Overview - Characters

Numeric codes are used by MathFlow when interfacing with other applications, as generally the most robust, interoperable method of representing characters across systems.

MathFlow input accepts any valid Unicode character, but can only display characters located in an available font. The MathFlow Editor flow utilizes two kinds of fonts:

• System fonts
• Internal fonts

MathFlow includes internal fonts for approximately 500 math characters. The advantage of using these fonts is that they enable MathFlow to use the most common mathematical symbols, regardless of the fonts available on the system. However, they are low quality and only come in one face, slant and weight; thus, styles are ignored when rendering characters from these fonts.

The following sections document the characters MathFlow Editor has in its internal fonts and the character names MathFlow accepts.

MathFlow Named Characters

While MathFlow supports all Unicode characters subject to availability of fonts, certain Unicode characters are more relevant to mathematics than others. The MathML Recommendation identifies approximately 2000 such characters in sufficiently common usage to have received names. MathFlow recognizes over 1000 of these names, with support for several hundred additional names specific to MathFlow. To insert a character by name in the MathFlow Editor, you can use the Insert Symbol dialog. For advice about finding fonts containing a specific character, see Font and Style Management.

In addition to named characters, one can insert arbitrary Unicode characters directly by Unicode value using the Insert Symbol dialog or by editing MathML source code. For convenience, tables for most mathematical blocks Unicode characters are included at the end of this section. These tables are merely an aid to looking up character codes and names for obscure characters that you might need to enter. There is no guarantee that MathFlow will be able to locate such characters in an available font.

The tables in the next two sections list all named MathFlow characters.