On Tue, 10 Jul 2007, C. Frangos wrote:
> (1) The tex output automatically includes matching parentheses commands, and
> \\ so that very long expressions with parentheses, etc will appear correctly
> over multiple lines, for example,
>
> \begin{eqnarray*}
> \left(\left( .................... \right.\right. \\
> ............................................................. \\
> \left.\left. \right)\right)
> \end{eqnarray*}
First, this is completely wrong. Suppose the first line contains some high
elements (fractions), and the last line does not. Then the opening
brackets will be much larger than the closing ones - not what one wants.
The correct approach is, of course,
\biggl( ....\\
....\\
....\biggr)
where, unfortunately, the [La]TeX user has to choose the correct size
(\biggl or \Biggl or whatever) by hand.
Second, [La]TeX cannot break displayed equations to multiple lines,
because it is *in principle* impossible to predict the width of a part of
a formula before it has been typeset. There is the package breqn which
tries to solve this unsolvable problem using some heuristic guesses
(sometimes it even produces satisfactory results). Unfortunately, its
license is unclear (and its author has died), and it cannot be distributed
with free software like maxima.
> (2) The approximate width of each line above is specified by a number or list
> x, for example, tex(expression,x).
If you can invent an algorithm to do this, all community of [La]TeX users
will be grateful to you.
Andrey