From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Wed Nov 09 2005 - 07:27:53 CST
On 9 Nov 2005, at 01:54, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>> And why bother with +-? It seems sufficient that one knows that a
>> leading symbol is followed by a non-negative integer identifying the
>> abstract character.
>
> Visual clarity.
Sounds a silly argument. Once one is getting used to a form, that
will be the form easy to parse. There are investigations about which
font is the best for reading, where "times" should be one of the most
efficient. But other investigations suggest it is just the fonts one
is used to.
> Some people accomplish the same thing with casing, which
> can work pretty well for the letters, but doesn't help so
> much with the cap-height digits:
>
> U00f0 U0cae U4fbd Uabbd U0880
The digits 0...9 are usually typeset in a single width, to make
tables look good. So that suggests the same should apply for
hexadecimal digits as well. Also, all digits 0...9 are full height,
which ought to favor the uppercase version. Though I like the
lowercase version.
Hans Aberg
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