How can I customize the font size of first and second order sub/superscripts?

Questions
1

Consider

$
X_"first"_"second"
$

I’d like to implement a rule that changes the font size of “first” and “second” separately. How?

EDIT: See below for a possible answer.

2

It looks like it’s not possible. You can open an issue requesting this feature. Here are related places in the code:

So the script size is 70% of the display size (I assume) and sscript is 50%.

3

That’s bad news. Absolutely everything should be customizable!

4

Good thing it’s open source! How customizable is that?

3 Likes
5

Typst is still in active development and is missing a lot of small things (hence 700+ opened issues). And also there is a thing as too much customizability. Again, if you want it, feel free to open an issue.

1 Like
6

I can’t even convince the devs to accept my documentation improvements, see Revision of the Context documentation and Revised Styling documentation. So I consider this hopeless for now.

7

If you’re new to open-source, the key is patience. I looked at them and they are still open. For the first one it means that it’s still “work in progress”, for the second it means it wasn’t reviewed yet. I have a pull request stale for almost 2 months now: Improved ratio and relative length docs by Andrew15-5 · Pull Request #5750 · typst/typst · GitHub. Moreover, feature request and proposed changes are two completely different things, so relating one to another isn’t really helpful.

2 Likes
8

I don’t think that’s entirely fair. I have spent a non-trivial amount of time already reviewing your context documentation changes and it’s on a path to be merged. But especially for docs I can’t just merge it in good faith if I still see issues with it.

A lot of PRs are currently waiting for review because my time is limited. I could spend all my time on code review but then I wouldn’t get to work on the roadmap at all. It’s a balance and sometimes it goes more into one and sometimes more into the other direction.

5 Likes
9

As for this issue: One (extremely complicated) solution is patching the math font as that’s where the numbers come from.

10

I highly appreciate your responsiveness, it is really great. However, yesterday I was really frustrated because we didn’t make progress on the important questions (e.g. an improved introductory example). And a colleague told me that he has given up on Typst and returned to LaTeX. Unfortunately, I read your encouraging comment “I think we’re on a good path and nearing consensus on how this should look!” last.

11

I figured out that enclosing the subscript within a box gives sufficient control for my needs, for example via the following function:

#let SUB(body, size: 100%) = context box[
  #set text(size: size*0.8em)
  #set par(leading: par.leading*50%)
  $body$
]

// Usage:
$ X_SUB(bold(y)\ bold(z)) $

Of course, the specific formatting instructions are varied according to purpose. Thanks for your help!