hyperref + glossaries + latex = bad spacing around math relations

Question

Compile the following input with latex && dvips (which you sometimes have to do for a variety of reasons; my case is recompiling old documents):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\newglossaryentry{productOrder}{name={product order}, text={\sqsubseteq}, sort=productOrder, description={foo}}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\(A \sqsubseteq B\) (good spacing)\\
\(A \gls{productOrder} B\) (bad spacing)\\
\(A \not\sqsubseteq B\) (good overlaying)\\
\(A \not\gls{productOrder} B\) (bad overlaying)
\end{document}

What you get is wrong spacing around the glossary entry and that the slash does not match the symbol:

.

You can also see wrong spacing and overlaying when viewing the dvi file (the links are not hidden there, btw.).

Of course, you can always go with \mathrel{\gls{productOrder}} and \not\mathrel{\gls{productOrder}}. Doing it on each use is, well, tedious, though we could (probably) write a macro for that.

However, compiling the above file with pdflatex produces right spacing and the right overlay, which makes me think that there is a bug inside the hyperref-glossaries package chain. Any bugfix? Exchanging the order of loading the two packages resolves the problem, but the documentation of Nicola advises against it.

Answer 1

You could do something like the following (with a bit more effort could be integrated as (say) a mathclass=mathrel key in the existing keyval list but here as a command that you can optionally define to force a math class around a defined gls entry.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries




\let\oldhyperlink\hyperlink
\def\hyperlink#1#2{\glsmaththing{\oldhyperlink{#2}{#2}}}
\def\glsmaththing{\csname mathclass\detokenize\expandafter{\glslabel}\endcsname}

\newglossaryentry{productOrder}{name={product order}, text={\sqsubseteq}, sort=productOrder, description={foo}}
\newcommand\mathclassproductOrder{\mathrel}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\(A \sqsubseteq B\) (good spacing) \\
\(A \gls{productOrder} B\) (bad spacing)
\end{document}

Answer 2

By default commands like \gls (when used with hyperref) essentially do:

\hyperlink{target}{\glstextformat{text}}

As noted, this works fine for the PDF engine but not with the DVI engine.

The extension package, glossaries-extra, now (as from version 1.21, 2017-11-03) provides a boolean key hyperoutside. The default hyperoutside=true behaves as per the norm for the base glossaries package:

\hyperlink{target}{\glstextformat{text}}

The setting hyperoutside=false, switches the commands around:

\glstextformat{\hyperlink{target}{text}}

Since it's a bit of a nuisance to have to do \gls[hyperoutside=false]{productOrder} all the time, the category attribute hyperoutside can be set instead.

The extension package provides an additional key category that can be used when defining entries. The value is just a label, so you could define your productOrder entry as:

\newglossaryentry{productOrder}{
  category=mathrelation,
  name={product order},
  text={\sqsubseteq}, sort=productOrder, description={foo}}

The mathrelation category can then have the hyperoutside attribute set to false:

\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{hyperoutside}{false}

This means that \gls{productOrder} will now behave like \gls[hyperoutside=false]{productOrder}, but it won't affect any other entries that you define (unless they also have category=mathrelation).

Now that \glstextformat is outside of \hyperlink it could be redefined to \mathrel:

\renewcommand{\glstextformat}[1]{\mathrel{#1}}

but that will cause a problem for all your other entries.

This new version of glossaries-extra also recognises another attribute textformat which may be set to a control sequence name (without the leading backslash) identifying a command (that takes a single argument) that may be used instead of \glstextformat:

\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{textformat}{mathrel}

This means that instead of doing

\glstextformat{\hyperlink{target}{text}}

any entry defined with category=mathrelation will do:

\mathrel{\hyperlink{target}{text}}

All other entries will behave as normal.

Here's a complete example including hyperoutside=true for comparison and colorlinks to highlight the hyperlinks:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{glossaries-extra}

\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{hyperoutside}{false}
\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{textformat}{mathrel}

\newglossaryentry{productOrder}{
  category=mathrelation,
  name={product order},
  text={\sqsubseteq}, sort=productOrder, description={foo}}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\(A \sqsubseteq B\)\\
\(A \gls{productOrder} B\)\\
\(A \gls[hyperoutside]{productOrder} B\)
\end{document}

For the negation, I recommend defining a command that moves the \not inside the link text:

\newcommand*{\notgls}[2][]{\glsdisp[#1]{#2}{\not\glsentrytext{#2}}}

Updated MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{glossaries-extra}

\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{hyperoutside}{false}
\glssetcategoryattribute{mathrelation}{textformat}{mathrel}

\newglossaryentry{productOrder}{
  category=mathrelation,
  name={product order},
  text={\sqsubseteq}, sort=productOrder, description={foo}}

\newcommand*{\notgls}[2][]{\glsdisp[#1]{#2}{\not\glsentrytext{#2}}}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\(A \sqsubseteq B\)\\
\(A \gls{productOrder} B\)\\
\(A \not\gls{productOrder} B\)\\
\(A \notgls{productOrder} B\)
\end{document}