safely :-)
I'll make sure that they will be brought back again at the right moment.
> > U+210B(Script Capital H) is annotated with 'Hamiltonian function'
> > while U+2112(Script Capital L) is with 'Laplace
> > symbol'. Although some people refer to what most people simply
> > call 'Hamiltonian' as 'Hamiltonian function' (I wouldn't
> > believe this if google had not come up with a number of matches.
> > (http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Hamiltonian.html), it may have
> > been better to give more common alternative names 'Hamiltonian' or
> > 'Hamiltonian operator'. As for U+2112, Largrange wouldn't have liked the
> > fact that 'L' is exclusively attributed to Laplace by Unicode when U+2112
> > is used for 'Largrangian' as widely as for 'Laplace transform'. Besides
> > U+2131 (Script Capital F) has an alternative name 'Fourier transform' so
> > that I think it is more consistent to do the same withU+2112 with by
> > giving an alternative name 'Laplace transform' in addition to 'Largrangian'
> > I'm proposing.
>
> ??
>
> http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Lagrangian.html
>
> uses an italic-L, *not* a script-L, for the Lagrangian. (In more
> than one instance, so this is not just a point mistake.)
>
Actually, people use both script-L and italic-L for Lagrangian
'proper'. It's to their credit that they're consistent at
scienceworld.wolfram.com (but they don't have an entry for Lagrangian
density, yet.) Probably italic-L tend to be more widely used
for Lagrangian (when teaching classical mechanics) than script-L,
but script-L is also used. Italic-L is also used for Lagrangian
'proper' when there's a need to distinguish it from Lagrangian
density represented by script-L (as in field theory.) Even in field
theory, they get 'lazy' and drop 'density' and just refer to what's
represented by script-L simply as 'Lagrangian' because most of time it is
'Lagrangian density' that is of interest and is tossed around in field
theory. Here's just a random hit from google showing both usages(I mean
not 'glyphs' but refering to what's represented by script-L as Lagrangian
density earlier and then later simply as Lagrangian) in a single page:
http://www.pact.cpes.sussex.ac.uk/users/markh/RQF1/node24.html. So just
annotating script-L with 'Lagrangian' wouldn't hurt. Well, some people might
blame the UTC for not being able to distinguish between 'Lagrangian'
and 'Lagrangian density', but then you can counter that it's not the
UTC but their colleagues who mix them up rather freely without getting
confused much....
> The same site uses a script-L for the Laplace transform. So it
> would seem to me that the Unicode annotation in this case is
> correct.
Stiil, it appears that it's more consistent to put 'transform'
for both script-L and script-F than use 'symbol' for the
former and 'transform' for the latter. I'm tempted to give
a couple of more alternative names for 'script-F', but I'd refrain :-)
> Regarding the following issue for squared Latin abbreviations,
> if you have specific suggestions for annotations, then make
> them. However, as you surmise, I don't think the UTC is
> likely to consider further annotation of this particular
> batch of compatibility characters to be of much great
> utility.
I'll do next time Unicode NamesList is updated and let the UTC
decide what to do with them. Most of them are Greek prefices (used in
SI) plus SI units for current, capacitance, pressure, and so forth as
you know well.
Thank you,
Jungshik
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