How to type italic symbols in math mode properly?

#1

Spacing is a little narrower when I use math-it. Are there better ways to typeset italic letters in math mode? The following illustrates f<around*|(||)> and <math-it|f><around*|(||)>, respectively.
image

#2

Hi @luke36 and welcome to the forum. Could you post the source code for the two typeset strings as well?

#3

You are right. I’ve updated the post.

#4

On Linux Ubuntu, with TeXmacs 2.1.4, I get

<math|f<around*|(||)>>
image

<math|<math-it|f><around*|(||)>>
image

I can’t figure out if there is a difference. Inside the TeXmacs window, at 100% zoom, they look different, but much less as they are in your case—moreover, to me, the math-it f looks more spaced from the parenthesis than the plain one. In the images that I pasted here they look rather the same. Maybe I am just judging wrong in one of the two cases.

What happens to you may be a bug. What OS and TeXmacs version are you using? We might report it on the bug tracker at Savannah.

On the other hand, I do not understand the premise of your question. Math mode uses automatically italic letters; what is the function of math-it?

#5

Thanks! That’s weird. I’m on Ubuntu 24.04 with TeXmacs 2.1.2, but it looks the same on 2.1.4. Maybe font or something is wrong; I’ll try to figure out. I use math-it when I need to type multi-letter symbol in italic.