# [NTG-context] \pm set too low in MkIV?

Sanjoy Mahajan sanjoy at MIT.EDU
Wed May 7 02:34:35 CEST 2014

> the + aligns on the math axis so one can argue if the type-one variant
> is ok ... so we would need a smaller (less height) + then which would
> look visually weird

Plain TeX doesn't align the plus/minus to the math axis.  Rather, the
minus is aligned to the baseline, and the horizontal stroke of the plus
is above the baseline.  I agree that it looks a bit strange with the
horizontal stroke of the plus sign not aligned with the horizontal
stroke of the plus/minus.  Bt it looks even more jarring to have the
minus below the baseline, because the baseline is such a strong visual
line.

I don't think I've ever the minus below the baseline in a math book, and
it looks very wrong to my eye.

Pagella looks worse than the others, because it has a vertical gap
between the minus and the plus sign, so the depth below the baseline is
even larger.

> (all can be achieved ... but the idea of lm/gyre fonts is to provide an
> acceptable consistent set ... at some point we can think of variants -
> or maybe the fonts have a variant already)

I realize that it's not a ConTeXt problem, but is there a ConTeXt
workaround?  Or better to go to the TeX guts and compute the depth of
the box, then use \raise{}?

-Sanjoy