I was thinking about writing a partial derivative macro that has a similar syntax to the Mathematica D function. (example)
The syntax could be like this:
\D{f}{x}
expands to\frac{\partial f}{\partial x}
\D{f}{x,y}
expands to\frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x\,\partial y}
\D{f}{{x,2},y}
expands to\frac{\partial^3 f}{\partial x^2\,\partial y}
- et cetera for any number of derivatives.
Bonus points for an optional argument so that for instance
\D[subscript]{f}{{x,2},y}
expands tof_{xxy}
I looked at the commath
package but the syntax is a little tedious. For instance, to get \frac{\partial^3 f}{\partial x^2\,\partial y}
with that package I would need to do \md{f}{3}{x}{2}{y}{}
. And it doesn't generalize to three variables.
Before I dive in I thought I'd ask the hive and see what's been done.
Best Answer
The
cool
package offers commands for writing partial derivates (and a lot of other stuff).A short example:
Note
By default the last two of those will not work, as there is a bug in the package. This can be fixed by changing a
\def
to\edef
in line 2059 ofcool.sty
, see Basic use of derivative with cool package fails with "Missing \endcsname inserted"