# Difference in integral character heights

Above is an example of what happens. It seems that the first integral is longer than the second because the y-character is longer than the x-character as this doesn't happen with other similar-height characters:

Is there a way to change this so that the integral defaults to the larger size regardless of whether x or y is used?

If it's any help: the stylesheet is Outline and the screen environment is bulleted.

Edit - In response to the comments, this was in a text cell (part of a set of math notes)

Edit - By default it is in TraditionalForm. Converting to StandardForm, then back to TraditionalForm makes them look the ideal way:

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This is just another example showing, alas, that Matheamtica is not an ideal medium in which to typeset mathematics. As contrasted with (La)TeX. – murray Oct 14 '12 at 15:40
This seems to be system-specific. I cannot reproduce this on MacOSX. – halirutan Oct 20 '12 at 23:02
I can reproduce this under MacOSX, 8.0.4. – John Fultz Oct 21 '12 at 4:55

By default, Mathematica shrinks down typesetting that involves scripts and stretching inside of inline cells. The principle is to try to not introduce too much bulky whitespace as a result of the extra height of the typesetting. I suspect that the small scale at which things are operating is making it more sensitive (perhaps wrongly so) to differences of a pixel or two.

Perhaps you'd just rather have the extra space to get nice, large typesetting. That's really easy to do. In your notebook, choose the menu item:

Format->Edit Stylesheet...

In the resulting notebook, paste the following cell:

Cell[StyleData["InlineCell"], ScriptLevel->0]


You might have to save/close/reopen the notebook to get this change to trigger. Once you do, the change will affect all inline cells in your notebook.

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Yep. This did the trick. Incidentally, it solved another problem I was having - that typing "lim" and then trying to add an underscript would default to a subscript. After implementing your solution, that's been fixed as well. – Mirov Oct 22 '12 at 0:55
@user745434 Yeah, in addition to limits, ScriptLevel also affects the positioning of Subsuperscript, such as you see in definite integrals, and Underoverscript, such as you see in sums and products. – John Fultz Oct 22 '12 at 1:11

This only seems to happen in Inline Cells at certain magnification levels (or font sizes).

Input cell:

As above but in an inline cell:

The same inline cell but with a different Magnification level:

I don't have a complete fix but this might at least help you work around the problem.

Would you consider having the integral symbol be a fixed but short size a solution?

On a second look I think there is an actual bug involved.
Here is the inline cell at 55% and 50% magnification:

Notice that at the lower magnification the left $\int$ actually grows while the right one shrinks.

I can think of no valid explanation for this behavior.

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This is probably a bug, although I haven't done the due diligence to determine exactly what's going on (and, honestly, I probably won't for a while...sorry). – John Fultz Oct 21 '12 at 6:10
@JohnFultz Thanks. – Mr.Wizard Oct 21 '12 at 7:14