It is common in meta-mathematics to use the notation
n to mean the numeral for the number n, that is: S...S(0), where S is a symbol for successor and there are
n S's in the numeral for
n. In LaTeX, one can typeset this notation using
\overline{n} in math mode. Unfortunately, this does not always look very good: The height of the bar will vary with the height of the contained character(s), so the heights of the bars in
\overline{n} and
\overline{k} will not match.
The solution is to use a 'strut': an invisible (because 0 width) rule that functions only to set the height of the bar:
\newlength{\numheight}
\setlength{\numheight}{\fontcharht\font`0}
\newcommand\numeral[1]{\overline{\rule{0pt}{\numheight}#1}
It would perhaps be better to use the current font in
\numheight, but I've never had a problem with this in practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments welcome, but they are expected to be civil.
Please don't bother spamming me. I'm only going to delete it.