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Why all formula notations are overly large? Is there something optimally short? The shortest notation all formula branches encompassable?

for example long short \integral ∫

Also, I guess that a huge amount of them doesn't use Unicode (or there aren't in Unicode ) ∰ ..

Guido
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Xsi
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    Can you give an example? Is it font-size that is large, or? – nickpapior Mar 25 '13 at 21:51
  • Welcome to TeX.SE! Please provide a concrete example of formula notation that's giving rise to your question, preferably in the form of a MWE (minimum working example). – Mico Mar 25 '13 at 22:01
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    @Mico Your links are broken :-) Welcome to TeX.sx! , minimal working example (MWE) – karathan Mar 25 '13 at 22:09
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    @karathan - Actually, the links aren't broken: they're nonexistent! :-) – Mico Mar 25 '13 at 22:10
  • Perhaps you are using display math, when you are looking for a inline math? – Peter Grill Mar 25 '13 at 22:37
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    The comments so far (and my first reading of your question) assumed that you meant that the typeset result was large. But I suspect that you are asking why verbose ascii command names like \integral instead of single characters like ∫ In which case this is possibly a duplicate of: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/87257/unicode-in-the-equations-pros-and-cons – David Carlisle Mar 26 '13 at 00:09
  • That's right. Less words. Not to be bloated. But doubletopic has only one answer - it isn't very suitable. – Xsi Mar 26 '13 at 17:44

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The basic design of Tex with commands such as \integral pre-dates Unicode (which was first proposed in 1988, some years after the TeX82 system). The example you give (∰) U+2230 was actually in Unicode from quite early on (version 1.1, so roughly contemporary to LaTeX2e) but the majority of the standard LaTeX and AMSMath symbols were not added until Unicode 3.1 and 3.2 in 2001-2 (as part of the project that lead to the development of the stix fonts and the formalisation of the entity names in MathML and later HTML5).

Even today, and even if you are using xetex or luatex (which can use the full Unicode character set natively) many people find it more convenient to use an ascii markup form than access the characters directly. It is easier to type on most keyboards and is self documenting. If you look at the source of a document and see ⨌ then short of cutting and pasting a fragment and hoping, it is hard to know how to generate that symbol, whereas if you see \iiiint then it is fairly clear that you just need to type \ i i i i n t.

David Carlisle
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