Apologies for being a little too picky here, but I absolutely hate it when I see a non-symmetrical version of the infinity symbol being used, such as the one shown above, which just looks like '
8' rotated by 90°. Such a symbol will never be found in any of my writings. It is of no coincidence that (L
A)T
EX uses the proper, symmetrical symbol in its standard math typeface, or else it would not have passed Donald Knuth's strict criteria—and rightly so!
You are wrong. You are wrong aesthetically: Serif fonts with calligraphic variations to their stroke widths are superior (and I am infinitely more “picky” about typography than you or anyone else ever could be). And you are wrong about the design of Knuth’s Computer Modern typeface. You are probably accustomed to some publisher’s house L
AT
EX package which tinkers with the fonts.
My copies of the Te
Xbook and the Metafontbook were lost years ago in a “tragic boating accident”; thus, I will use the lazy way. And I will be ultra-lazy, for I am in a lazy mood; make no replies about how I could have done this so much better by invoking Metafont with Knuth’s original CM font sources with (blah blah blah)!
It is time for
empirical evidence!\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
$\infty$
\end{document}
$ pdflatex infty.tex
[...snip stuff that leaks info about my system...]
Output written on infty.pdf (1 page, 15410 bytes).
Transcript written on infty.log.
$ pdftocairo -png -transp -r 1200 -x 2459 -y 2141 -W 200 -H 140 infty.pdf
Result:
That is $\infty$ according to Knuth.Double-checking that the PDF is using Computer Modern:
$ pdffonts infty.pdf
name type encoding emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
LLVRDD+CMSY10 Type 1 Builtin yes yes no 4 0
SDXKYB+CMR10 Type 1 Builtin yes yes no 5 0
The one in your avatar looks fine though,
The infinity symbol does have some subtle variation in the stroke width. Take a closer look.
In my post that you quoted, I do not know what your browser is showing; it will show a default serif font. Probably some open-source clone of Times Roman?
P.S., I almost suggested that the new forum software should use
\LaTeX as a markup language for posts—or at least to allow that as an option, alongside bbcode and/or markdown and/or whatever other stupidity. Then, I decided not to bother. Perhaps I can obtain your support for
loudly demanding politely requesting this?
:-)P.P.S., why do I not see you in Development & Technology? (Or do you use an alt there, because... never mind.)
Edit: You will argue with me about
\TeX?
:-/First thing I do is launch Firefox, which automatically opens 6 sites:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Outlook Mail
[...]
Knuth does not use e-mail. And you use centralized shitmail.
Also, it is unwise to fuck with me.