resizing delimiters in LaTeX with line breaks

IEEE uses a two-column format that is a bit narrow for large formulae, and it makes parenthesis resizing a pain when you have to break lines, because LaTeX (apparently) will not match parenthesis sizes across lines. For example, consider


So if you have a \exp \left( followed by some tall expression, like - \sum_{i=1}^{n} \frac{1}{2^i} \int_{\mathbb{R}} \langle f_i(t), g(t) \rangle dt + \prod_{i=1}^{n} f_i(0) - \lim_{x \to \infty} \frac{g(t)}{2 \pi} you start to run into problems fitting the whole thing on the line so that the corresponding \right) fits within the page margin. Furthermore, if the equation has multiple opening brackets and different size elements, the opening and closing brackets may not match in size when you break the line.

My old hack for this was to manually resize the \left( by using \Big\left( or something like that, putting empty \right. commands before the line break, and then starting the next line with empty \left. commands. If you have multiple opening and closing brackets you have to futz around, putting a \Big or \Bigger around each delimiter to make it fit, but a (somewhat) easier hack is to insert a tall whitespace like this:

\\rule{0pt}{15pt} \\right. \\right. \\nonumber \\\\
\\left. \\left. \\rule{0pt}{15pt}

This isn’t too great a savings, since I now have to resize 2 things instead of 4, but it’s something at least, and the delimiters end up the same size. I could probably write a macro to do this, but that seems like a waste of time.

regular blogging resumes

I apologize for all the server issues I’ve been having (it’s a long story involving caching and file permissions issues) — I think things are back up to normal now, and I should get some posts up about Paris and ISIT up sometime soonish…