[OS X TeX] parindent in asparaenum

[Herb Schulz]

On 12/4/04 12:49 PM, "Alain Schremmer" <Schremmer.Alain at verizon.net> wrote:

> 
> (2) I tried Schulz's solution
>   \hspace*{3mm}
> which of course also works but why is it "a bit more ``LaTeX.''"?
>

Howdy,

\hskip is a TeX primitive and LateX tries to look at things from a higher
level. Of course the primitives (e.g., \def instead of \newcommand) are
still available but you lose some error checking, etc.

> (3) I adopted Moore's solution because by incorporating the line
>    \def\indent{\hglue .3cm}%
> in the macro I use to set the asparaenum, I will ensure that all my
> "occasional" indents will be the same without having to rely on my
> failing memory. But why the % at the end? It seems to work without it.
>

In this case it doesn't make much difference but spaces after a `}' at the
end of a line count and can lead to unexpected spacing problems.

> (4) And while I am at it, why does \; create a vspace instead of the
> hspace I expected?
> 

Hmmm... Don't really know but I'd guess that at the beginning of a paragraph
you're in a vertical mode (i.e., TeX is going to glue together paragraph
boxes on top of each other) and until you enter horizontal mode (these are
TeX terms) where boxes are glued together horizontally to form words,
sentences and a paragraph the space ends up a vertical space. Just
``guessing'' here though.

> Grateful regards
> --schremmer

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)

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