General ⇒ Problem with footnotesize

[Smeedy]

I have a problem connected with the command footnotesize. I am writing a report which contains some large matrices, these matrices are to large to be contained on the page. So i have used the command \footnotesize to reduce its size, however the command effects the text above as well, which i haven't been able to solve.

Any ideas?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Smeedy,

use braces {} to limit the scope of \footnotesize, for example:

Code: Select all

Text
{\footnotesize
\[ \begin{pmatrix}
     1 & 0 \\
     0 & 1
   \end{pmatrix} \]
}
Text

Stefan

[Smeedy]

Hmm it doesn't seem to work, the above standing text is still crammed together. Does it mean anything that it is around a eqnarray?

[balf]

Anyway, eqnarray shouldn't be used any more. Check what happens if you replace eqnarray by align from amsmath. To reduce the size of your math display, you also can use the nccmath package, an extension of amsmath that has medium sized math commands and environment (it's in the ncctools bundle). Such an environment reduces the display size by 20%.

B.A.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Smeedy,

just show us some lines of your LaTeX code, then we could provide specific help. At the moment you are describing rather vaguely. Without your code I cannot say why {\footnotesize ... } should not work. { } should limit the effect of \footnotesize. Alternatively one could write \begingroup \footnotesize text... \endgroup.
By the way have a look at the article "Avoid eqnarray!" to clarify why eqnarray should not be used, like balf already said. See amsmath user's guide how to use align. Of course we would help you to change your code that way.

Stefan

[Smeedy]

Well there is not much to show...

{\footnotesize
\begin{align}
...

\end{align}
}

The result of this is the following:
- The above standing two lines get crammed together with less than normal line spacing
- The content of the align gets footnotesize

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Smeedy,

though the size effect is limited by the braces the \footnotesize affects the linespacing of the whole paragraph. So to repair the spacing just insert an empty line before {\footnotesize ... }.
To suppress additional vertical space you could even use \vskip:

Code: Select all

long Text

\vskip-\parskip
{\footnotesize
\begin{align} ... \end{align}}

Stefan

[balf]

Try this one (loading nccmath+amsmath):
\[ \begin{medsize}\begin{aligned}
x + y = & = z\\
a + b & = c
\end{aligned}\end{medsize} \]

B.A.

[Smeedy]

Stefan's suggestion worked... thanks for the help

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Smeedy,

balfs suggestion is working too. The medsize environment also reduces \arraycolsep slightly. Perhaps it would look even better then.
Further it has a medium matrix environment, you mentioned matrices in the first posting. For information see nccmath documentation.

Stefan