Comment by kzrdude
3 years ago
I was wondering what's better. The document is clearer if we use unicode.
But maybe for humans it's easier if we have a limited character set and use context instead. Like this.
In plain text, - is a hyphen:
twenty-five, -1
In math context - is a minus sign
$ (-1)^3 + x^3 $
Where it will be ensured to be rendered as appropriate
It’s easier to type HYPHEN-MINUS‐the‐keyboard-key, but text should be displayed using the appropriate glyph, depending on its semantic meaning, which is never HYPHEN-MINUS‐the-glyph.
(This discussion is similar to the classic net discussion about TAB‐the‐ASCII‐character versus TAB‐the‐keyboard‐key, with some people having trouble conceptualizing the difference.)