First character of inline cell is partially cut off

Question

Bug introduced in 12.3 or earlier and persisting through 13.1.0 [CASE:4900891]

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Notice how the "f" is partially cutoff in the following inline cell.

Here is the textual form.

CellPrint[
 Cell[TextData[{
     "This is some text. Consider the function ",
     Cell[BoxData[
        FormBox[
          RowBox[{
             RowBox[{"f", "(", "x", ")"}], "=", 
             SuperscriptBox["x", "2"]}], TraditionalForm]],
       FormatType -> TraditionalForm],
     "."
    }], "Text", FontFamily -> "Times New Roman"]]

I can manually add a space in front of the "f" as a hack-ish fix. But is there a better way?

(I'm currently on MMA 13.0 for Mac OS (Apple Silicon) w/ MB Pro 16" macOS Monterey 12.2. But the same thing was happening on MMA 12.3 with the same machine.)

Answer 1

I reproduce the issue with version 13.0.0 on Windows 10 x64 (screenshot). With version 12.3.1 on the same machine it looks OK on 100% Magnification, but with Magnification 125% it is also partially cut off: screenshot. Hence it strongly depends on the Magnification setting. With version 8.0.4 installed on the same machine, the problem doesn't reproduce independently on the Magnification.

The simplest workaround is to not use inline cells:

CellPrint[Cell[
  BoxData[RowBox[{"This is some text. Consider the function ", 
     FormBox[RowBox[{RowBox[{"f", "(", "x", ")"}], "=", SuperscriptBox["x", "2"]}], 
      TraditionalForm], "."}]], "Text", FontFamily -> "Times New Roman"]]

It is worth to point out that the size of the text in the FromBox is determined incorrectly:

CellPrint[Cell[
  BoxData[RowBox[{"This is some text. Consider the function ", 
     FormBox[RowBox[{RowBox[{"f", "(", "x", ")"}], "=", SuperscriptBox["x", "2"]}], 
      TraditionalForm, BaseStyle -> {Background -> Yellow}], "."}]], "Text", 
  FontFamily -> "Times New Roman"]]

Apparently this is the reason why the first character is cut off in the inline cell.

Since incorrect determination of the sizes of textual elements is a well-known "unsolvable" problem of Mathematica, I think the default behavior for cell rendering should be do not cut off textual elements going beyond the cell. Currently they are cut off not only for inline, but also for ordinary cells:

CellPrint[Cell[
  BoxData[FormBox[RowBox[{RowBox[{"f", "(", "x", ")"}], "=", SuperscriptBox["x", "2"]}], 
    TraditionalForm]], "Text", FontFamily -> "Times New Roman"]]

It is interesting that version 8.0.4 installed on the same machine has no such problem independently on the Magnification:

CellPrint[
 Cell[BoxData[
   FormBox[RowBox[{RowBox[{"f", "(", "x", ")"}], "=", 
      SuperscriptBox["x", "2"]}], TraditionalForm]], "Text", 
  FontFamily -> "Times New Roman", Magnification -> 3]]

I think current behavior should be considered as a regression bug in rendering of Cells (both inline and ordinary). Reported it to the support as [CASE:4900891]. Here is the response:

Thank you for taking the time to send your report.

It does appear that CellPrint is not behaving properly. I have forwarded an issue report to our developers with the information you provided, and added your contact information to the report so that you can be notified when it is resolved.

As one can see from the response, the subject-matter expertise of the support engineer isn't good in this case (it is not CellPrint, but FrontEnd's rendering of Cell is not proper). But it is good that the issue is registered.

Answer 2

Does not appear to be cut off in version 12.3 on windows 10.