I do think there’s some innovation on notation, but it mostly happens with existing typographic symbols because extending typography is harder than it used to be. Previously, you could just come up with whatever you wanted because work started out hand written. Then you’d pay to get the printer to make whatever weird symbol you wanted for publication, or, if on a budget, come up with some weird approximation using simpler symbols.
It seems like it should be easier on computers, and in theory it is, but lots of things drive us towards making default choices. The worst of these is probably that Unicode is already full of some many symbols that LaTeX can render, so it’s much easier to just pick some existing symbol rather than try to go through all the work of cooking up a new one.
I separately hope that there’s some effect from computer code, too, where people are trending towards favoring longer symbols that more resemble descriptive function and variables names, which feel less like notation but are easier to read on first glance, even if they bear costs in efficiency once familiar with them.
I do think there’s some innovation on notation, but it mostly happens with existing typographic symbols because extending typography is harder than it used to be. Previously, you could just come up with whatever you wanted because work started out hand written. Then you’d pay to get the printer to make whatever weird symbol you wanted for publication, or, if on a budget, come up with some weird approximation using simpler symbols.
It seems like it should be easier on computers, and in theory it is, but lots of things drive us towards making default choices. The worst of these is probably that Unicode is already full of some many symbols that LaTeX can render, so it’s much easier to just pick some existing symbol rather than try to go through all the work of cooking up a new one.
I separately hope that there’s some effect from computer code, too, where people are trending towards favoring longer symbols that more resemble descriptive function and variables names, which feel less like notation but are easier to read on first glance, even if they bear costs in efficiency once familiar with them.