Why would a / user want to bother with /?

If you are just starting out as a / user, you'll probably have to take our word for this (or the word of friends and colleagues), but:

If your writing contains a significant proportion of mathematics, and you care about the quality of the printed results, then sooner or later you'll find shortcomings in standard / and want to remedy them. Chances are that at least the first few of the shortcomings you encounter will be ones that are already addressed by an / package. If you want to have maximum mathematical typesetting power ready at hand, rather than stop to cast about for a solution whenever you run into some unusual demand in your writing, then / will go a long way toward meeting your needs.

If you are a long-time / user and have lots of mathematics in what you write, then you may recognize solutions for some familiar problems in this list of / features:

• A convenient way to define new `operator name' commands analogous to sin and lim, including proper side spacing and automatic selection of the correct font style and size (even when used in sub- or superscripts).

• Multiple substitutes for the eqnarray environment to make various kinds of equation arrangements easier to write.

• Equation numbers automatically adjust up or down to avoid overprinting on the equation contents (unlike eqnarray).

• Spacing around equals signs matches the normal spacing in the equation environment (unlike eqnarray).

• A way to produce multiline subscripts as are often used with summation or product symbols.

• An easy way to substitute a variant equation number for a given equation instead of the automatically supplied number.

• An easy way to produce subordinate equation numbers of the form (1.3a) (1.3b) (1.3c) for selected groups of equations.

• A boldsymbol command for printing bold versions of individual symbols, including things like and lowercase Greek letters.

• An amsthm package that provides a useful proof environment and some enhancements to the newtheorem command: support for multiple theorem styles in a single document and for unnumbered theorem types.