Andy Buckley writes (via the cam.ctan.org upload daemon):

Macros for making math bold or italic according to context

The maybebm and maybeit macros can be used in math
expressions to make the arguments typeset as bold or italic
respectively if the surrounding context is appropriate. They
are useful for writing user macros for use in general contexts.

maybebm is especially appropriate when section titles contain
math expressions, since the title will appear bold but the
header and table of contents usually replicate the title in
normal width.

maybeit performs a similar role to mathrm{} but the math
expression will be italicised if the surrounding text is.
maybeitsubscript is provided to shift subscripts to the left
if the expression is italicised.

i've installed the package as requested, in macros/latex/contrib/maybemath. thanks for the upload.

Robin Fairbairns

For the CTAN team