[arcanus]

Hmm, in all my correspondence with engineers and mathematicians, we just paste or write latex directly in the email.

Knowledge of latex is assumed, and honestly I (and my colleagues) are able to parse thus natively.

[dTal]

Which is, in a nutshell, why it's important for a formal language to be easy to read and write, and why eliminating overly verbose notation matters. It's not just for computers...

[semi-extrinsic]

In this respect I think AsciiMath doesn't go far enough, precisely because of the Ascii part. Especially for super- and subscripts, why not use the corresponding Unicode characters?

At least on my keyboard, "x^2" is one keystroke more than "x²", and the latter is much more redable.

[JumpCrisscross]

AsciiMath optimises for ease of use in both reading and writing. Fewer people know how to write x² than x^2, yet virtually everyone will read them equivalently. That's not true for n/2 versus \frac{n}{2}.

[semi-extrinsic]

Isn't x^2 typed <x><^><space><2>, while x² is the same minus the <space>, on most keyboards?

[kobeya]

Not in US standard keyboards, no. You're using an international keyboard layout with dead keys.

[thaumasiotes]

I've never knowingly seen a keyboard that would allow you to type ² at all. So, no.

[ziotom78]

On my Linux Mint 18 KDE system, ² can be typeset by typing AltGr-2 (I can get ½ by pressing AltGr-5). I am using an Italian keyboard, but I bet this works with US keyboards as well.

Recently I used Windows 10 quite a bit, and the number of AltGr combinations available on Linux has been the thing I missed the most!

[daurnimator]

No. I've never seen a keyboard do this.

[brute]

Every german keyboard can do this. And a quick (non-exhaustive) google image search shows that many other keyboard layouts support it, e.g. french, turkish and portuguese (brazil but not portugal)

[blt]

same, even when it adds nothing, for example I wrote \alpha in an email recently.

[vanderZwan]

Now if only email had autocomplete like the Juno IDE does...

http://junolab.org/ (scroll down)

[milesrout]

If you want email to have autocomplete, then it does. 'Email' isn't a client. The client you choose to use is. Write your emails in vim -> now you have autocomplete.

[monsieurbanana]

But does vim have a top class email plugin that allows powerful research, editing, sending and receiving emails?

Because Emacs does. Choose smart, choose Emacs.

(this comment is written half in jest)

https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html

[gjjrfcbugxbhf]

No. The way to write your emails in vim is to use an email client that lets you open the text in an editor of your choice. E.g. mutt, or a webclient combined with an add on that let's your open textarea in an external editor (vimperator or its all text).

P.s. emacs sounds like a great OS - are there any add ons that allow one to open its textareas in a decent editor? :p

[milesrout]

Well no, because vim isn't an email client. It is a text editor, and good email clients can use it to edit emails.

[zulln]

Eh.. there should be plugins for that.