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Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

(corrected) You can use a Unicode encoding (by means of \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} or \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}) to type a lot of special characters (in fact, the × character I typed instead of \times is such a character, and works with utf8x, but not with utf8).

Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

(corrected) You can use a Unicode encoding (by means of \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} or \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}) to type a lot of special characters (in fact, the × character I typed instead of \times is such a character, and works with utf8x, but not with utf8). Using another package (textalpha) you can even type θ in your source text and get (more or tess) the expected result.

Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

More seriously, you could use a Unicode encoding (by means of \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}) to type a lot of special characters (in fact, the × character I typed instead of \times is such a character). I bet that, internally, × gets converted to {\ensuremath\times} or such.

Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

(corrected) You can use a Unicode encoding (by means of \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} or \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}) to type a lot of special characters (in fact, the × character I typed instead of \times is such a character, and works with utf8x, but not with utf8).

Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

Suppose you could use \times just in your text (I mean, like in 7×8=7\times 8=56), and \times would automagically switch to math mode (with proper spacing enabled and spaces ignored). How (and when) would you exit from the math mode ?

More seriously, you could use a Unicode encoding (by means of \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}) to type a lot of special characters (in fact, the × character I typed instead of \times is such a character). I bet that, internally, × gets converted to {\ensuremath\times} or such.