# “Have you ever wanted to type in Peanese? Now you can!” A new LaTeX package for typesetting “Principia Mathematica”

As part of the Principia Rewrite project I am undertaking, I created and published a new LaTeX package for typesetting Principia Mathematica. It is creatively named ‘principia’ and covers all notations through Volume I. Updates to include Volumes II and III are planned.

If you ever wanted to type square dots, now you can! Just input “\pmdot” – or, if you want two dots, “\pmdott”, and so on. What about Principia‘s famous eight-pointed asterisk and slightly-raised dot for theorem numbering? Now you can just type “\pmast” and “\pmcdot” to reproduce them! Here’s a sample picture of the result (here’s the corresponding page of Principia Vol. I):

What about Principia‘s notoriously misaligned existential quantifier? (It was originally typeset by rotating an “E” backwards, causing it to be partly below the text line.) Now you can just type “\pmsome{z}” to get Principia‘s symbol! (You can also type “\pmSome” to get the symbol without an argument.) Here’s a sample (and the corresponding page in the original):

There’s a lot more included in the package: the slightly rounder class intersection and union signs; the analogues for relations with dots in them; the circumflex for class and relation symbols; and of course, the rotated iota for definite descriptions. For more details, check out the package documentation! Comments and suggestions are welcome.

## 2 thoughts on ““Have you ever wanted to type in Peanese? Now you can!” A new LaTeX package for typesetting “Principia Mathematica””

1. Cool package! I think the spacing around the dots needs to be impoved to be more even, it seems to stick to the (.

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• Thanks for that nice suggestion. The spacing has been fixed to make more space between the scope dots and parentheses (and also connectives and the theorem-sign). Whenever it is updated (whether with the Volume II notations or sooner), the changes will be reflected in the package.

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