On Mar 20, 2015, at 7:38 AM, Benedict Holland <benedict.m.holl...@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Equation labels should be human readable and make sense to you and the 
> document. That is the proper use. If you are making them all a1, a2,... aN, I 
> can't help you but typically there are not many equations in documents 
> anyway. Each one is a bit different and requires a slightly different human 
> readable note attached with a number that you don't care about. It seems 
> perfect to me. 

Responding to Benedict and others...

This assumes something that isn't necessarily true. It assumes one person's 
writing style or habits or needs. Other people have dozens and hundreds of 
equations in a document and having to invent meaningful labels for then is 
truly a nuisance because equations don't naturally have names. The same goes of 
course for figures and tables but at least in those cases one might pick a few 
choice words from their captions.

To make a meaningful name can easily take 10-20 words in many cases. One can 
make shorter labels but then the meaning is lost so one may as well do A1, A2, 
.... And short labels or longer descriptions as labels doesn't matter that much 
when one is scrolling through a list of dozens or hundreds of labels trying to 
remember what "Laplace distribution modified by AM after substitution of 
cross-correlaction factor from AR process" means. And the outline doesn't show 
display equations that aren't labelled. The only easily meaningful thing is the 
equation itself, which is why one spends tons of time looking around for the 
actual equation to make sure it's the right one. Thus my argument for a 
graphical equation browser.

Jerry

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