mathcal letters

[Angela Partain]

Dear Mimi, Robin, and Troels,

I apologize for the delay in replying.  I've been out of town for a few
days.  I think the problem I am having is with missing fonts, and I am
pretty much out of my league in trying to figure it all out.

I've figured out that I am now (after upgrading to Y&Y 2.2.8) unable to use
any, or most, of the symbols that are available with the amssymb package,
although I was able to use them before.  (Example, \leqslant or \triangleq,
to name two of them, but there's a long list.).   Do you think I need to
purchase more fonts, or is it more likely that I've done something wrong in
the installation of them?  (I received and installed the Mathtime fonts.)

Thanks again for your assistance.
Best,
Angela


----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Fairbairns" <Robin.Fairbairns at CL.CAM.AC.UK>
To: <YANDYTEX at LISTS.UCC.IE>
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: mathcal letters


> mimi writes:
>
> > 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.
>
> so you don't have the font \mathcal is selecting.
>
> > {\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.
>
> provided she has the default caligraphic font.  if she has a times-only
> version, she needs mathtime.sty to designate the relevant mathtime font
> into the correct maths font family.
>
> > > 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.
>
> but this adds to my suspicion that she has a times-only system (though i
> don't recognise the font name mtms).
>
> > > 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  ;-)
>
> no: if she was using maths mode commands to select the character, this
> would indeed happen, but she's not: she has bypassed all latex mechanisms.
>
> > take the following and latex it and see what happens..
> > \documentclass[12pt]{article}
>
> \usepackage[LY1]{mathtime} % or something similar
>
> > \begin{document}
> >
> > \verb|\mathcal| will work, with \textbf{no} definition
> > saying what font to use.
>
> % the mathtime package seems to me the right way to go.  however, i'm a
> % bit uneasy because i don't recognise the font name mtms
>
> > \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}
>
> use \[ ... \] -- see
> http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=dolldoll
>
> (and note the interesting bug in the translation to html that i
> discovered today -- in particular, "$$" disappears in a few places ;-)
>
> robin
>
>