[texhax] Forcing size changes in exponents

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Mon, 17 Aug 2015 03:03:57 +0200 schrieb Reinhard Kotucha:

> No reasonable book about LaTeX mentions \rm, \it, etc.  Why are people
> still using these macros?

Well I sometimes use them as they are shorter than
\normalfont\rmfamily or \normalfont\itshape. 

Also if you need a font change to italics that works in text and
inside math then 

{\it{abc}}

is shorter than 

\TextOrMath{{\normalfont\itshape abc}}{\mathit{abc}}

So they are imho sometimes useful commands and I'm not quite happy
about the "deprecated war" going on here.  

But the main problem is naturally that many people don't understand
the difference between \itshape and \it, use them only because they
are shorter and then complain when \it\bf doesn't give the expected
output. 



-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/