This question is mainly to collect your opinion, and probably to reach a good solution. That said, let's go to the discussion topic and question.
I commonly use the acronym
package in my work, mainly to write article with lots of abbreviations. Sometimes I also use glossaries
for the same purpose. I know there are others.
Well, when using those, it sometime may happen that an acronym is expanded inside parentheses, e.g.,
the \ac{BS} (also known as \ac{eNB})
become
the Base Station (BS) (also known as Enhanced Node B (eNB))
As it may be seen, in the second expansion, it get nested parentheses. To avoid this, I sometimes use \acs{}
instead of \ac{}
while inside parentheses. However, it may happen that the acronym is first used inside the parentheses, and with this approach it is not expanded in the first use.
I was reading link 1 and link 2, and while people said it is acceptable, others recommend to rephase, or use brackets. With brackets, my simple example would become
the Base Station (BS) (also known as Enhanced Node B [eNB])
A solution for this, would be use always brackets instead of parentheses while using acronyms. But I don't know if it is acceptable of all purposes or not.
What is your opinion?
Further, is it possible to say to acronym
or other package to use brackets inside parentheses?
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{acronym}
\begin{document}
\begin{acronym}
\acro{BS}{Base Station}
\acro{eNB}{Enhanced Node B}
\end{acronym}
the \ac{BS} (also known as \ac{eNB})
\end{document}
Best Answer
I can't help with the
acronym
package as I don't use it, but if you don't mind usingglossaries
instead you can do the following:Here you can just use
\pac
instead of\ac
when you want to use the acronym in parentheses.Result:
An alternative approach (which most may consider overkill) is to do:
Result:
Edit: Caveat: it's best not to use the second approach if you use a package such as
tikz
where parentheses form part of the command syntax.Edit: Here's an example that switches back and forth, which can either be done by changing the category codes of
(
and)
or changing their definition:Result: