mathcal letters
Mimi Burbank
mimi at CSIT.FSU.EDU
Tue Apr 6 09:07:11 CEST 2004
On Apr06 08:40AM, Angela Partain wrote:
> Hello!
> I have a question about using mathcal letters. In all the years I've been using tex, I've never been able to get it to work properly. I was able to fix the problem, but now I have a situation that's not working.
first of all, \mathcal{A} is the proper usage, and requires
no definition of a "font" to use...
it also requires a $ or something because it is *math*, not text.
> When I use {\cal A}, \cal{A}, {\mathcal A}, or \mathcal{A}, I get an A in Courier type.
{\cal A} should work, unless your tex installation is really old, but
this is the old latex2.09 way of doing things. The current
LaTeX2e uses \mathcal{argument}.... it turns what is inside
the braces into the calligraphic font.
> My fix has always been to put this command in the preamble: \font\mcal=MTMS
> and then type \text{\mcal A} (in math) or just {\mcal A} in the text.
remove this def... it is built into LaTeX.
> This works fine unless the mcal letter needs to be sub- or superscript. In that case, it appears the same size as a normal letter, rather than superscript size. I tried this:
> \text{\scriptsize {\mcal A}}, to no avail.
well - if you look at your log file, you will see that this is
an error.. mcal can't be used in text mode ;-)
take the following and latex it and see what happens..
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\verb|\mathcal| will work, with \textbf{no} definition
saying what font to use.
\verb+\mathcal+ is a \textbf{math} definition. It requires
a dollar mark; you don't use it in ``text''.
$$ \alpha = \mathcal{A} + B_{\mathcal{A}}$$
\end{document}
mimi
More information about the yandytex
mailing list