there's a "canned" routine called testfont. use it with plain tex:
tex testfont
it will walk you through what it wants to test. the first question is what font you want.
the comprehensive symbols list should show you what fonts the asterisk is in (i'm pretty
sure there's one in cmsy10
). then you tell it what to do. the usual directive is
\table\bye
if you want to test another font, then respond \table\vfill\eject\init
and the "what font"
question will come up again. you can preview the result, or print it out for reference.
the indices on the top/bottom/sides of the table will identify the addresses of the cells,
which is what the last argument of \DeclareMathSymbol
wants.
As barbara mentioned, you can use \ensuremath
like this:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{lengthtree}%
{%
name={\ensuremath{L_t}},
description={description here},
sort={L}
}
\begin{document}
In line: \gls{lengthtree}. In math mode:
\[
\gls{lengthtree}
\]
\printglossary[title={List of Symbols}]
\end{document}
The arguments against \ensuremath
come down to two main issues (see When not to use \ensuremath for math macro?):
Firstly, you might end up with $
inside the argument of \ensuremath
. This won't occur in this example, as the argument of \ensuremath
is being explicitly set to L_t
.
Secondly, there is an issue of semantics. Following this line of argument, you should define the entry without \ensuremath
and do $\gls{lengthtest}$
, which is fine in the document text that you type, but this will cause a problem in the glossary where the style doesn't automatically shift to math mode when it comes to the entry name. Personally, I think \ensuremath
is okay in this context, but for the purists who can't stand it, here's an alternative solution:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{lengthtree}%
{%
name={$L_t$},
text={L_t},
description={description here},
sort={L}
}
\begin{document}
In line: $\gls{lengthtree}$. In math mode:
\[
\gls{lengthtree}
\]
\printglossary[title={List of Symbols}]
\end{document}
Both the above examples produce:
Best Answer
The Web page
http://www.onemathematicalcat.org/MathJaxDocumentation/TeXSyntax.htm
has a very detailed explanation of each LaTeX command that is interpreted by MathJax.
The commands are of course explained in the LaTeX manual or in many user's guide; the commands that are labeled "AMS" are described in the documentation of amsmath.
A particularly recommended guide about math in LaTeX is "Math mode" by Herbert Voß (although more focused on usage in LaTeX).