# Illegible subscripts, superscripts and exponents

Far too often I find my self wasting precious time tweaking the rendering of subscripts, superscripts and exponents, because the default MathJax rendering is illegible with the default fonts. Can this be fixed? Below is a recent example from the first version of this answer. Notice how almost all of the subscripts on $\rm\,m\:$ are not legible.

I expected the rendering below, which was obtained by prefixing each subscript with \,

• Is it possible it's a combination of browser and/or fonts installed on your machine? This is how I see both revision 1 and current. Edit: I see same with both Chrome & Firefox. – user2468 Nov 6 '12 at 2:28
• @JenniferDylan I use the default web fonts with MathJax and I see the same problems in Chrome, FireFox and Opera on Win7. The problem disappears if I use larger fonts. Perhaps you used larger fonts in your screenshots? If so, you might see the problem by switching to smaller fonts. – Bill Dubuque Nov 6 '12 at 2:32
• I run Ubuntu. It's still the same with the default zooming (CTRL-0). – user2468 Nov 6 '12 at 2:45
• @Jennifer Interesting, so the problem may be OS dependent. Does it still look good no matter how small you go? Are you using the STIX fonts or the web fonts? – Bill Dubuque Nov 6 '12 at 2:47
• It looks kind of reasonable. I have to add, a page-refresh is needed after the page zoom. Let's see if others have similar experience as yours. – user2468 Nov 6 '12 at 2:54
• I'm not using STIX. The MathJax pop-up menu says "using TeX web fonts". My ~/.fonts/ contains jsMath fonts. I have no idea if these fonts are used by MathJax. – user2468 Nov 6 '12 at 3:04
• Does the same thing happens if you do not force mathjax to use roman fonts? – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Nov 6 '12 at 3:44
• @Mariano It's not as bad with italic fonts. But note that Jennifer does not see any problem using Roman fonts on Ubuntu (see the images she linked to in the comments). – Bill Dubuque Nov 6 '12 at 3:52
• Another data point. With default fonts on Safari OSX Mountain Lion the original version displays correctly, and the edited version has extra space that does not look correct. – Noah Snyder Nov 6 '12 at 13:12
• No problems here on Ubuntu. We should have some other Windows user comment. – Phira Nov 6 '12 at 17:45