Sloppy \left and \right?

Question

The \left and \right commands often produce improvidently large delimiters. It almost always looks better to use delimiters that are just slightly too small than delimiters that are too large. With computer modern, the results are usually bearable, but with (for example) the mathdesign package using charter font, the delimiter sizing is intolerable. For instance, the following code produces vertical bars around y that are much larger than x:

\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage[charter]{mathdesign}

\begin{document}

    It would be nice if these were the same size:
    \[ \left|x\right| \quad \left|y\right| \]
    It would be even better if
    \[\left|x^{2^3}\right| \quad \text{ looked like } \quad \bigl| x^{2^3}\bigr|\]

\end{document}

An image of the result:

So now the question: Any ideas on how to produce sloppy \left and \right commands (say, \sleft and \sright) that allows a little bit of overhang?

Answer 1

\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage[charter]{mathdesign}
\delimitershortfall=10pt
\delimiterfactor=750
\begin{document}

    It would be nice if these were the same size:
    \[ \left|x\right| \quad \left|y\right| \]
    It would be even better if
    \[\left|x^{2^3}\right| \quad \text{ looked like } \quad \bigl| x^{2^3}\bigr|\]

\end{document}