Yeah, TeX name autocomplete or better yet free unicode description search triggered by \ is the obvious direction. (think github emoji search, like how :ship also offers :anchor: and :package:)

https://kasperpeulen.github.io/PressAndHold/Unicode/ was a novel attempt. [source: https://github.com/kasperpeulen/PressAndHold] The trick is you long-press any letter, e.g. press Shift+A and don't release => you get a popup offering 𝐴 ∀ 𝒜 𝔄 (use arrors & Enter to select) Long-pressing letters is amusingly unnatural, I have to make a conscious effor :-)

Apropos unicode notations, that demo was made for https://github.com/kasperpeulen/CoffeeTeX, a unicode AsciiMath-inspired notation.

Yeah, the original design philosophy of AsciiMath was to make that input symbol something in ASCII that looks kind of like the desired symbol. The idea of supporting Unicode as an alternative is reasonable idea and probably one we should look at (feel free to make a pull request).

I see unicode as both an alternative rendering for text based devices, and an alternative input (because on my keyboard, the right Alt key followed by a gives me α, which is faster than typing alpha)

A couple of ideas:

- Keyboard shortcuts, like for diacritics on european keyboards.

- On screen keyboard, like for phones and tablets.

But entry is not the important part - rendering is.

> But entry is not the important part - rendering is.

If that was true, TeX already has us covered.

TeX does not render in my email, in hacker news, in reddit, in ascii files (that I edit with leafpad or vim or anything else depending on my needs)