Re: Square root char?

On Tue, Jul 8, Stan Brown inscribed on the eternal scroll:

The standard entity is "√" or "√".

Indeed...

It takes a lot of
extra work to create the overbar,

There are ways of getting a reasonable effect, but I wouldn't
recommend doing it by hand except in the simplest of cases (see
various (la)tex-to-HTML packages for programmatic approaches).

so if the radicand is at all
complicated you probably want to use a small image instead.

(which would then need a recommendation for composing the alt text.
If your readers are accustomed to Latex notation, then you could
use that as alt text. Or indeed write the formula out with √
for the benefit of text-mode browsers which have decent HTML4
support.)

More recent browsers can handle this,

Like Lynx when used from a utf-8-capable terminal ;-)

The percent of computers that see √
correctly is monotonic increasing over time.

Agreed, but the √ notation still has a slight edge when it comes
to supported browsers. The other consideration is what will happen on
non-supporting browsers. It's an awkward choice to have to make.
The third option would be the genuine unicode character (e.g in a
utf-8 -coded document) - but presumably those authors who know how to
handle utf-8 coding know that already, and those who don't would be
safer sticking with &-notations.

Sure, the font issue will still be relevant whichever notation is
used.

cheers