I have a relatively large but sparse matrix (say 20×20). Maple has no problem displaying it on a screen because maple does not force the columns to be aligned when the matrix is large enough : element 6,3 might not be directly underneath element 5,3.
In LaTeX, on the other hand, the width of a matrix is at least the sum of the widths of the widest elements in each column. This does not fit on a paper at all.
So, is there a way to make "maple-style" matrices in LaTeX?
this
|1 0 0 0 (very wide element) | |(very wide element) 0 0 0 0 |
instead of
|1 0 0 0 (very wide element) | |(very wide element) 0 0 0 0 |
Best Answer
From the example given, it looks as though there's no common alignment between the rows. In which case, all you really want is a list of numbers with a decent separation between and the appropriate braces either side. So the following would do that (using
amsmath
for nice matrices):