# Improving the posting frame

1. Sep 30, 2011

### Studiot

Useful symbols.

Another technical teaching site http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/ has a very useful collection of symbols directly available in their forum posting frame - some common greek letters and maths symbols.

How about PF adopting this - there is a blank space to the right of the Tex icon.

They do not have the sup and sub function though which is great here.

2. Sep 30, 2011

### dlgoff

When I need a Greek letter or symbol I use the ones in my signature or Windows Character Map.

3. Sep 30, 2011

### Greg Bernhardt

done and done

4. Sep 30, 2011

### I like Serena

Nice and quick!!!

It so happens that Redbelly98 researched which symbols are useful, viewable by everybody and in sorted order:
https://www.physicsforums.com/blog.php?b=347 [Broken]

For quick reference:

α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ ς σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω
Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π Σ Φ Ψ Ω
∂ ∫ ∏ ∑
← → ↓ ↑ ↔
± − · × ÷ √
¼ ½ ¾ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞
∞ ° ² ³ ⁿ Å
~ ≈ ≠ ≡ ≤ ≥ « »
† ‼

Is it possible to put these as quick symbols?

Last edited by a moderator: May 5, 2017
5. Sep 30, 2011

### Greg Bernhardt

Which ones are used often that I don't have. I've never seen anyone use the fraction ones.

Last edited: May 5, 2017
6. Sep 30, 2011

### Studiot

Hey, Greg, That's great.

Can you please now have a word with my bank manager and show him how to effect money transfers into my account as quickly?

7. Sep 30, 2011

### I like Serena

Symbols that I miss in particular are:
φ Γ Θ Λ Φ Ψ · × ≡ ≤ ≥

I have used all of these in some post of mine.

I'd also really like for the greek symbols to be in alphabetical order.
And the small greek letters might as well be complete.

8. Sep 30, 2011

### SammyS

Staff Emeritus
Very Nice and Useful. THANKS !!!

9. Sep 30, 2011

### Fredrik

Staff Emeritus
I just noticed the quick symbols box, and thought it was a very nice addition. I came here to suggest that we add at least one more line to it. I consider all of the following symbols more useful than any of the ones that are on that list now:

· × ≤ ≥ → ℝ ℂ

The following are less important, but still about as useful as the greek letters:

ℚ ℤ ℕ ∅ ∈ ⊂ ²

By the way, http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/mathchart.html [Broken] has all the Greek symbols. You can probably find a lot more if you click around on that site a bit.

Last edited by a moderator: May 5, 2017
10. Oct 1, 2011

### mishrashubham

3 hours! I am amazed how quickly changes are made in this forum. Another thank you to Greg.

11. Oct 1, 2011

### Redbelly98

Staff Emeritus
I noticed this feature yesterday, thanks Greg for adding it. I have a few suggestions...

1. If I want two or more symbols to appear together (for example ±√ or →∞), I can't just click on the two symbols. The second symbol replaces the first, unless I click back in the text box in between. Is is possible to have the second symbol click not replace the first one?

2. Personally, I use · ≤ ≥ and → fairly often and would like to see those added to the list. Though Greg might not want the size of this list to grow too much bigger.

3. I'd like to suggest a different ordering/grouping of the symbols. Perhaps along these lines, more or less:
Lowercase Greek
Uppercase Greek
° ± √ → ∞
· ≤ ≥ ≠ ≈
∂ ∫
Mainly, I'd like to group the Greek letters together, and to keep the characters in (≤ ≥ ≠ ≈) as well as (± √) and (→ ∞) together too. Not too concerned where ° and · are.

4. I don't know if we really need the ∂ symbol. It always appears as part of a fraction, for which LaTeX works much better, i.e. $\frac{\partial f}{\partial x}$ vs. ∂f/∂x

Thanks again to Greg for adding this feature!

12. Oct 1, 2011

### DaveC426913

What are you guys talking about? I don't see any new feature.

Am I looking in the wrong place? I'm looking in the advanced message editor.

13. Oct 1, 2011

### Redbelly98

Staff Emeritus
You have to be in a forum where the LaTeX icon shows as well. So any technical forum, but not Forum Feedback.

14. Oct 1, 2011

### Greg Bernhardt

Thanks for the feedback. I can make the changes on Monday.

15. Oct 1, 2011

### Fredrik

Staff Emeritus
I don't think those are useful. Maybe the one for 1/2, but I would only include it if the last line is incomplete once you have included all the important symbols. I also don't see a reason to include the symbols « » † ‼. The last two are only used in chess, right? (Meaning "check" and "very good move"). I don't know what the first two are used for. Rewind and fast forward?

16. Oct 1, 2011

### tiny-tim

hmm … i did first suggest it over three years ago

i use "½"

i think most members say "half m v squared", and so prefer to write "1/2 mv2" rather than "mv2/2"

"½mv2" would be better (also "½Iω2" and "s = ut + ½at2")
seconded

but could we please have "…" (for use in sequences), and "#" (not on uk non-mac keyboards)?
≤ and ≥ are needed a lot
i think most members type "dy/dx" rather than go to the bother of "$dy/dx$" …

so why should it be any different with ∂f/∂x ?

but it's a great new feature

now i can ditch my current signature, and replace it with important goldfishy information!
preserve the bowliverse!

17. Oct 1, 2011

### Redbelly98

Staff Emeritus
I agree, fractions are not needed.
I wouldn't include them on grounds they are not used very often. Not sure if you're joking here, since they do all come up in physics and math. It's easy enough to just type symbols twice for <<, >>, and !!.

18. Oct 1, 2011

### Fredrik

Staff Emeritus
I was not joking. Hm, let's try again... !! is the semi-factorial function. I completely forgot about that, and I haven't had a reason to use it since the 90's. << Can mean "much less than". Didn't realize that either when I wrote the post. (The fact that the symbol is so small could have something to do with it). The stuff I'm interested in almost never requires me to plug numbers into equations, so I haven't used that since the 90's either. And LOL, the "dagger" symbol for the adjoint, is used all the time in QM. I must have been really confused when I wrote that post. When I was searching my brain for uses for that symbol, it didn't even occur to me to look for situations where that symbol is used as an exponent. I just didn't see a use for expressions like $A\dagger$ or $A\dagger B$ and ended the brain search there. A partial explanation is that the past two years or so, I've been using the mathematicians' notation $A^*$ instead of $A^\dagger$, but it was still a pretty major brain fart. This is really weird. I'm not that old.

Hm, maybe we should include the † then. It's not as important as · × ≤ ≥ → ℝ ℂ, but I can see how a lot of people would find it useful. I'm guessing that there's no easy way to do this, but if there is, I think a click on that symbol should cause [noparse][/noparse] to be typed, because it's only used exponentiated. At least that's the way it seems to me, but maybe my brain is still malfunctioning.

Regarding the ∂ symbol, it can be used for the boundary ∂E of a set E in a topological space, and in differential geometry (especially in the context of relativity) the μth partial derivative operator is often written as ∂μ. As tiny-tim said, people might prefer to write ∂y/∂x rather than [noparse]$\frac{\partial y}{\partial x}$[/noparse]. So I think it should be included, if it doesn't push out something more important. I have never used it myself, but I can see how people might want to use it.

Last edited: Oct 1, 2011
19. Oct 4, 2011

### Fredrik

Staff Emeritus
· × didn't make it. But thanks for adding the other ones I suggested.

20. Oct 18, 2011

### tiny-tim

seconded

at present, the symbol is inserted and highlighted, it would be easier if it was inserted and then the cursor was placed after it