0

Wondering about how LaTeX implements the vertical and horizontal brackets [{(⟨.

I saw these unicode characters which could potentially be used for vertical brackets:

⎡
⎢
⎣
⎤
⎥
⎦
⎧
⎨
⎩
⎪
⎫
⎬
⎭

But they would have to manually fine-tune the position of them because they don't line up:

⎧
⎪
⎨
⎪
⎩

In addition, unicode only has this partial support for vertical brackets only, it doesn't have it for horizontal brackets. Maybe you could rotate them though...

Wondering if they are instead drawing them by hand somehow, or where the implementation is so I can look further how it is done.

To clarify, I am using unicode examples here. I only did that to demonstrate that there are unicode characters to handle this. At least, there are the vertical versions. So maybe LaTeX uses those. What I am really interested in though is, using a modern font in LaTeX (maybe a modern math font, though I don't know what the difference is), such as an OpenType font, how the brackets (horizontal and vertical) are constructed, and how they are mapped into the TeX system.

Lance
  • 1,799
  • Are you aware of this question? –  Aug 03 '18 at 03:51
  • See also Unicode math at TeX primitive level. – Alan Munn Aug 03 '18 at 04:07
  • I don't understand how that would work for () regular parentheses, the scaling technique. Or for the 〉angle brackets. – Lance Aug 03 '18 at 05:51
  • 1
    Stacking of glyphs for the parentheses is done by the font shaper (at least for Unicode math fonts but that's what you are referring to in the question) which makes this sort of off-topic. – Henri Menke Aug 03 '18 at 05:59
  • Not sure what a font shaper is. – Lance Aug 03 '18 at 06:01
  • 1
    you write "latex" but then talk of unicode fonts that latex can not use. Are you asking about classic tex or about xetex/luatex and opentype math fonts (the details are different, although in either case a range of designed delimiters is used then finally constructed delimiters made of small characters that can be stacked to make arbitrary size) – David Carlisle Aug 03 '18 at 06:18
  • I didn't know latex couldn't use unicode fonts, I am not skilled enough to know about xetex/luatex and all the details you are asking about. I would just like to know basically how the brackets are built, in whatever format or variation one would be able to describe it in. – Lance Aug 03 '18 at 08:14
  • Wondering also if the \big( \Big( \bigg( \Bigg( are just separate font glyphs somewhere defined... – Lance Aug 03 '18 at 08:23
  • @LancePollard: \big( et al are definied in fontmath.ltx, which is part of your system in the .../latex(base/ folder –  Aug 03 '18 at 08:37
  • See https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/111802/2388 for the tex way, unicode fonts have a similar system inside the fonts. – Ulrike Fischer Aug 03 '18 at 09:17

0 Answers0