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by stevemadere 1902 days ago
The idea is great but the many notational typos are going to confuse the hell out of people who don't already know this math. (e.g. References to vector variables are often not bolded even as they are introducing bold as the notation for vectors, reusing x excessively as a variable in multiple contexts in the same expression, etc.)

I went to graduate school for physics so I know all of this math cold but reading this paper caused me much confusion until I figured out they had a ton of typos in it.

Caveat reader.

Upon closer inspection, I realized they are not so much typos as poor UI implementation of the rendering. The visual difference between bold and italic when this page renders in either Chrome or Firefox is so subtle, it's very hard to see. Many of the equations and in-line variable references are rendered with svg so one cannot even inspect the page source to determine the intended font weight. Regardless, it's very confusing to read because of that. Not exactly what you want when trying to explain vector calculus. :)

P.S. I'll try to submit some comments to the authors to see if they can get this cleared up before it causes too much confusion.