Rather than replying three times, first let me say "thanks" to Mikael and
Wolfgang for their suggestions.
Interestingly (to me) I found the looks of Mikael's \dm{...} example to
look good, but when I changed it to \im{...} I found the top of the 4 to be
too close to the horizontal line. (A bit more on this below.)
On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 20:07 (+0200), Hans Hagen via ntg-context wrote:
> On 9/6/2025 7:35 PM, Jim wrote:
>> I think you should mention that math isn't going to look the same.
>> For example, attached are two PDFs
>> -> plain tex: $3\over 4$
>> -> context: \im{\frac{3}{4}}
>> As can be seen, in ConTeXt there is a much bigger space between the '3' and
>> the horizontal line. (I *really* don't want to step on toes or sound like
>> a complete ingrate, especially in light of the large amount of effort
>> (AIUI) which has gone into math typesetting, but I strongly prefer the
>> plain TeX version.)
> it has a lot to do with consistency ... putting stuff next to each other,
> more complex formulas and so on; all is configurable (see manual) and we've
> chosen values that work well with the hundreds of pages and thousands of
> formulas we looked at
>> To help plain TeX (and maybe LaTeX) refugees understand that things which
>> look different may not be due to them doing something wrong, pointing out
>> some examples where there are some typesetting differences (I assume by
>> design) may make the adoption of ConTeXt more expeditious for some people.
> context math is definitely not for those who like to mix lots of \, \!, \:
> or whatevers in formulas
<snip>
Trust me, I don't *like* playing with spacing tweaks. Maybe I am having a
bit of OCD about this, but looking at \im{frac{3}{4}} triggers my inner
typographer (or some other annoying part of my psyche :-) and tells me I
can't live with that.
For the case of \im{\frac{3}{4}}, Wolfgang's suggestion of
\setupmathfraction[strut=no,distance=both,topdistance=1pt,bottomdistance=1pt]
does the trick... when there is no descender in the numerator, I believe
(and I admit that beauty is in the eye of the beholder) that the numerator
should not be as far above the horizontal line as when there is a
descender, even at the cost of the 3's being at different heights in this:
\im{\frac {3}{4} = \frac {3g}{4g}}
Clearly YMMV.
So it would seem (to me, anyway) that being able to produce math output
that (almost) never needs tweaking is only possible if there is universal
agreement on exactly how math should be typeset. I conclude there isn't
universal agreement on that point, which means either people can learn to
live with the defaults, or they will need to perform some tweaking.
Which gets me back to my suggestion for Hraban's book. Perhaps some basics
and a pointer to the math manual is all that is needed, but if his book is
going to be useful for refugees, then I think an example or two of how
things are different in ConTeXt could help readers out.
> ...
> basically one can set up a plain machinery but we wonder if that looks
> better on the average
Hard to say. I would assume DEK likes the way his math engine worked (even
though I believe in The TeXBook he admits that occasional tweaking will be
necessary). But I suppose that doesn't speak to "on average".
I'd like to conclude by saying (as previously mentioned) I don't want to
step the toes (or be seen as stepping on toes) of people who put in great
efforts to provide such an excellent tool to the world (for free!) and who
are always ready to help on this mailing list. I sincerely appreciate
everyone who makes contributions (large or small) to ConTeXt and the
ConTeXt community.
Jim
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