[texhax] Font Size Question

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 22 June 2010 Axel E. Retif wrote:

 > On  22 Jun, 2010, at 12:46, Thomas Jacobs wrote:
 > 
 > > Karl and Alex,
 > > 
 > > Thanks very much for the replies.  The link Karl shared helps me to
 > > know that I cannot use tiny if my base font is 12 and I am limited to
 > > a minimum 7 pt size.
 > 
 > Yes, you can:
 > 
 > \documentclass[12pt]{book}
 > \renewcommand{\tiny}{\fontsize{7pt}{8pt}\selectfont}
 > \begin{document}
 > Normal size in 12pt. {\tiny This should be in 7pt}. And 12pt again.
 > \end{document}

Sorry for the late response.  But I woudn't redefine \tiny.  I simply
wouldn't use it.  My proposal is to redefine \tiny this way:

    \renewcommand{\tiny}{\errmessage{<some text>}}

Then LaTeX aborts and complains loudly if \tiny is used accidentally.

Problematic are subscripts and superscripts in math formulas.  They
are obviously controlled by \DeclareMathSizes.   

    http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/tutorial10/mathsize2.pdf

Since there is the \DeclareMathSizes macro, I assume that \tiny is
ignored anyway when typesetting math formulas.

I've seen in this tread that the .clo files were mentioned.  It's
quite odd to point casual users to them.  There's no need to change
them.  They are 16 years old now and if there is really the need to
change them, I expect that a macro package is available which does
such changes.  You can be sure that if such a macro package doesn't
exist (after 16 years) it's undesirable to change anything at all.

Convincing a casual LaTeX user to modify a .clo file is almost as
wrong as to convince him to buy "The TeXbook" in order to solve LaTeX
problems.

Please note that LaTeX's default values for scriptsize and
scriptscriptsize are fine for Computer Modern fonts because they
contain variants which are especially designed for these sizes.  When
using any other font, {sub,super}scripts are scaled-down versions of a
10pt font.  They appear too thin and should better be enlarged a
little bit anyway.  It requires some experimentation because the
visual appearence is what counts.

BTW, the arguments of \DeclareMathSizes are numbers, but they aren't
restricted to integers.

Just for the record, I received the newest TUGboat release today and
there is a related article "Mathematical typefaces in TeX documents"
written by Amit Raj Dhawan (page 27).  It provides samples of a math
formula typeset with various fonts.  There is also a comparison
between "cmr5" and "cmr10 at 5pt".

Please apologise the advertising. :)

    http://tug.org/join.html

Regards,
  Reinhard

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