Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 45511
Integral sign too small and not scalable
Last modified: 2021-01-15 07:52:52 UTC
Trying to work seriously with integrals in OOo I find that the integral sign is just acceptable for a one-line formula. If however I have a formula of two or more lines height, the integral sign looks "inappropriately" small. - There is currently no possibility to scale the integral sign. - Temporarily changing the font size for the integral only does not work either because of the complex syntax. Any other idea? I would prefere if there existed a "large integral" sign slighly larger than the current one. The new one should be appropiate for two-line formulae as an alternative to the usual one. (PS. Also I can't help noticing that the formula rendering looks much clearer in OOo1.1.3. The infinity sign is almost invisible for me. I'll open yet another issue if I don't find a duplicate for it.)
Created attachment 24048 [details] Integrals in practical use + Size comparison with book
Reassigned to requirements.
seems similar to http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=26048. But I agree with matthiasbasler! Limit should be scaleable as scaleable brackets. I said "should" because, of course, if someone doesn't want this feature he must be able not to apply it. So if I write int{1 over 2 dx} int{ {hat 1} over {hat 2} dx} limits shouldn't become higher. But if I write something similar to left int {{x+1} over y + 1} over z dx right int limit should become higher. Remember to allow the possibility to add limits! left int_a^b ... left int from a to b
Thanks for pointing to this duplicate, "30790". Obvioulsly I am not the only one having problems with the small integral signs. I just want to express explicitely that I acknowledge the objection raised in issue 26048, which is that integral signs should not scale automatically by contents since this could produce many different integral signs on one line of formulae - which doesn't look nice. However I believe that the suggestion I made - having two (max. three) explicite integral sign sizes - does circumvent this problem and is also easy to use. In general I consider it important that the user has control over the size (as all comments so far agree).
*** Issue 75532 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
We can't just arbitrarily change the font. Something like that needs to be done when we will get a new font. That should be about the release of OOo 3.0. Thus I'm changing this target accordingly. Anyway I wonder if the character is really to small. It is the same size as the Sigma character for the sum and nobody complained about that. Also it's size is designed to match the size of the font in a Writers paragraph if the formula is used in the _same_ line as the paragraphs text (i.e. a short embedded formula). If the character would be any larger the line height between the lines with such a formula and the other lines will be noticeably different. Which I think is surely not wanted. Also you can easily change this yourself: You can simply define a new user-defined character, let's say %INT and use that instead of the keyword int. Also you can change the relative size of int, sigma and other operators by adjusting the value in "Format/Font Sizes: Operators". I hope this will help. I will also add a sample document that will illustrate my issue with the line height. (It is already a little bit larger as it should be...)
Created attachment 48802 [details] Sample document to show the effect of int symbol for to the line height
@tl As you correctly note, the sign is appropriate (or maybe just slightly too large) for an integral with a one line formula behind. My point however was, that I want the symbol to automatically scale according to the size of the formula behind. If it is a fraction or anything spanning two or more lines, it should be larger. This is not so much a "font" problem imho.
This enhancement obviously wasn't done for 3.0 (beta is due shortly). Moving to 3.x.
As mentioned in the earlier comments, not only the integral sign should be scaled, but also the summation and the product signs. (Also the curve integral, multiple integrals, the coproducts etc.) However, I would prefer a one-sided operator instead of the siggested left int right int. Then it would be enough to write int {{a} over {b} db}. And simply scaling the integrator sign isn't enough either. I've tried that ({size +3 int} {a} over {b} db} and the integral sign doesn't look good - it's too fat. It would probably look better if the middle part were simply "stretched". You can't stretch the entire integration symbol, because then the round parts at the end don't look good anymore.
Ver 3.0 pro still gives no possibilty of integral and sum signs scaling. Very irritating! I wonder if it is so difficult to do? Why square root is scaled from the beginning and the above said issues still not after so many years?????????????????
*** Issue 108796 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
add me to cc.
I'd like to add that I also want some enhancement to make scalable integrals. I do not think that various differently sized integrals on the same line looks wrong, neither think that extra space at a line in Writer would look wrong. The syntax could be: left int <?> right none Of course with support for limits, either above or at the side of the sign.
Also would like to add: I went to the Wikipedia article about the integral symbol. It seemed to me that the larger version is "more default" than the smaller one, which would seem to me that the smaller one is only used to make inline formulas. Therefore, I think that the larger (even if not scalable) integral symbol should be implemented and used as default, with the small one as optional.
Version 4.0 and this is still not fixed. So frustrating..