\[sqrtex] woes (related to bugs bug #62923 and #63179)

[joerg van den hoff]

hi everybody,

I am also encountering the misalignment issues discussed in the above mentioned bug reports with 
assorted third party fonts (using groff 1.22.4).

as far as I have understood the discussions in those threads, the problem seems 
to have been
attributed to a naming collision (or rather the presence of a sqrtex glyph in 
the font)?

in this case, I just want to report that for me the problem definitely is 
present
*without* the new fonts defining/containing a sqrtex glyph themselves (and I verified that the 
sqrtex -> radicalex fallback substitution/redefinition takes place for them).

attached a pdf (via grops) with examples of what I see.

question: what is the current best short explanation what is going wrong here (and why it does 
effect different fonts in such a pronouncedly different extent) and whether/how the user
can patch it away somehow (or even better if there might be a real fix any time 
soon :))?

personally (since using eqn a lot), this issue is quite serious since it 
effectively prevents
serious use of non-standard fonts...

best,
joerg

ps: probably known, too, but for completeness: the MacOS pdf rendering engine can/does cause 
additional problems, so better view otherwise ;).

sqrt.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document