[OS X TeX] Typography problem

[Richard Seguin]

In general, I’m having problems with situations like the following. If I write

\begin{theorem}
If $\mathscr{W} \in M$ and if $W \in \mathcal{V}$
\end{theorem}

The “f” in the initial “If” is uncomfortably close to the first character within the math environment. In this particular example I’m using the Memoir class, the mathdesign package with the Utopia option, and Michael Sharpe’s rsfso package yielding script characters more upright than the rsfs package. In fact, in this particular situation, the italic “f” actually touches that script W. This does not look good. It’s as if there should be a \thinspace inserted after the italic “f”. I have another version of this document done with high quality Adobe Minion Pro and Adobe Bickham Script Pro typefaces, and I have the same kind of problem with that, although it typically looks a little better, but still not good. Note (referencing the sample code below) that with the Utopia/rsfso version, the italic “f” in "$f\mathscr{W}$” actually does seem to have a small space following it, as I would expect. Here the “f” is contained within the math environment instead of immediately preceding the math environment.

Are there any clever ways of dealing with this? I have a lot of situations like this in a 200 page document, hunting everywhere through the document to find them to insert a \thinspace to make it look better is deathly tedious, and inserting exceptions like this everywhere is not even good practice if you can possibly avoid it.

(I’m investigating the mathdesign Utopia/rsfso combination as a free set of fonts acceptable to arXiv. I tried looking at the mathdesign Garamond/rsfso option but could not get it to compile. Unfortunately, arXiv does not accept the commercial fonts Minion Pro and Bickham Script Pro. They used to accept Minion Pro, but they’ve dropped it.)

Here’s the fairly minimal sample code:

\documentclass[11pt,letter,twoside,leqno]{memoir}
\let\xhrf\hrulefill  % must be used with the memoir/mathdesign packages
\usepackage{amsmath,amsthm}
\usepackage[protrusion=true,expansion=true]{microtype}
\usepackage[utopia]{mathdesign}
\let\hrulefill\xhrf  %must be used with the memoir/mathdesign packages
\usepackage{eucal}
%\usepackage{mathrsfs}     % don't use with mathdesign package
\usepackage[scr]{rsfso}
\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]

\begin{document}
\begin{theorem}
If $\mathscr{W} \in M$ and if $W \in \mathcal{V}$
\end{theorem}
\begin{theorem}
If $\mathscr{V} \in M$ and if $W \in \mathcal{V}$
\end{theorem}
\begin{theorem}
If $\mathscr{D} \in M$ and $f\mathscr{W} \in X$ and $\mathscr{A} \in \mathcal{A}$ and if $W \in \mathcal{V}$
\end{theorem}
Non-theorem environment: If $\mathscr{W} \in M$ and if $W \in \mathcal{V}$
\end{document}
\end

Richard Séguin