[texhax] Misplaced parentheses

Donald Arseneau asnd at triumf.ca
Sat Oct 30 16:59:40 CEST 2010


"Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)" <P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk> writes:

> Donald Arseneau wrote:
> 
> > 2) The character d in computer modern math italic has the wrong
> > bounding box. This is a typical Knutian ad-hoc-hack so that
> > "dx" looks like a differential instead of d times x.  Compare
> > $d\vrule = \l\vrule$.
> 
> I confess that, when I read this, I was shaken to the core.
> I know that one must expect one's idols to have feet of clay,
> but to learn that Don had fudged mathit "d" so that differentials
> would look better was not something that I had expected.

> This is, in part, explained by Donald's analysis of the
> bounding box, but one also finds in "mathit.mf" :
> 
> 	ligtable "d": "Y" kern u#, "Z" kern-u#, "j" kern-2u#, "f" kern-3u#, % $d:$

I was quoting from memory, and I think the absence of italic 
correction (kern with skew character) is the major contributor.
There *is* a difference in bounding box (d has no white-space
side bearing whereas l has a fair bit).  But I was being sloppy
and jumbling it all together.

Also, Don's reasoning is mere surmise.  Having the same first name
confers no telepathic connection.

-- 
Donald Arseneau                          asnd at triumf.ca


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