Poor kerning with adjacent uppercase variables in math mode

Question

I want to lay out a sequence of adjacent variables in math-mode with reasonable spacing between the letters. But LaTeX produces output which (to me) is "obviously wrong":

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\[B X A \Gamma C\]
\[B\;X\;A\;\Gamma\;C\]
\[B\;X\;A\;G\;C\]
\[B A \Gamma C\]
\end{document}

To clarify, I don't want these to appear as one word, but as consecutive variables, as in a product or curried function application.

What's going on here? X is clearly causing problems, but even in the last example the A looks slightly too close to the gamma and too far away from the B.

Why does LaTeX perform so badly on such a simple example, and how do I get better kerning by default?

This question is related.

Answer 1

You can use math kerning, but its values will depend on the pair of letters, and probably on the math font that you use. How do you like this one:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\[B X \mkern-1mu N \mkern-2mu A\mkern2mu Γ \mkern1mu C\]

\[B X \mkern-1mu A\mkern2mu Γ \mkern1mu C\]

\[B A\mkern2mu Γ \mkern-0.5muA\]

\end{document}