Hi,
who ever wrote some latex knows what I mean. You are just writing some nice $\textrm{\LaTeX}$-Code and suddenly $\textrm{\LaTeX}$ throws you a curve ball making something what should be easy totally crazy for some reason. Wherefore, I will write down some of my personal WTFs with my ugly solutions hopping someone else is either pointing me to the correct way or fixes this mess.
My first one is the problem of braces in aligned equations.
\begin{align}
\left( & \right)
\end{align}
This will not work as $\textrm{\LaTeX}$ will not find the closing \right. You have to have it all on one side of the &. WTF? Why is this? Doesn't $\textrm{\LaTeX}$ have to analyze the complet row anyway because of the aligning? Why not use this information to have the braces have the right size?
For now, I know of two solutions:
1. Decouple both sides
\begin{align}
\left( \right. & \left. \right)
\end{align}
Example:
$$ \textrm{ \begin{align} \left( \frac{\frac{1}{2}}{2} \right. &= 0.25 \left. \right) \end{align} } $$
Which will leave us with braces of different sizes because the braces will only fit the side they are on. NOT GREAT
2. Fixed sized braces
\begin{align}
\biggl( & \biggr)
\end{align}
Example:
$$\textrm{ \begin{align} \biggl( \frac{\frac{1}{2}}{2} &= 0.25 \biggr) \end{align}} $$
Which leaves us with braces of the same size but the size will not depent on the equation between them meaning they will be to big or to small. Yuck.