Re: latex mode, nexted subscripts are unreadable

[Tim Hesterberg <timh@insightful.com>]

Thanks.  I think I'm set now.

(1) I've now added this to my .emacs latex-mode-hook
	     ; Modify ratio of font sizes for suscripts; I was getting
	     ; small unreadable nested fonts with these at the default 0.8
	     (set-face-attribute 'subscript nil :height '0.82)
	     (set-face-attribute 'superscript nil :height '0.82)
That should be enough for my use; thanks for your suggestion.
.82 is enough to handle nested subscripts; .88 would handle an extra
level of nesting.  I'm using the default Courier New 10 as my normal font.

(2) I mentioned the "separate bug" about raising of nested suscripts.
I thought this only occurred after changing the height attribute;
but this occurs even without that, it just wasn't apparent to me before
(sorry).

I don't think this is that important, and my guess is that the
programming required to handle differential raising of different
levels of nested suscripts would get onerous, and might affect performance.
Hence it is probably not worth the time it would take to do.

Thank you very much.

Tim

>    I tried evaluating a modified defface definition  (in a temporary file,
>    not by changing tex-mode.el) but this had no effect.
>
>I believe that defface is like defvar et al; if the symbol is already
>defined, it won't do anything.  You can call modify-face or
>set-face-attribute from Elisp to change existing faces.
>    
>    $a_{b^c}$ makes $c$ elevated at the same level as the $c$ in $a^c$;
>    the raising is done relative to $a$ rather than to $b$.
>    Maybe this is a separate bug?
>
>Maybe.  I believe this is the code in tex-mode.el that does the raising
>and lowering.  I don't see any reason offhand for the different face to
>affect it, but unfortunately I really can't say for sure.
>
>(defun tex-font-lock-suscript (pos)
>...
>
>Best,
>Karl