# [NTG-context] math spacing

Mojca Miklavec mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com
Sun Mar 13 21:26:31 CET 2011

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 13:16, Hans van der Meer wrote:
>
> It might be that I am missing something here. But I don not understand why in the math expression below the spacing behind the letters is different. With this behaviour it seems impossible to name a variable PYR and have it typeset as such.
>
> Hans van der Meer
>
>
> \starttext
> $\tfd Q,Y,N,P,Y,Z \quad PYR$
> \stoptext

I don't know enough about the zillions of math parameters in fonts,
but you will notice exactly the same behaviour in plain TeX.

If you need to have a variable PYR, you should probably do
\def\PYR{PY\kern-2ptR}
$\PYR$
(modify kerning at your own will; you might also want to use em
instead of pt units, or you could use \! if you don't need to be too
accurate)

The extensive original spacing is most probably related to the fact
that in mathematics you usually mean multiplication when you write one
letter after the other. In other cases (for example when you have a
function like "sin", "cos", "lim", ...) the spacing will look better.

Still, the fact that there is such a huge difference between PY and YR
looks more like a tiny font bug to me (but it is already present in
CM, so LM is unlikely to change it, at least until they switch to
OpenType Math).

Mojca