Re: defining the script sizes via font dimens

• To: Matthias Clasen <clasen@pong.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de>, Frank.Mittelbach@Uni-Mainz.DE
• Subject: Re: defining the script sizes via font dimens
• From: "Y&Y, Inc." <support@YandY.com>
• Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 14:58:20 -0400
• Cc: math-font-discuss@cogs.susx.ac.uk

```At 07:55 PM 97/10/18 +0200, Matthias Clasen wrote:

>PS.: And what about the new font dimensions for math spacing (ie \thinmuskip
>and friends) ? Has anybody experiences with customizing those values ? Should
>we expect them to vary between font families ?

I think there is an endless reservoir of things one could put in.
In CM several quite different things are tied into one parameter. For example,
the defaultrulethickness is used for several different spacing purposes that
lead to conflict and compromised in fonts other than CM (particularly
w.r.t radicals and fractions and limits).   Then, the assumption
is made that various `axes' are all at the same height (as they are in CM).
This again leads to problems in non-CM fonts (e.g. the operator `axis'
need not be the same as the delimiter `axis' --- and isn't in Lucida New
Math).

One could imagine adding more font dimensions to deal with some of this,
but it is probably pointless since it is the hard-wired TeX math typesetting
machinery that ought to look at these new parameters and use them...

Berthold K.P. Horn