[texhax] parenthesis problem in LaTeX

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009, Tom Schneider wrote:

> Reinhard:
>
>> Tom Schneider writes:
>> > Here's a puzzle for the sharp folks on this list!
>>
>> Hi Tom,
>> the problem is obviously that unlike "silent", the word "ring"
>> contains the letter "g" which has a descender, as Steve explained
>> already.
>>
>> How can you achieve that all braces have the same size?  There are
>> many possible solutions.  You could use struts or phantoms.
>>
>> However, there is a very elegant solution.  All *tex programs except
>> Knuth's tex itself are using the eTeX extensions for a couple of years
>> now.
>>
>> $ pdftex \\relax\\bye
>> This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.1415926-1.40.9 (Web2C 7.5.7)
>>  %&-line parsing enabled.
>> entering extended mode  <===========
>> No pages of output.
>> Transcript written on texput.log.
>>
>> You are using \left and \right already, but eTeX provides a new
>> primitive called \middle.  See:
>>
>>   http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/e-tex/v2/doc/etex_man.pdf
>>
>> section 3.9 on page 12.
>
> Ok, thanks.  I'm unsure how it would be used in this case.
>
> \left( ..part A ring .. \right)
> \middle??
> \left( ..part B silent .. \right)

I think Reinhard meant

\left( ... part A ring ... \middle)
\middle( ... part B silent ... \right)

This will make all the brackets of the same height. However, from what I 
remember (and I may be wrong here), \middle does not change the spacing at 
all, so you may need to add spaces before \middle) and after 
\middle(.

Aditya