Full Math Symbols?

[tecosaur]

Hello,

Out of impatience, I see that in 2017 @mjabbink said "Extended Math symbols will come in 2019" and then in 2018 "We will design a version of Plex with full mathematical glyphs next year". Now that it's 2019 I was wondering how much longer we'll have to wait?

Also I'm curious as to how extensive addition will be; specificly, which of the following blocks are planning on being included?

• Mathematical Operators block (U+2200 – U+22FF)
• Supplemental Mathematical Operators block (U+2A00 – U+2AFF)
• Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block (U+1D400 – U+1D7FF)
• Letterlike Symbols block (U+2100 – U+214F) has a math subset
• Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A block (U+27C0 – U+27EF)
• Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B block (U+2980 – U+29FF)
• Miscellaneous Technical block (U+2300 – U+23FF) has a math subset
• Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0 – U+25FF) has a math subset
• Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block (U+2B00–U+2BFF Arrows) has a math subset (U+2B30 – 2B44 and U+2B47 – 2B4C)
• Arrows block (U+2190–U+21FF)
• Supplemental Arrows-B block (U+2900–U+297F)
• The various math symbols in other blocks that haven't yet been added (Such as U+2034 triple prime)

thanks!

tecosaur.

[BoldMonday]

The APL glyphs should be more consistent:

Where a space occurs, only glyphs to the left are regulary in use, but those on the right are prime candidates for adoption in future language extensions.

The leftmost glyph is the prototypical one for the class.

@abrudz Thank you for the very valuable feedback.

Two questions:

1. Do you the same example set in a font where the glyphs are correct according to your opinion?
2. Are there other mathematical fonts out there (STYX, Cambria, ...) that do a good job when setting APL? I get the impression that certain technical symbols have to be adapted very specifically for APL.

[abrudz]

APL doesn't require special adaption of symbols. Any consistency achievable is nice, but none of this is critical for use. Here are 3 proportional (including Stix) and 3 monospace samples:

Iosevka Etoile

https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ 

Stix Two Math

https://www.stixfonts.org/ 

Quivira

http://www.quivira-font.com/ 

DejaVu Sans Mono

https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/ 

APL385 Unicode

https://abrudz.github.io/APL386/ 

SAX2

https://abrudz.github.io/SAX2/ 

[BoldMonday]

Everyone: here is a new public alpha build of IBM Plex Math.

We addressed the comments from @abrudz about the APL glyphs as good as we could. There is a brand new design for the Fraktur, Script and Typewriter glyphs. Also lots of changes have happened in vertical positions and sizes of many symbols. The math table is still in progress so typesetting of formulas might not be possible still. But already the font contains well over 5,300 glyphs. Give it a try and let us know in the comments what you think.

IBMPlexMath-Alpha231127.otf.zip

[apoorvpotnis]

Is there a possibility of having regular (non-bold) sans Greek letters, in the private use area, say imported from the sans serif IBM fonts? I ask this since even though Unicode blocks do not have it, they might add it in the future. If there is bold sans serif Greek, why not regular? New Computer Modern, STIX2 and XITS provide these letters.

[abrudz]

Awesome.

1. The stars in ⍣ and ⍟ could really be the same size as ⋆:
2. ⌷ doesn't look like a merged []:
3. In general, the lines of APL glyps look thin compared to other mathematical symbols. It is especially noticable in the circles in ⍥⍟⌽⍉⌾ compared to ○⊖⊙: but also e.g. ÷ vs ⌹ (both the - and the ⎕): plus ⌸ and the outer ⎕ of ⍯ compared to =≠: and ∘ is thicker than the APL glyphs that contain it:
4. ⍜ appears very small, and easily confusable with ⍛:
5. ⍒⍋ are too low on the line compared to their brethren:
6. ⍷ should get its ∊ part from ∊:
7. ϼ is smaller than other Greek symbols:
8. ⟃⟄ seem smaller than plain ⊂⊃:
9. ⊤ looks much better than its derivations ⌶⍕⍑⍡ and the same goes for ⊥ vs ⌶⍎⍊:
10. ⍲ is mirrored:
11. ∨ and ∧ look much better than their derivations ⍱⍌ and ⍲⍓ which are both thinner and larger/taller:

[BoldMonday]

Is there a possibility of having regular (non-bold) sans Greek letters, in the private use area, say imported from the sans serif IBM fonts? I ask this since even though Unicode blocks do not have it, they might add it in the future. If there is bold sans serif Greek, why not regular? New Computer Modern, STIX2 and XITS provide these letters.

Not sure. In my opinion PUA unicodes are a hack, and never a good solution in the long term. It creates portability problems too. And if these glyphs are ever adopted by Unicode then they will get their own codepoints.

[BoldMonday]

Everyone: here is a first public beta version of IBM Plex Math.

This font contains nearly all glyphs (close to 6,000) that are scheduled for the official release. But most importantly there is a math table now which allows typesetting of formulas.

Feel free to give it a try and let us know in the comments what you think.

IBMPlexMath-Beta240212.otf.zip

[JimEBlevins]

This Beta release compiled my current LaTeX mathematical-file flawlessly (which is based on a SIAM Journal style).

Already, IBM Plex Math allows the use of unicode symbols for basic mathematical operators (mathematical Greek, set-membership, black-board bold, etc.) that are still impossible for Latin Modern Math (!).

(Without the OpenMATH Table, the previous alpha releases of IBM Plex Math could not even be tested.)

Congratulations to the team!

[mjabbink]

Thanks for getting this up @BoldMonday. I am also sharing with IBM Research community.

[mpsmath]

Thank you! This now works as a real math font, and can be tested. Nice that there are many variants for delimiters. From a quick test I have a few comments:

• ssty is used for both smaller styles (script and scriptscript). Could be a two-step thing.
• The two sizes of the integrals do not look compatible. The small one is perhaps too small, and the big one maybe a bit bold. Nice that the integral is an extensible!
• Math fraktur I and J are very similar.
• The radicals might be considered badly located vertically. In other fonts they are placed vertically in such a way that the small index is correctly located (this can be fixed in macro packages, and in fact one could argue that it should have been clearer from the Opentype math spec). I suggest to have a look on how other fonts do this.
• The bar and double bar come with extensibles, but the triple bar (U+2980) does not (it comes as an extensible, though). It would be nice if that one also came with variants.
• The delimiters are not consistent in vertical size, they vary just slightly. Maybe that is by design, but I think it makes sense to have them sized uniformly. In the image below we can see a few of them (but not all!)
• The font parameters ScriptPercentScaleDown is set to 70 and ScriptScriptPercentScaleDown is set to 55. I got the impression that they are slightly too large. I tried with 65 and 50, respectively, and I think that looked a bit more balanced. I understand very well that this is highly subjective.
• In Unicode math there is a script alphabet, but no calligraphic one. Some other fonts, like Stix Two Math have one of them in these slots and the other as ss01. It is nice to have both types of alphabets available.

Again, thanks for making it available for testing.

[JimEBlevins]

@mpsmath (Mikael P. Sundqvist) has written recent articles on the development of mathematical typography through LaTeX:

TUGBOAT: (The Communications of the TeX Users Group)

• Articles by MPS