I recently stumbled on the .vimrc of connermcd and noticed that he has an extensive list of keybindings for inputting Greek and math unicode characters. For example, given the mapping
map! <C-v>!= ≠then to input “≠”, just type <C-v>!=. This is incredibly useful for anyone who uses vim to take notes involving mathy things. Compare:
a >= b & b >= c -> a >= c # ascii only
a ≥ b ∧ b ≥ c → a ≥ c # nice unicodeThe second line is, I think, much cleaner looking and more legible than the first, and only takes a couple extra keystrokes to type out, once you’ve set up the appropriate mappings.
For example, I’m currently writing this post in vim, and if I have the following mappings
map! <C-v>fa ∀
map! <C-v>ex ∃
map! <C-v>!= ≠
map! <C-v>-> →
map! <C-v>& ∧then I can easily type out a formula of predicate logic in unicode, which comes out like this:
Unicode: ∀x∃y[x ≠ y → Px ∧ Ry]
Of course, on this blog I could also write such a formula in \(\LaTeX{}\), which comes out like this:
\(\LaTeX\): \(\forall x \exists y [x \neq y \to Px \land Ry]\)
I think in general the \(\LaTeX{}\) version probably looks nicer than the unicode version on websites like this, but there are some benefits to using unicode:
Unicode doesn’t need to be rendered by a conversion engine such as Mathjax; it just works.
Unicode is much more legible in source code (e.g., the markdown version of this blog post) than \(\LaTeX{}\). Compare:
∀x∃y[x ≠ y → Px ∧ Ry]$\forall x \exists y [x \neq y \to Px \land Ry]$If you use vim to write emails (e.g. with mutt), or forum posts (e.g. with vimperator for Firefox), etc., then you’ll usually want to use unicode, since most email clients and forums cannot render \(\LaTeX{}\).
There are lots of unicode characters which you can’t write in \(\LaTeX{}\) and/or which Mathjax and other engines can’t handle, such as IPA symbols, which I find myself needing to type relatively often.
For example, if I’m emailing a student or writing a forum post about the transcription of the word “ring”, I would usually go a site like this, click-type the transcription, copy it, then paste it—sort of time-consuming. Plus, if I’m not connected to the internet, then I can’t use this method at all. But if I have the following mappings in my .vimrc
map! <C-v>I ɪ
map! <C-v>N ŋ
map! <C-v>r ɹthen all I do is type
"Ring" is transcribed: [<C-v>r<C-v>I<C-v>N].which becomes
"Ring" is transcribed: [ɹɪŋ].By the way, you don’t need the <C-v> prefix, but that’s useful to group these bindings together, and to not override other keys. For example, you could do
map! N ŋbut then any time you pressed N, ŋ would appear, making it very difficult to ever type N.
<C-v> makes sense as a prefix because it’s what you press to type a unicode character manually: for example, <C-v>u2203 comes out as ∃, because the unicode encoding for that character is U+2203.
Anyway, to close this out, I’ve put some useful mappings below. If you want more ideas about what to map, check out the Wikipedia page Unicode/List of Useful Symbols, which has a ton of math, science, music, etc. characters, all of which could be handily mapped to in your .vimrc. ♫♫ cool! ♪♩♪
" Greek {{{
" (thanks to connermcd for these)
map! <C-v>GA Γ
map! <C-v>DE Δ
map! <C-v>TH Θ
map! <C-v>LA Λ
map! <C-v>XI Ξ
map! <C-v>PI Π
map! <C-v>SI Σ
map! <C-v>PH Φ
map! <C-v>PS Ψ
map! <C-v>OM Ω
map! <C-v>al α
map! <C-v>be β
map! <C-v>ga γ
map! <C-v>de δ
map! <C-v>ep ε
map! <C-v>ze ζ
map! <C-v>et η
map! <C-v>th θ
map! <C-v>io ι
map! <C-v>ka κ
map! <C-v>la λ
map! <C-v>mu μ
map! <C-v>xi ξ
map! <C-v>pi π
map! <C-v>rh ρ
map! <C-v>si σ
map! <C-v>ta τ
map! <C-v>ps ψ
map! <C-v>om ω
map! <C-v>ph ϕ
" }}}
" Math {{{
map! <C-v>-> →
map! <C-v>< ⇌
map! <C-v>n ↑
map! <C-v>v ↓
map! <C-v>= ∝
map! <C-v>~ ≈
map! <C-v>!= ≠
map! <C-v>!> ⇸
map! <C-v>~> ↝
map! <C-v>>= ≥
map! <C-v><= ≤
map! <C-v>0 °
map! <C-v>ce ¢
map! <C-v>* •
map! <C-v>co ⌘
map! <C-v>fa ∀
map! <C-v>ex ∃
map! <C-v>& ∧
map! <C-v>or ∨
" }}}
" IPA {{{
" vowels
map! <C-v>-i ɨ
map! <C-v>-u ʉ
map! <C-v>m ɯ
map! <C-v>I ɪ
map! <C-v>Y ʏ
map! <C-v>U ʊ
map! <C-v>/o ø
map! <C-v>@ ə
map! <C-v>E ɛ
map! <C-v>oe œ
map! <C-v>^ ʌ
map! <C-v>O ɔ
map! <C-v>ae æ
map! <C-v>A ɑ
" consonants
map! <C-v>N ŋ
map! <C-v>r ɹ
map! <C-v>mf ɱ
map! <C-v>eth ð
" }}}