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Re: Suggestions

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg111650] Re: Suggestions
  • From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
  • Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 05:12:34 -0400 (EDT)

Yes, that works. But it seems unnecessarily indirect. When I'm typing a 
text cell, I hate to interrupt the flow of thought by going to a 
different cell to create the fraction, then put it into the text cell.

What might be better is a Format menu entry for changing the fraction 
size change.

Actually, the problem is even worse than fractions: integral signs, 
summation signs, etc., whose height one should be able to change easily 
(without the kludge of selecting the characters and specifying a 
different point size -- which then gets messed-up when you print or 
change to a different screen environment, such as Presentation).

The interface design issue becomes how much does one want to tolerate on 
the Format menu, and how.

On 8/8/2010 7:22 AM, David Park wrote:
> One can control whether fractions change their script size and other
> features with the FractionBoxOptions.
>
> fraction = Style[(a + b)/c,
>     FractionBoxOptions ->  {AllowScriptLevelChange ->  False}];
>
> Then to write a Text cell with the fraction:
> 1) Write the text and leave a place for the Inline cell.
> 2) Put fraction into the Inline cell and evaluate in place....
>
> From: Murray Eisenberg [mailto:murray at math.umass.edu]
>
> ...as to size of typeset fractions: the often unpleasant small size
> is akin to the default behavior the "gold standard" of mathematical
> typesetting, namely, LaTeX. There the size of fractions in in-line math
> automatically shrinks, but if you want to resize it larger, you can
> explicitly do so by inserting a markup command to say to use display
> style, which sets numerator and denominator in normal size -- with the
> result, of course, that the line with such an in-line fraction becomes
> higher than normal and extra inter-line leading has to be introduced
> (automatically), which can lead to unpleasant results.
>
> (So what mechanism would you want to control fraction size, and how
> would you want the inter-line spacing to be handled. (AFAIK, Mathematica
> does not a distinction between typesetting in-line math and display math.)

-- 
Murray Eisenberg                     murray at math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower      phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts                413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street            fax   413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305


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