[OS X TeX] underlined variable, how to make it line break.

[Herbert Schulz]

On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:18 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
> On 5 avr. 08, at 17:34, Joseph C. Slater PE, PhD wrote:
>
>> On Apr 5, 2008, at 8:28 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> In WSU.sty, replace
>>>
>>>  ENTITLED \uline{\thesistitle}
>>>
>>> by
>>>
>>>  ENTITLED \expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\uline 
>>> \expandafter{\thesistitle}
>>>
>>> Works here.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks! I have to admit not knowing why that's necessary, but glad  
>> that it works. How you figured it out... I don't know.
>
> Hi Joe,
>
> That's because of the sentence in the doc from ulem.sty:
>
> ALL THE TEXT IN BRACES OR COMING FROM A MACRO IS TYPESET IN A BOX.
>
> Meaning that, because \thesistitle is a macro, \uline will put it in  
> a box before underlining it. Hence I decided to try \expandafter, so  
> as to tell TeX to expand the macro \thesistitle *before* applying  
> \uline to it. And because \thesistitle is preceded by "{" in  
> \uline{\thesistitle}, with "{" itself expandable, you need one  
> \expandafter before "{" and several others before \uline.
>
> The result is the construct
>
> \expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\uline\expandafter{\thesistitle}
>
> which tells TeX to expand (i.e. interpret) \thesistitle first, then  
> "{", then \uline.
>
> In case you're not familiar with it, \expandafter is a plain TeX  
> macro (maybe it's one of the primitives defined in the TeX program  
> itself, I'm not sure) to be used as \expandafter\a\b to tell TeX to  
> expand \b first then \a. It's defined in one chapter of the TeXbook  
> (I don't have it at hand right now), probably the one on macros, and  
> there are plenty of examples of \expandafter trickery in appendix D.
>
> Bruno
>


Howdy,

I think that in this particular case you can get by with

\expandafter\uline\expandafter{\thesistitle}

since the { will be expanded by the \uline command when it reads its  
argument.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)