Talk:Bra-ket notation

Should we really use & rang ; and & lang ;? My Mozilla on Windows and IE both don't render it. (For mozilla this is reported as a bug in bugzilla: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15731 ) Is there actually a browser that does? -- Jan Hidders 12:19 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

What's wrong with th ordinary angle brackets < and > ? or & lt ; and & gt ; ? Theresa knott

Mozilla renders it fine for me. rang and lang are HTML 4.0 character entity references (http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/testcases/layout/entities) specifically for "bras" and "kets", so it's more correct to use them. It also looks more legible; < and > make the bras and kets somewhat more difficult to read.

IE 4 should be able to display the characters (see here (http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/explorer_older)). Are you using IE 3? Do 〈 and 〉 (generated from the numeric codes) work for you? -- CYD

I use IE 6. I can see everything on Wikipedia:Special characters and on http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc10/x-utf8 , but neither 〈 nor ⟨ - Patrick 21:01 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Can you see the characters on http://wwwhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/symbols ? -- CYD

I couldn't. I was also using IE6 under W'98 and there it didn't render. IE6 under XP also doesn't render it. Mozilla 1.2 under W'98 doesn't render it either, but Mozilla 1.3 under Linux and XP do. I'll see what happens if I upgrade to Mozialla 1.3 under W'98. If that works, than I'm happy with lang and rang, although strictly that would not be enough for the official policy on special characters. -- Jan Hidders 21:22 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Is it a problem with the browser or simply the correct font that is missing?

Then maybe we should use an image, similar to what is done for ([[Image:Del.gif]]). Out of curiosity, what "official policy" are you referring to? -- CYD

You could, but images are really the last resort. They don't scale and are sometimes positioned awkwardly by different browsers. So I would suggest using < and >. If you really don't like those then my next choice would be to use lang and rang anyway, just as long as we can tell people that if they want to see the page in its full glory they have to install the latest Mozilla. You might even want to plead for a change of policy on the mailing list. In that case you have my vote. :-) The "official policy" is more or less implicit in the page on special characters. From what I remember from previous discussions on the mailing list the main argument is always that we should keep Wikipedia as accessible as possible and therefore only use special characters if we really need them. -- Jan Hidders 21:35 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

I would say that having to use one particular browser is much worse than either an image or a regular <. - Patrick 22:11 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Absolutely, however, where Mozilla goes so do the browsers that are based on the Gecko rendering engine, and since it follows the standards the KHTML-based browsers (Konquerer et al.) and other open source browsers are usually not far behind and even IE will probably catch up if it has not already. Besides, Mozilla is pretty easy to install these days and availiable on many platforms. -- Jan Hidders 22:40 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Using <FONT FACE="SYMBOL">& #9001 ; &lang ;</FONT> I can see them here: 〈 ⟨, in accordance with http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/miscellaneous_technical , which says "LEFT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET (present in WGL4 and in Symbol font)" - Patrick 21:58 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Ah I can see them now [IE 5 windows 2000]. Is it safe to assume that symbol is a pretty much unversal font? Theresa knott 14:20 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

Alternatively, we can use TeX all the time for these brackets, they work fine also. - Patrick 22:06 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

In-line TeX is usually discouraged. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics. -- Jan Hidders 22:40 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

comparison: the "correct" in-line symbol (?), the ordinary less-than, and the TeX symbol: ⟨<<math>\langle</math>. I see more difference between the correct in-line symbol and the TeX symbol than between the correct in-line symbol and the ordinary less-than! So using the ordinary < and > seems best. - Patrick 04:32 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

That's strange. The TeX symbol looks exactly like ⟨ to me. The difference between the correct symbol and an ordinary < looks to me like the difference between <math>\langle</math> and <math><\;</math>. -- CYD

Perhaps Patrick is referring to the size and not the shape? -- Jan Hidders 10:36 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

No, to the shape. In my case ⟨ and < have a much smaller angle than <math>\langle</math>. - Patrick 12:40 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Yup. I am now looking at it with my IE6 under W'98 and also there the shapes differ. The symbol font, byt the way, works for me in IE6 and Mozilla under W'98, XP and Mozilla under Linux, but seems a bit cumbersome to type. Does anybody know if there is some font that I could install under Windows to see lang and rang? -- Jan Hidders 15:51 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Better to be cumbersome to type than impossible to read. I've changed the page accordingly. Could people check for mistakes please. Can anyone still not read the text ?Theresa knott 09:30 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)