Compress equation horizontally

Is there a command that compresses equation horizontally, so that everything is closer together in the horizontal direction?

This is not for a real document but rather just for viewing and playing around.

• Not clear what do you want. Consider adding an MWE, at least specify \documentclass. – hola Jun 10 '14 at 13:39
• \small ?........ – David Carlisle Jun 10 '14 at 13:44
• Do you want, e.g., no (or at least less than normal amounts of) space around +, -, and = symbols? – Mico Jun 10 '14 at 13:44
• @DavidCarlisle - Wouldn't \small reduce things vertically as well as horizontally? – Mico Jun 10 '14 at 13:45
• You could use the graphics package to rescale it. – John Kormylo Jun 10 '14 at 13:46

\documentclass{article}

\def\z{
\par
\noindent X\dotfill X$a+b^{x+y} + \sum_{i=0}^n(x+y)^i + \sqrt{x+y+z} = 2 < a\frac{1+2}{3}b$}

\begin{document}

\z

{\small\z}

\medmuskip=0mu
\thinmuskip=0mu
\thickmuskip=0mu

\z

\medmuskip=-2mu
\thinmuskip=-2mu
\thickmuskip=-2mu
\nulldelimiterspace=-1pt
\scriptspace=0pt
\z
\end{document}

• It's strange that some things (eg things in double-fractions "\frac{\frac{1}{2}}{3}") don't get affected that much by changing the parameters \medmuskip etc. Any reason for this or how one could fix that? – Your Majesty Jun 10 '14 at 14:21
• What I'm saying is that if one have an expression of the form \frac{A\times\frac{B}{C}}{D\times\frac{E}{F}} and then one plays around with the parameters \medmuskip etc and the others...A and D changes but B, C, E and F do not since they occur as "double-fractions". Any idea why and how to fix that? – Your Majesty Jun 10 '14 at 14:39
• Doesn't \nulldelimiterspace get around fractions, tho? Also you could squeeze a wee bit more with \scriptspace. – morbusg Jun 10 '14 at 14:39
• @LoveLearning the additional medmuskip spacing around infix operators isn't added to scripts (or nested fractions which are set in same style) so (unless you make it negative) there is no more space to be gained there, and don't make them negative in a real document:=) – David Carlisle Jun 10 '14 at 15:03
• @pluton \divide\medmuskip by 2 or \medmuskip=\muexpr\medmuskip/2\relax – David Carlisle Jan 29 '19 at 7:43

Probably your equation is a little bit too long. Then you can manually scale it using \scalebox. Certainly, if the scale factor is far from 1, it must look ugly.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphics}

\begin{document}

$$1<12345667890123456789012345678901234566789012345678901234567890$$

$$\scalebox{0.95}[1]{1<12345667890123456789012345678901234566789012345678901234567890}$$

\end{document}


• \scalebox seems to have some conflict with "aligned" inside "equation". – Your Majesty Jun 10 '14 at 14:26