amsmathmath-modemathtools
I read on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Mathematics:
The
mathtoolspackage fixes someamsmathquirks and adds some useful
settings, symbols, and environments toamsmath.
It sounds like "mathtools has everything that amsmath has and more", isn't it?
Are there cases when it is justified to use amsmath instead of mathtools?
In other words: Is mathtools "always" better?
If you take a look at the documentation for bm, it says that if the bold fonts are not allocated, it will use the correct symbol—if it exists—by using \boldmath, but that this is slower. If there is not a bold version of the symbol, it uses poor man's bold.
I think that in most cases, you want to use \bm.
AMS alignments box and measure each cell anyway so you can check if the cell height is larger than a strut you can locally increase the strut height.
Code updated to use > instead of < so it opens up big entries not small ones:-)
Also does not do anything on first row to avoid adding space above the display.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mathtools}% includes amsmath
\makeatletter
\newlength\minalignvsep
\def\align@preamble{%
&\hfil
\setboxz@h{\@lign$\m@th\displaystyle{##}$}%
\ifnum\row@>\@ne
\ifdim\ht\z@>\ht\strutbox@
\dimen@\ht\z@
\advance\dimen@\minalignvsep
\ht\strutbox\dimen@
\fi\fi
\strut@
\ifmeasuring@\savefieldlength@\fi
\set@field
\tabskip\z@skip
&\setboxz@h{\@lign$\m@th\displaystyle{{}##}$}%
\ifnum\row@>\@ne
\ifdim\ht\z@>\ht\strutbox@
\dimen@\ht\z@
\advance\dimen@\minalignvsep
\ht\strutbox@\dimen@
\fi\fi
\strut@
\ifmeasuring@\savefieldlength@\fi
\set@field
\hfil
\tabskip\alignsep@
}
\makeatother
\minalignvsep.15em
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.20\linewidth}
\textbf{Nice}
\begin{align*}
x &= 73 \times 2\\
&= 146
\end{align*}
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.25\linewidth}
\textbf{Not so nice}
\begin{align*}
x &= \frac{146}{10}\\
&= \frac{73}{5}
\end{align*}
\end{minipage}%
\bigskip\par\noindent
\textbf{Manual Tweak Options:}
\medskip\par\noindent
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.25\linewidth}
\textbf{Tweak jot}
\setlength{\jot}{8pt}% tweak
\begin{align*}
x &= \frac{146}{10}\\
&= \frac{73}{5}
\end{align*}
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.30\linewidth}
\textbf{Add vertical space}
\begin{align*}
x &= \frac{146}{10}\\[5pt]% tweak
&= \frac{73}{5}
\end{align*}
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.30\linewidth}
\textbf{spreadlines}
\begin{spreadlines}{0.8em}% tweak
\begin{align*}
x &= \frac{146}{10}\\
&= \frac{73}{5}
\end{align*}
\end{spreadlines}
\end{minipage}%
\end{document}
Best Answer
I believe that the answer has been provided, mostly in the comments but here is a short summary:
The
mathtoolspackage loads theamsmathpackage, if it has not already been loaded. This is common in many packages that need to ensure that dependencies are loaded. If you have a look inmathtools.styline 60, you will see:As such if you only load
mathtools, you will have both packages loaded and you do not need to\usepackage{amsmath}in your preamble. To see this you can run the following minimal:Certainly
mathtoolsis not a replacement package foramsmath. This is clear from the package author's comments in the abstract and the introduction:Hope the above will help you a bit more as to how to find your way around LaTeX and the many packages that are available.