Cfrgtkky

I would like to centre characters and, if needed, enlarge parenthesis, in such a way that they fully contain accented characters and characters with symbols upon them, like a vector arrow for example.

The following code

documentclass[12pt]{article}



usepackage{stackengine}

newlengthshlength

newcommandcvec[2][0]{setlengthshlength{#1pt}%

  stackengine{-5.1pt}{$#2$}{smash{$kernshlength%

    stackengine{7.225pt}{$mathchar"017E$}%

      {rule{widthof{$#2$}}{.3pt}kern.4pt}{O}{r}{F}{F}{L}kern-shlength$}}%

      {O}{c}{F}{T}{S}}



begin{document}

${grave{E}} {E} {grave{a}} {a} {cvec{ell}} {ell}$

end{document}

Produces the following (the characters shown are only examples)

I'm using a custom vector arrow so that it extends to all characters below it and that I can manually centre over them.

As it can be seen there are two things that puzzle me. Namely:

• Why the characters aren't centred but shifted vertically in respect to the centre of the parenthesis, how can this be adjusted?


• How to enlarge the parenthesis, if needed, such that they contain the accent or the vector symbol (or any other symbol)?

I've used the curly braces only because with them it's easy to see where the centre is, but I'd like the whole thing to be applicable to all three types of parenthesis.

I know that to enlarge parenthesis I could use commands like big and similar but it would be nice to have them of the specific size needed, not just a generic bigger size. Additionally, it would be nice not to have to do it manually all the time too.

Thank you for your time, it is very appreciated.