MathTimePro (was: Status of Lucida and Y&Y TeX)

[Paulo Ney de Souza]

    >From w.a.schmidt at gmx.net  Tue Aug  2 05:15:35 2005
    >From: Walter Schmidt <w.a.schmidt at gmx.net>
    >To: Paulo Ney de Souza <desouza at Math.Berkeley.EDU>
    >CC: YANDYTEX at lists.ucc.ie
    >Subject: Re: MathTimePro (was: Status of Lucida and Y&Y TeX)
    >
    >Paulo Ney de Souza schrieb:
    >
    >Well, $h^ef$ is a hairy case and I cannnot agree that MathTime looks
    >substantially better.

I expliciltly mentioned in my letter that some of these - including the
the $h^ef$ case are inherited from MathTime!

    >> When you try something like $$K[\alpha])];$$ you can see the parens
    >> and the braces and the rest all jumbled up and almost touching each
    >> other. See the much nicer spacing you get with CM.
    >
    >An accumulation of delimiters like this will _alway_ look ugly.
    >Under normal circumstances, the outer delimiters should be enlarged,
    >anyway:  $ ... [\alpha]\big) ... $.

Yes, you can also do kerning by hand, and insert \! all over your file,
but what we are discussing here is not ways to make it look good, is the
font itself (raw).

    >> One of the most visible ones is the parens outside math-mode being
    >> smaller than the normal-size in math-mode. If you have a formula at
    >> the end of the expresion, like :
    >>
    >>    ..... text here $(x=4)$.)
    >>
    >> the outside parens are SMALLER than the inside ones!
    >
    >The MathTime fonts include the round parentheses from the "Times"
    >text font, so you don't see any difference, when your text font is,
    >indeed, "Times".  MathTime Pro, in contrast, comes with parens that
    >were initially designed to blend best with "TimesNR".

That is a design decision that has very little reason-d-etre ...
Michael can try making a font that will blend with everything ...
it will probably not look good.

    >Both the MathTime and the MathTime Pro fonts, however, are to be
    >used in conjunction with other text fonts, too.  Thus, the mismatch
    >of "text" and "math" parens is -- strictly speaking -- the normal
    >case and can hardly be avoided.  I agree that there is a certain
    >problem, but I'd say that it does not occur too frequently in
    >practice.

That depends on your practice! I have a book with zillions of math
formula inthe text and when I swtiched to MTPro the difference in
size of the parens was visible all oer the place.

    >When using MT-Pro together with Times (rather than TimesNR), you may
    >try out the following workaround:
    >
    >\usepackage{mtpro}
    >\DeclareMathDelimiter{(}{\mathopen}{operators}{40}{largesymbols}{0}
    >\DeclareMathDelimiter{)}{\mathclose}{operators}{41}{largesymbols}{1}
    >
    >As a result, the round parens from the current text font (regardless of
    >what it is!) will be used in math mode, too.  Note, however, that these
    >parens may turn out to be too light or too small in certain situations
    >-- that's why this is _not_ the default behavior of the mtpro package.

That makes things even worst! with the distance in between the bulge of
the parens and the symbols it enclose getting bigger.

    >> the diminute kerning of ;
    >
    >I'm sorry; I cannot see any problem here.

Try enlarging it some 10 times and you can see it.

    >To summarize, I cannot agree that the problems you have reported can
    >be regarded as serious.  With all due respect:  Describing (in public)
    >the MathTime Pro fonts as "defective" and "not anything that you can
    >use professionaly" just because of these issues is somewhat over the
    >top.   Yet I acknowledge that there is room for improvements, and I am
    >going to forward your bug report to the font designer.
    >
    >best wishes
    >Walter Schmidt

Michael already know about it, I have personaly told him and have also
filled a complaint with the distributor, there is no use in beating the
dead hose even further ...

Paulo Ney