[texhax] xfrac in bold

[Morten Høgholm]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:27:52 -0400, Alexandru Scorpan  
<ascorpan at math.ufl.edu> wrote:

> Suggestion for some small improvements for xfrac with mathpazo:
>
> 1. Adjust spacing when \sfrac is used under \boldsymbol (which might be  
> not be the best way to get the virgule/solidus to be bold, but seems to  
> work).  I'dd add \mkern2mu to the numerator, see example below.
>
> 2. Make \sfrac work under \bm.  The example below produces an error.

Mostly because of typos... ;-)

> \[ \boldsymbol{\sfrac{11}{11}\
> 	\bm{\sfrac{11}{11}} \]

When wanting something done to a package, the best way is usually to write  
the author. I see now that the author's email isn't printed in the manual,  
but it is listed at the very top of the dtx file. Anyway, that doesn't  
matter much, 'cause I'm the author and we have had email exchanges within  
the last month or so - I was hoping I had left some kind of (non-bad)  
impression...

You might also want to look closer at the bm manual, because it states  
that it actually overwrites \boldsymbol. Using the \boldsymbol command  
 from amsbsy alone works.

You are right however that there is a problem with using a bold face /  
with mathpazo. The reason is that there is no bold face / in the pazo  
fonts! It comes from the standard Palatino/Palladio text font, so... Using  
the commercial PAmath fonts solves the problem.

That was \boldsymbol, what about \bm? Well, in the bm manual, the section  
"Strange failures" mentions that sometimes you may get weird error  
messages if the contents contains something that isn't regular math  
commands. In those cases simply add an extra level of braces.

However I see that I have not provided any kind of detection af math  
version. That is something that could be considered for a future release.  
Please experiment with the package (that's what the x is for :-) and let  
me know if you get something useful out of it.
-- 
Morten Høgholm