eds.activemath.org

It’s not really new that mathematical notation is made there to be abused so as to be most efficient for the current context. But I just met an extreme case:

In the OpenMath3 and MathML3-content efforts, we are polishing the description of symbols’ so that they can be common. Discussion about using linear syntax appears, of course, and an extreme case about the need for context was just posted by James Davenport:

In MY CASE […] that was in the scope (a complete chapter of Davenport, Siret, Tournier, fo example) in which ‘int’ had a specific meaning (the inverse of differentiation in a given differential field, in particualr that a formula for the integral existed).

Thus far a classical case of yet another semantic of integrals, nothing special.. but the next sentence really shows that there is a special context in this book:

Having said which, I must admit (which was NOT stated in DST) that ‘=’ meant ‘equality up to a constant’.

Well, the 17 equalities of Coq aren’t even crazy… even books make abuses as above!