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From: Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>
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Subject: Re: special math minus
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 15:22:36 +0100
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Hans Hagen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sometimes a special minus sign is used to distinguish between a - b and -b.
> In the second case, the sign is alightly raised and looks more like a
> hyphen than a math minus.
> 
> Is there a pre-coocked macro for that? [the problem is that \hbox's are not
> zware of superscript status and therefore cannot be used,

Not one I know of, so you need a mathchoice instead. Something like this
should work:

\def\doneg{\mathord{{#1\raise.2ex\hbox{{#1 -}}}}}

\def\negative{\mathchoice{\doneg{\tf}}{\doneg{\tf}}{\doneg{\tfx}}{\doneg{\tfxx}}}

-- 
groeten,

Taco