LaTeX forum ⇒ Math & Science ⇒ How a math delimiter could be placed above baseline?

[kornaros]

I am trying to put \left[ or other well know delimiters in the front of a box something like

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baseline \_ 
$\left[ \rule[0ex]{3cm}{4cm}\right.$

As you could see the bracket is far below the box and with different height! Is it possible to find a way so that the delimiters respect the dimensions and the position of the object(image, box, no below baseline etc)?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi kornaros,

you could use \vcenter to center the object at the baseline. Then, the delimiters match top and bottom.

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex)

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
baseline \_ 
$\left[ \vcenter{\hbox{\rule[0ex]{3cm}{4cm}}}\right.$
\end{document}

Stefan

[kornaros]

Thank you for your answer! The bracket [ have to respect the position of the box. In otherwords \vcenter centers everything on the middle of the baseline! I just want to put the brackets [ at the right position (at the front of the box...)! Thanks!

[kornaros]

Another strange result: The \left is not well defined! If one make some experiments with boxes of different heights like

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex)

$\left[ \vcenter{\hbox{\rule[0ex]{2cm}{1.89cm}}}\right.$$\left[ \vcenter{\hbox{\rule[0ex]{2cm}{2.4cm}}}\right.$

etc. then the brackets are not fit the boxes with the same accuracy! You could see this by taking many different values of the heights of the boxs. I can not understand the reason...

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Those delimiters are built from symbols, so not perfectly scalable but just near the height as much as available symbol font delimiters and delimiter building pieces allow.

With a drawing package, such as TikZ, brackets or braces can be drawn in an exact way.

Stefan

[kornaros]

Yes! You are right! TikZ is a very good package but I never studied it in details! If you have time, could you please define a vertical and a horizontal bracket or angle with TikZ ? Or at least could you answer me if it is possible to make lengtly horizontal brackets that respect the end of a line (i.e. they wrap to the next line for the case of a big text underneath) or vertical brackets that respect the page breaks i.e. the continue to the next page? Thank you again for your interest!