Question

I’m trying to insert some symbols from LaTeX Math Symbols into my LaTeX document: under the relational symbols heading, I want join (⨝) and square supset (⊐).

They both have a little b symbol after them. What does that mean; how do I insert them into my doc? I tried adding them ignoring the b but it seemed to error and not work.

I’m using the small Mac install of LaTeX.

Answer 1

They’re using meta-LaTeX on you: that is a superscript ‘b’ ($ indicates a short math expression and the caret is the superscript).

What they’re indicating is that there is a footnote. It is shown in the ‘Binary Operation Symbols’ section.

$^b$ Not predefined in a format based on {\tt basefont.tex}. Use one of the style options {\tt oldlfont}, {\tt newlfont}, {\tt amsfonts} or {\tt amssymb}.

So, if you are seeing an error, that would indicate to me that you are using a basefont format. Try one of the style options listed in the footnote and see if you have more luck. As explained below,

\usepackage{newlfont}

is worth a try. That should enable symbols such as \Join.