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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: space in equations in LaTeX
Message-ID: <1991Mar20.021516.9425@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 91 02:15:16 GMT
References: <97C967B93601641D@Post-Office.UH.EDU>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
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BRONWEN@SBCCVM.BITNET (Bronwen Heuer) writes:

>I have a user who is very dissatisfied with the space allowed
>around equal signs, plus signs and some other places in LaTeX.

Is your user anywhere near typographically qualified?
What TeX does is extremely close to what high quality
math typesetting in math journals looks like.
Maybe your user is conditioned by the apalling spacing
of some dtp product used earlier?

>She has gone in manually and added thickspace and medium space
>in many locations but would like a more global solution.

In fact, I can bring up arguments why the TeX default spacing
is somewhat too large.
 
>Any suggestions?

Yes. Look up the parameters \thickmuskip, \medmuskip, and
\thinmuskip in the plain format, and change their
values. The thing that is hard-wired about math spacing
is the decision process where to insert wht sort of space.
See for this the table on page 170. Of Knuth's book thatis.
LaTeX users must have this book, because Lamports book
is only about the extensions contained in LaTeX.

Victor.