[Tex/LaTex] Italic/slanted math font and kerning

italic-correctionkerningmath-modesubscripts

I'd like to write a macro for typesetting slanted letters in bold for highlighting vectors. I've used this implemenation:

\newcommand\vect[1]{\text{\bfseries\sffamily\slshape#1\/}}

But I've run into problems with kerning — when I want subscripted vector (like \vect{F}_g), the italic correction (\/) causes there's to wide space but when I omit \/, the space between vector and | is too narrow.

It's the same when I tried it with \mathit macro. So I wonder whether there is any possibility how to handle this in general (not to have \/ written after each vector without subscript.

Best Answer

Your default sans serif font family should have a boldface slanted variant (this is the case with Latin Modern)

\usepackage{lmodern}
\DeclareMathAlphabet{\vect}{OT1}{\sfdefault}{bx}{sl}

Now $\vect{F}_{g}$ will not suffer from the problem.

It's not necessary to use Latin Modern fonts throughout; if you use the standard Computer Modern fonts, the declaration

\DeclareMathAlphabet{\vect}{OT1}{lmss}{bx}{sl}

will do.

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[Tex/LaTex] Math letter’s italic correction

I've nothing to do with txfonts (more exactly, txmi family). Maybe you can use another Times like font package. mathptmx works fine (but it has fewer symbols than txfonts), and if you use XeTeX, you can also use XITS Math for math fonts. Commercial fonts like MathTimePro(2) are also good-looking.

I suggest XITS Math with XeLaTeX:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{XITS}
\setmathfont{XITS Math}
\begin{document}
See $S_1$, $S_2$, $S_3$.
\end{document}

enter image description here

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One way to shift your numerators in an italic context would be

 {\hss\tiny\kern\fontdimen\@ne\font#2\/\kern-\fontdimen\@ne\font\hss}\cr%        Emit numerator [#2]

as for safe ways of looking ahead and adding space or not, you might want to look at latex's definition of \DeclareTextFontCommand which defines \textit and friends to add italic correction at the start or end, depending.

Best Answer

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