Where usage meets TeX

Question

We recently closed a maths usage question, Can I use both of setbuilder notations in one article?, which asked for whether it is acceptable to use two different comprehension notations in one article, on the grounds that it is off-topic. It is quite true that "a mathematical style question", as Ryan Reich put it, is not about TeX and Friends.

However, the question was clearly phrased in terms of TeX markup, and the semantics friendly approach to TeX can influence how one best answers these questions. Consider, hypothetically - what if there was a comprehensions.sty package out there with distinct comprehensions \pointcomprehension, \funspacecomprehension, with a configuration command that allowed you to issue such commands as (excuse the ConTeXtism) \setupcomprehension[point][separator=:], together with the configurations used in several textbooks?

In my opinion, the possibility either that such specialist support might exist for such usage questions, or might be desirable to have, is a reason for such usage questions to be considered on-topic, provided they have such an overt TeX&co. context. I consider that a usage question with such TeX-specific context is a different question, in that it asks for different kinds of answers, than one without.

Answer 1

As I see this question it's a perfect candidate for http://math.stackexchange.com (as already suggested by a comment to that question). They users there aren't bad in TeX either, because they use it with MathJax.

Because there is already a specialized SX site for this I agree that we should consider such questions as off-topic on TeX.SX. However, migration to Math.SX should be prefered before closing it as off-topic.

Answer 2

I agree that the distinction between the present question (roughly, "Which of two acceptable mathematical notations should I use?") and the hypothetical one ("Help me with this package that produces that notation") is a little fine, but one objection is that the question as written is explicitly not about help using TeX at all: the same question could be asked about Word's equation editor, or handwriting for that matter. It's purely a stylistic question.

Now, the answers that were given before closure actually do (some of them) address a TeX means of dealing with the underlying issue, but on-topic answers don't make the question on-topic, just as novel answers don't make a duplicate question unique (if I recall this is a current topic too). This aspect of the nature of the question makes it something of an XY problem, with the added twist that Y is off-topic.

Another connection is with the similar problem with MathJaX, where several answers agree that at least a significant part of that genre of question is off-topic, and moreover is explicitly on-topic elsewhere. MathJaX questions are arguable in the same way, in that even installation and troubleshooting questions (as discussed by Martin Scharrer's answer) are analogous to such questions about installing and troubleshooting a TeX distribution that are on topic here...but when applied to MathJaX they are not, because the tool is fundamentally not TeX even if it accepts some TeX code. And likewise here, the mathematical style question is fundamentally not TeX, even if it admits some TeX solutions (that may not even be appropriate! What if it's a journal or university style?).

I think the usual thing that's done for questions like this is to ask the q'ner to refine their post to the point that it is on-topic, specific, and answerable to their satisfaction. However, what if their question really is "should I use two notations for sets?"; in that case, I think that it really belongs on a math forum because it's really not a TeX question, even if by virtue of being a typographic language TeX sometimes has opinions about matters of style.