Hi Sigfrid, Slightly editing my quote of you below At 2026-02-12T11:17:01+0100, Sigfrid Lundberg wrote: [...] > I had actually forgotten that I had filed a bug report. > > Inspired by the discussion I looked around in the tmac and font > directories and found some odd definitions.
If you're referring to this: $ git grep -nw sr tmac/ps.tmac tmac/ps.tmac:30:.char \[radicalex] \h'-\w'\[sr]'u'\[radicalex]\h'\w'\[sr]'u' ...which is then fixed by... > ...add[ing] another of my own (in my document) > > .char \[sr] \[u203E] > > then it seems as if the radical and the bar actually connect. ...then that sounds like the exact issue being tracked in Savannah #63179... https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?63179 ...and further, it sounds like the font you're using does in fact _not_ define a radical extension glyph that is positioned, as I put it, "weirdly as hell" relative to its bounding box. > The square root symbol is too bold, but otherwise OK. _That_ issue is being tracked as the one you filed, Savannah #67796. http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?67796 I neglected to say what I thought could be done about that, beyond not using \[sr] and \[radicalex] characters typeset at a larger size than the radicand. Merely "not using" them would typeset nothing in their place, making radical signs invisible, a severe defect. The alternative I had in mind but did not express was having eqn emit (in troff mode) drawing commands to simulate the radical. I'm attaching a crude sketch of what I have in mind. Don't pay too close attention to all the numerical figures in the *roff source; they are present because I didn't use eqn at all to typeset this. eqn aligns things much more nicely. The thrust of the example is to demonstrate the relative straightforwardness of drawing a radical sign with `\D` escape sequences. This can (and should, if chosen as the solution to #67796) be refined to improve the appearance of the drawn sign. Improvements could include (a) using slightly different thicknesses for the various strokes of the radical sign; (b) altering the length of its leading horizontal stem; and (c) altering the angles of the non-horizontal strokes. Regards, Branden
.\" Draw a big radical sign with a fraction radicand in GNU troff.
.sp 1i
Expression with \[lq]hand-drawn\[rq] radical sign:
.sp 2v
\Z"\
\D'l 1m 0'\
\D'l 1v 1v'\
\D'l 0 -3v'\
\D'l 4m 0'\
"\c
.\" Now move inside the radical sign.
\h'1m+1v+1n'\v'-1v'
.ft I
foobar
.br
\h'1m+1v+0.5n'\v'-1.5v'
\Z"\D'l 6n 0'"
.br
\h'1m+1v+1n'\v'-1.5v'
bazqux
.ft
.\" Do the same thing with GNU eqn.
.sp
Expression using
.ft I
eqn:
.br
.EQ
sqrt { foobar over bazqux }
.EN
draw-radical.ps
Description: PostScript document
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
