Unicode supported in Atom scripting window but not in REPL

New to Julia
1

Hey guys!

I am trying to write:

\bfpartial

It works in the Atom editor window, but not in the REPL - how do I fix this?

Kind regards

2

Does it look like đť›› ?
On Windows it seems to be a problem of the REPL underlying CMD Shell (didn’t tested with Powershell).
Using a cygwin terminal with bash (under windows 10) it seems to work.

3

Yes it is windows sorry and it looks like that, and I see, thanks. I don’t know what a cygwin terminal is - I hope it gets fixed some day.

Another question which just arose, is do you happen to know why some unicode letters are not supported? For example it is possible to do:

\_x

Which gives a small x subscript, but the same for y does not exist?

Kind regards

4

There are some efforts to solve this issues with the windows shells.
As a workaround you may use the cygwin terminal which doesn’t help you as you do not know about, but there are others so don’t bother with cygwin :grinning:

The git bash comes with the git windows GUI:
https://git-scm.com/download/win
(just tried and \bfpartial works)

For the future there will be more general solutions (i hope), see for some ideas:

1 Like
5

Then of course you cannot input that character (since it does not exist). Julia cannot extend Unicode.

IMO the sub/superscripts should be use sparingly, as they can be difficult to read on lower-resolution devices, or for readers who have less than perfect vision.

6

I just thought it was a bit weird, that exactly the y did not work, so just wanted to ask to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong. Thanks for clarifying.

I agree with you, I am just trying to see how much I can “change” the code, to look like something I would write in my math notes etc. A fun exercise.

Kind regards

7

AFAIK the sub/superscripts are included when they have various semantic distinctions, eg in phonetics. There is no such use for the character y, so it was not included in Unicode.

That said, I like to experiment with Unicode chars in code, too. First I thought that writing eg Greek letters like α was a gimmick, now I miss them when coding in other languages.

8

I see - I think it is better to stick to an official library like the Unicode one, rather than letting people use their own symbols, even though I would like to add my own mini y - shared code could suddenly be much harder to use.

Yes it is very nice, especially in engineering being able to write an equation utilizing the symbols we already know, like sigma for stress etc.