2012/12/18 Michel Suignard <[email protected]> > Added to that, the STIX fonts which are a common implementation of math > symbols tend to size squares and circle even larger than the Unicode > charts. So any effort to size down these shapes (implied by an alignment > with the diamond sizes) would go opposite from current practice. >
I'd like to note that STIC fonts for maths do NOT have to obey the the same definition of the EM box (used in linear text with a low baseline). Maths fonts use a square box similar to the ideographic box with a CENTRAL baseline for operators and symbols but its EM sizing does not match the size of an ideographic square box (it is usally smaller than the ideographic square box, but bigger than the EM box used by Latin/Greek/Cyrillic/digits). Maths symbols are species livng in different families than punctuation and symbols that line up with alphanumeric text (like bullets, currency symbols, hyphens and dashes, and even the slash marking an abbreviation of: "per", "on", "over" or the separation of alternatives). Maths symbols will even resize contextually (but will preserve their alignment on the central baseline, using a precise 2D layout (not part of the 1D linear layout of alphabetic text, digits).
