It would be nice if OSs defaulted numeric keypad / * and - to Unicode ÷, ×, −. I never use them even when I do use the digits. That would solve the more glaring typewriter legacies. Then you'd just have the apostrophe/single-quote as the last remaining unification.
I'm not convinced. I was brought up with the middle dot for multiplication (and × reserved for cross products, I suppose?) and according to Wikipedia, the
> ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the solidus / or "fraction bar" for division, or the "colon" : for ratios; it says that the ÷ sign "should not be used" for division
I think these things are way less standardised even on paper than you believe.
That was kind of my point. We somewhat settled on an ASCII representation of many symbols, and that space is so small that lots of them have multiple meanings you have to infer. There was a brief window where we could’ve taken a different path and used different symbols for different things. Alas, we didn’t.
I don’t contend we should change things today. I do think if I were personally writing a new programming language from scratch today, I’d likely use different Unicode symbols for different operators, and the accompanying language server would nudge people to use them.
