I assume the blackboard bold was exactly that. An attempt to reproduce the printer's bold on a blackboard. The printer was emulating the pen; I bet if you use a quill or other broad-nibbed pen you can do normal weight and bold quite easily.
At some point the printers started emulating the blackboard, and TeX set everything in stone.
It's realted to the convention of putting a wiggly underline on your named vectors. That's an editor's instruction to the typesetter to use bold weight characters. That convention hasn't been very widely emulated in print yet (thank goodness).
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Date: 2007-06-01 05:55 pm (UTC)At some point the printers started emulating the blackboard, and TeX set everything in stone.
It's realted to the convention of putting a wiggly underline on your named vectors. That's an editor's instruction to the typesetter to use bold weight characters. That convention hasn't been very widely emulated in print yet (thank goodness).