Error in arrow symbols.

Question

My LaTeX installation, and many others on the internet seem to be typesetting arrows with thick bits in them, and it looks like a hypen or something has been overlayed over them. Does anyone have a solution---this isn't a problem on inkjets, it all just smudges together but it looks ugly on PDF viewers and nice laser printers.

Answer 1

This is normal. LaTeX uses hypens to draw the lines of the arrows, because it can't really draw arbitrary vector graphics by itself.

The solution (for a few arrows) is to use a vector graphic package like pstricks or tikz:

For example using TikZ, inside text mode:

\tikz[baseline] \draw [->] (0,1ex) -- ++(3em,0);

Change the 1ex value if you want to change the height and the 3em for the length. You can place material on top of the by added node[above] {<text>} just before the closing ;.

See the manuals of the mentioned packages for more details.

Answer 2

you can draw any arrow with the small package pict2e

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pict2e}

\begin{document}

foo\vector(3,-2){30}bar\vector(3,-12){30}baz

\end{document}