in LaTeXspan (as in all the other tickhandlers) cursor(f) points one character into the enclosed span, so I need to cursor(f)-1 to point at the first character in the span

generate.c

@@ -947,8 +947,8 @@ static void
 LaTeXspan(MMIOT *f, int size)
 {
     Qchar('$', f);
-    if ( size > 1 )
-	code(f, cursor(f), size-1);
+    if ( size > 0 )
+	code(f, cursor(f)-1, size);
     Qchar('$', f);
 }