in reply to Re^6: OSCON Perl Unicode Slides
in thread OSCON Perl Unicode Slides

Hm. I'm not sure that you answered my question.

In infant school we were taught the 'minus sign with two dots' thing as division -- I haven't entered the actual sign because i have no idea how to enter it; I copied it from my correspondent's post when replying above. But as I said, in my time in Germany, I never recall seeing division writing or typed as anything other than x/y. Am I wrong?

Further, can you or anyone reference a single published, cited mathematical thesis that uses the '-:-' thing rather than '/'?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

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Re^8: OSCON Perl Unicode Slides
by Corion (Patriarch) on Jul 25, 2011 at 20:52 UTC

    I'm not aware of any use of -:-.

    Even though it's not "citeable", the easy way out is to look at the German page of Wikipedia on "Division", which shows the ":" notation. It also shows the -:- notation as an alternative and attributes both to Leibnitz.

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[d/l]
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      Don't tell him how multiplication is written, he'll blow a gasket!

      It's still my biggest problem when I try to help my kids with their maths homework.

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      Okay, I accept that on the basis that my knowledge (of German/y) is limited to the business/IT/a few months.

      That said. I find much of the nomenclature used on the "english" Wikipedia pages to be utterly foreign to me. And I've been reading English theses and dissertations on a daily basis for over 30 years.

      The trouble is, there is a school of english that thinks -- and I think, truly believes -- that complicated, sophisticated, intellectualated confers stat-us. (Contendo:sta-tus), It doesn't. Only pointless confusion and off-hand dismissal as: 'lack of understanding'; 'unsophistication'.

      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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        there is a school of english that thinks ... believes -- that complicated, sophisticated, intellectualated confers stat-us.

        You are mistaken. If that were really the reason some of us argue that proper English requires more characters than are in ASCII, I think you'd be right to fight it. But it's not.

        Maybe all those years of reading hyper-abstruse papers has addled your brain in some peculiar way.

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