Blissfully unaware of mathds for years I have used $\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Q}$ and so on. No one has complained but is there a best practice on choosing between mathbb and mathds for these?
There has been discussion here of using mathds for 1 and for A. Are there other technical issues I should know about in making my choice?
It is good to be reminded that from a LaTeX team member's viewpoint font choice is just a style choice. But from a user's viewpoint some choices would be unacceptably odd and others would be not best.
Manuel brings up a technical issue that is decisive for me. Even using the amsmath and amsfonts packages you do not have \mathds. Of course I can easily add the dsfont package but I can't assume everyone I deal with has it, or wants to add packages for me.
While mathbb only handles uppercase letter, mathds add numerals. As far as I can see looking around online, neither handles lowercase letters (which you probably would not want to see doublestruck).
mathds package (version 1.111, the PDF file says November 29, 2006), besides uppercase letters, \mathds supports the figure 1 and lowercase letters h and k (see page 4).
\mathdsis presumably defined in some package you haven't stated and gives a double struck alphabet. Like any font choice it is just a style choice.dsfontpackage provides\mathds{..}alphabet. If you want to use that alphabet, but with the usual command, just do\let\mathbb\mathds.