[texhax] Isthis a bug in LaTex?

[Robin Fairbairns]

> I *can* reproduce the output, using an old teTeX 1.0.7 installation (TeX
> Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1), LaTeX2e <1999/12/01> patch level 1. This
> is, unfortunately, the only installation available to me at this moment).

this is not the sort of thing that changes between versions of tex.

the problem is the inevitable consequence of the grottiness of latex's
raggedness code.  the \newline puts the same stretchability in as
there is at the end of all the other lines of the paragraph because of
the \flushleft.  quite why this means that the explicit break has the
effect it does, i've not quite worked out.  however, explicit line
breaks are never really a good idea, and in a ragged-y situation they
ask for trouble, unpredictable though it may be.

(the fact that you've used the flushleft environment as a command
probably _doesn't_ confuse things any further, i think.  that is, i
don't think the trivlist, that flushleft invokes, is interfering.
whatever, using \raggedright instead doesn't make a difference.)

the problem doesn't appear if you use \par to end the paragraph,
instead of \newline.  why _was_ \newline used here, btw?