Re: \minus entity and LaTeX export

[Max Nikulin]

On 14/05/2022 13:30, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Max Nikulin writes:
>
> > >        "** Science et al."
> > > -     ("minus" "\\minus" t "−" "-" "-" "−")
> > > +     ("minus" "-" t "−" "-" "-" "−")
> >
> > Should it be "\textminus" instead? I never used it but my expectation
> > that it was added for text mode outside of equations: \minus1. It
> > required \usepackage{textcomp} in the past, but it seems it is not the
> > issue any more, so the symbol is available out of the box. I was not
> > following that changes in LaTeX so I may miss something.
>
> \textminus appears to work without textcomp. However, I am not sure if it
> should be used instead of math version.

Timothy tried texlive-2022, I had 2019 installed, users of old versions 
may add \usepackage{textcomp}.

> Look at the attached screenshot where I tried to compare how \textminus
> vs. $-$ would look inside a document. I find the math version to be more
> visually appealing. Of course, we can always change to \textminus if
> people more familiar with typography jump in and ask for the change.

I am a bit lazy to check what font and what codepoint is used in each case.

From my point of view, the correct way to type negative numbers is 
\(-1\), not \(-\)1. TeX math mode sets proper spaces around the 
character, e.g. \(1 - 1\) has larger spaces around. I considered \minus 
as something special for cases when a user has reasons to avoid math, 
e.g. to avoid MathJax or images when a document contains only a few of 
simple expressions.