Increase default size of equations to allow subscripts to be seen easily without zoom

Question

Between fractions and subscripts using MathJax characters can get really small to the point of not being legible under the current default zoom conditions. From here it was recommended that I see if others on the EE SE are interested in changing the default size/zoom of equations here.

Here's an example text of a dual subscript in a fraction that makes it really hard to read. Even the "t"s in it are difficult to discern. Your votes will determine if I just need new glasses.

$$ \frac{V_{t_p}}{V_{t_n}} $$

Here's the quote from the other Meta stack site stating a way to change the default size:

Or, if sufficiently many EE users think that the font size in formulas should be increased, that can be done site-wide, by changing MathJax configuration. E.g., the configuring script could include MathJax.Hub.Config({ "HTML-CSS": {scale: 120} });. This is something you can bring up for discussion on meta.EE.

EDIT: No one had come up with a good answer/solution to the original question on the other SE so this question was originally a feature request. I've changed it to be a support topic as no new feature is needed. W5VO answered this question perfectly in his comment.

Answer 1

If you know you're going to need a lot of subscripts, you can dictate a font size in your MathJax equation. From your post, you had an equation with two levels of subscripts, which is pretty much illegible at normal settings:

$$ \frac{V_{t_p}}{V_{t_n}} $$

However, you can add size modification tags to your equation to help make it legible. For example, I added the \Large tag and it was much easier to read.

$$ \Large\frac{V_{t_p}}{V_{t_n}} $$

You can see the before and after effects in the rendered image below:

From this reference, a few modifiers that will increase the size are:

• \large
• \Large
• \LARGE
• \huge
• \Huge

Answer 2

You can set the scaling for yourself using MathJax's contextual menu. Right click (or control click on a Mac) any typeset equation and select the "Math Settings" submenu, then the "Scale All Math" item. You can enter a scaling factor that will be used for all equations on the site where you set it. It is saved in a cookie, so should continue to be used for subsequent visits until you toss your cookies (or a year passes, which is the expiration time for the cookie). So if you don't like the default scaling, you can chance it, and can make it either larger or smaller.

Note that the readability of the text is very much dependent on the browser and OS that you are using, the rendering engine used by the browser or OS, and settings controlling antialiasing of the fonts. For instance, your example with the fraction and double-subscripted V's is very readable for me. I understand that Windows (particularly older versions) produce very poor results for small fonts in general.

Since the math displays nicely for me, I would find an enlarged scaling factor a distraction (since the math would not match the surrounding font well). So I would vote not to make such a global change.