[OS X TeX] Dental problem

[Maarten Sneep]

On 18 feb 2005, at 18:56, Alain Schremmer wrote:

> Maarten Sneep wrote:
>
>> On 18 feb 2005, at 17:28, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>>
>>> I agree that it will—I didn't know that—but this is not the problem: 
>>> I was not trying to get rid of space between columns but to 
>>> left-align the third table on the first two and thereby to prevent 
>>> the third table from sticking in the right margin.
>>
>>
>> A few remarks:
>> - The document you provided is inclomplete: a lot of environments are 
>> missing. They might be the cause of the problem.
>> - Don't mess with TeX parameters, if you don't know what you're doing.
>> - Please don't top-post, and trim the signatures from your message.
>>
>> Have you tried to put @{} at the beginning of the parameter-list for 
>> the tabular environment, like \begin{tabular}{@{}|c|c ...}?
>>
>> Maarten
>
> -  I copied the source from my post back onto a TeXShop new file and 
> it typesets, showing the third table offset compared to the first two. 
> What do you think could be missing?

Sorry about that, I missed the paralist bit.

> -  The only thing I could find in Companion2ed that I thought might be 
> somewhat relevant was, on page 104 and in reference to LaTeX' 
> flushtext environment, that "Another important restriction is the fact 
> that the settings chosen by this enviroment have no universal effect, 
> because some environments […] restore the alignment of paragraphs to 
> full justification." I thought that something like that might be 
> happening but even thinking about how to defeat is entirely beyond the 
> pale as far as I am concerned.

See below at my description of the @{} remark. I don't think this is 
particularly relevant.

> -  As I think I have made abundantly clear in the past, I have 
> absolutely no idea what a TeX parameter is and would never even 
> consider messing with them. I am missing your point.

I was referring to:
     \def\indent{\hglue 5.3mm}
which is about as plain TeX as you can get.

> -  I did "put @{} at the beginning" and it does nothing.

Now, that I actually tried the code, I can see the problem, and it 
isn't a bug, it is a feature.

First, I see that you were playing with the tablecolsep, presumably to 
get the width of the table to fill the available space. This may be a 
better and easier way to do that:
\noindent
%\setlength{\tabcolsep}{5.5pt}
\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Cleveland & Franklins & Hamiltons & Washingtons & Dimes & Cents \\
\hline
\end{tabular*}

This doesn't solve your problem, as that is related to the indentation 
of the compact item. I've added a paragraph to your example to show the 
problem. Remember that your table is really just another paragraph 
you've added to the item. The whole idea of an itemized list is that 
the whole item (no matter how many paragraphs it is made up off) is 
indented to indicate that they belong together. To the extra left 
margin is not an indentation, and it is there by design.

\begin{compactitem}
\item
This is body text within compactitem

and some more text within the same.

\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Cleveland & Franklins & Hamiltons & Washingtons & Dimes & Cents \\
\hline
\end{tabular*}
\end{compactitem}

OK, this doesn't solve the issue, but in the log, it tells us how much 
too wide that line was, which happens to be the left indentation:
     Overfull \hbox (14.22636pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 39--44
So change the example to:

\begin{compactitem}
\item
This is body text within compactitem

and some more text within the same.

%\noindent
%\setlength{\tabcolsep}{0pt}
\hspace*{-14.22636pt}% The % sign is important, otherwise you'll get a 
spurious space.
\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Cleveland & Franklins & Hamiltons & Washingtons & Dimes & Cents \\
\hline
\end{tabular*}
\end{compactitem}

And you get what you want (although it whould be helpful to get to know 
the name of the constant that determines this indentation).

> -  Being keen on "when in Rome, do as the Romans do", I had surveyed 
> what the custom on this list is but did not see any pattern. When 
> replying to you, though, I will make sure not to top-post as this is 
> the very least I can do.

top posting makes it hard to reply in a conversational manner, try the 
signature I added to this mail to see what I mean. I would recommend to 
everyone to avoid top-posting on any mailing list.

Maarten Sneep
-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on a mailing list?
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