[TeX] accents and superscript alignment, comparing with real TeX

[pkra]

This is a question, mostly out of curiosity (though it came up in production) and just in case the team considers it a bug.

Comparing MathJax with real TeX, the following renders differently

$$\hat{G}^J\widehat{G}^J\widehat{GG}^J\overline{GG}^J\overline{G}^J\bar{G}^J G^J$$

MathJax consistently (i.e. in all outputs) has the superscript at (I think) 4 different heights whereas TeX has them at 3 different heights; and they disagree on which one gets which.

MathJax screenshot:

TeX screenshot:

[dpvc]

This has come up before (see #712); TeX handles accents generated by the \accent macro via special rules, but MathJax doesn't have \accent and the underlying MathML would make it difficult to handle as TeX does. In particular TeX ignores the accent in the first two and second-from-last cases, while MathJax doesn't.

[pkra]

Ah, I didn't find that issue -- thanks for pointing me to it! I figured it was a bit of TeX special sauce.