spacing

For feedback and discussion for testers of the MathTime Professional II fonts.

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zedler
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:50 am

spacing

Post by zedler »

Hello,

Please have a look at the spacing of these equations
- $[]_{\langle n\times m\rangle}$ (the brackets touch)
- $Z_{F1}$ (F and 1 spacing)
- $\frac{L_L}{L_R}$ (the subscript L too close to the fraction rule)

Michael
Michael Spivak
Posts: 52
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 2:10 pm

Re: spacing

Post by Michael Spivak »

zedler wrote:Hello,

Please have a look at the spacing of these equations
- $[]_{\langle n\times m\rangle}$ (the brackets touch)
- $Z_{F1}$ (F and 1 spacing)
- $\frac{L_L}{L_R}$ (the subscript L too close to the fraction rule)

Michael
The $\frac{L_L}{L_R}$ is not a font issue. Things are just as bad for
Computer Modern (actually, slightly worse for Computer Modern); it's a matter of how TeX sets fractions in this (somewhat strange) situation.
Notice that for a displayed equation $$\frac{L_L}{L_R}$$ there is no
problem at all. If you really want $frac{L_L}{L_R}$ rather than
$L_L/L_R$, then you would have to adjust spacing yourself (for example, by replacing the _L with something like _{\astrut L} where \astrut was
some strut that had some extra depth to move things up).

I guess I could go and add kerns for upper-case letters and the numeral 1 (which has more space on each side than the other numerals). I'm interested to know how this expression arises. It's uncommon to have a character {\it followed\/} by the factor 1. [Also note that, if you know a bit you can always go in and change any kerning that you would like to adjust to your own specifications: use tftopl to go from mt2mi*.tfm to
mt2mi*.pl, go into mt2mi*.pl with any reasonable text editor to change, or add, a kern, and then use pltotf to go back to the mt2mi*.tfm.

As for $[]$, yes the brackets [almost] touch, but even the brackets in
Computer Modern almost touch. Are you sure this is what you really want, and not something like $[\ ]$ or $[\,]$, etc?
zedler
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:50 am

Re: spacing

Post by zedler »

Hello,

what do you think about the following, is it worth to introduce kerning pairs with the comma?

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{mtpro2}
%\usepackage{MinionPro}
%\usepackage{lucimatx}
%\usepackage{fourierx}
\begin{document}
\[\phi_{N,n}\]
\end{document}

Best,
Michael
Michael Spivak
Posts: 52
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 2:10 pm

Re: spacing

Post by Michael Spivak »

zedler wrote:Hello,

what do you think about the following, is it worth to introduce kerning pairs with the comma?

\[\phi_{N,n}\]
Best,
Michael
This again is not a font question, but a TeX question. A comma in math mode is a "punctuation" (see The TeXBook, pg.154), and the spacing before an ordinary symbol, as given on pg.170, is (1), meaning that there
is a thin space after the punctuation, but only in display and text sizes, not in script and scriptscript styles. So there is no space after the comma.

Moreover, it is not possible to kern the comma with the n, because even
if you put a kern in the tfm file it will be ignored, since the comma, as a punctuation, has its own rules for spacing.

(Similarly, a subscript a+b will not have any space around the + sign, which may or may not bother you. Some typists may decide to add
their own \, in various places of a subscript. It's sort of sad that TeX doesn't provide an option for things of this sort being done automatically, but that's the way it is.)
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