The following code:
Inline mode $\|f\|_{H^{-1}}, \|f\|_{_{H^{-1}}}, \|f\|_{_{\scalebox{0.7}{$H^{-1}$}}},\|f\|_{_{\scalebox{0.5}{$H^{-1}$}}}$,
display mode $$\|f\|_{H^{-1}}, \|f\|_{_{H^{-1}}}, \|f\|_{_{\scalebox{0.7}{$H^\{-1}$}}},\|f\|_{_{\scalebox{0.5}{$H^{-1}$}}}$$
Results in the following:
I want to have $H^{-1}$
as a sub-index, in the first case it is just too big to be a subindex.
I added a second subindex in the second, the H looks good, but the -1 is just too big, in particular the minus sign.
I added scalebox, in the last two cases, which seems to give a better looking result, and it actually scale correctly the term H^{-1}, but I hate to use it, I can see this failing once I have to modify this for other formats, but I'm not sure.
Is there a way to tell that minus sign to scale appropriately with respect to the sub-index level used?
It seems that one way to solve the problem is to correctly set the norms either by grouping or defining a norm command as perfectly shown in some answer.
I still found that the minus sign is too big in what follows:
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
&f^{-1}(x) &&L_{f^{-1}}[\eta] \\
&f(x) &&L_{f}[\eta]
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
The "-1" sign takes even more width than the "f" in the first case, in the seconds it gets close to the width of the $L_f$.
I imagine I could use a different symbol, i.e. a minus in $1-2$ could be different that in $-1$.
\newcommand{\mym}{\mkern-1.5mu-\mkern-3mu 1}
and\newcommand\finv{f^{\mym}}
-- and then write$L_{\finv}[\eta]$
. Note that this approach simply reduces the amount of whitespace around the scriptscript-styleminus
symbol. It does not reduce the size of either the minus symbol or the digit1
.