[texhax] use of \ldots

[Pierre MacKay]

On 02/08/2011 02:11 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
>
> On 9/02/2011, at 5:15 AM, Pierre MacKay wrote:
>
>> On 02/07/2011 07:32 PM, Steven Jonak wrote:
>>>
>>> I curious about the correct usage \ldots.  If I use it in a 
>>> sentence, which is correct:
>>>
>>> Just a moment\ldots now, there we are.
>>> or
>>> Just a moment \ldots now, there we are.
>>>
>>> Should a space come before the \ldots or not?
>>>
>>> S Jonak
>>> "Maintain an even strain."
>>>
>> In one sense neither is correct, since $\ldots$  in any version of 
>> TeX I have ever used works only in math mode.
>
> <SNIP>
>
> Not true.  I.e. the dollar signs are not needed.  I tried it
> to make sure.  Also Lamport's book says explicitly (page 42):
>
>     The \ldots command works in any mode, but \cdots, \vdots,
>     and \ddots can only be used in math mode.
>
>     cheers,
>
>         Rolf Turner
>
>
This is interesting evidence if the early development of dialects or, 
perhaps idioms, in TeX. I thought I had always got a math mode warning 
if I mistakenly left off the math mode $, and, in my plain.tex world,it 
seems that I still would.
  tex \&tex
This is TeX, Version 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.6)
Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for english, french, german, 
ngerman, gr
eek, italian, latin, russian, spanish, turkish, nohyphenation, ibycus, 
loaded.

*\show\ldots
 > \ldots=macro:
->\mathinner {\ldotp \ldotp \ldotp }.
<*> \show\ldots

? x
No pages of output.
Transcript written on texput.log.

Pierre.MacKay