Layout Properties

As with all property dialogs, the Layout Properties dialog is opened from the Properties menu. It is also the default property dialog for non-token templates, and can thus be opened by double clicking the corresponding MathML elements in the MathML Ancestry panel.

The following layout properties deal with all the non-character related options in MathML, except those specifically for tables:

Layout in Display Style

In traditional math typesetting, equations that appear interspersed with text in a paragraph are laid out differently than equations that appear by themselves, centered and set off from the surrounding text. The two styles are called inline style and display style respectively. The main difference is that in inline style, vertical space is at a premium since it is undesirable to have to change the spacing between adjacent lines of text. The following example illustrates some of the differences:

Script Level

MathFlow, like MathType and TeX, generally tries to use just three font sizes per equation -- the base font, a superscript font, and a font for scripts of scripts. The default size in any subexpression depends mostly on algorithms that happen automatically, such as switching to the script font for a superscript. However, by setting the Script Level property directly, you can force a particular script level. Thus, for example, by setting the script level to 0, you can prevent a superscript from shrinking.

Foreground Color and Background Color

These properties are mostly self-explanatory. The only subtlety is how they differ from the foreground and background color properties on the Font Properties dialog. The point here is that some templates, such as matrices and fractions, don't contain any characters directly -- they only contain other templates. Thus they have areas of background that are not behind any characters at all. In order to set the background uniformly in such a template, you need to use the Layout Properties version of background color, rather than changing the background for all the characters nested inside it. Similarly, you must use the foreground property in the Layout Properties dialog to change the color of things like the fraction bar, which don't come from an alphanumeric font character.

These properties accept any legal MathML color value. Behind the scene, the MathFlow editor inserts style change templates as necessary, so these properties are always non-sticky in the sense described above in the discussion of font properties.

Treat Underscript/Overscript as Accent

As explained above in the discussion of the "Treat As Accent" operator property, accent characters are typeset differently than non-accent characters when displayed as underscripts and overscripts. By setting this property on the script template directly, you can specify that an underscript or overscript be treated as an accent, even when it isn't an operator symbol.

Fraction Line Thickness

This property only applies to fraction templates (<mfrac>), and controls the thickness of the horizontal line between the numerator and denominator. The default setting is "1." Enter a number greater than one to increase the thickness of the line. You can also use the keywords 'thick', 'medium' and 'thin'.

Beveled

This property only applies to fraction templates (<mfrac>), and controls the linear orientation of the fraction. The default setting is "Automatic." Value may be set to "True" or "False."

Numerator Alignment and Denominator Alignment

This property only applies to fraction templates (<mfrac>), and controls the alignment of the numerator or denominator with respect to the vertical axis. The default setting is "Center." Value may also be set to "Left" or "Right."