[OS X TeX] environment for symbol notation

[Alan Munn]

At 11:05 AM -0500 2/15/08, Themis Matsoukas wrote:
>I want to include in a paper a list of symbols that is formatted 
>something like this:
>
>$X$     long, windy and verbose  description that may span more
>            than one line, but if does, it should be properly indented.
>
>So far I've been doing this using
>
>\makebox[50pt][l]{$X$} Short description
>
>while keeping the descriptions short to avoid running into the next 
>line.  Is there a better way?
>
>Themis Matsoukas

Why not use a tabular (or tabularx) environment? (or longtable if it 
will span across pages). -Alan

\usepackage{array, tabularx, lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{>{$}l<{$}p{4in}}
\theta & \lipsum[1] \\
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{>{$}l<{$}X}
\theta & \lipsum[1] \\
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}
-- 
Alan Munn 
amunn at msu.edu
Department of Linguistics                             
and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages   Fax.  +1-517-432-2736
Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824       Tel.  +1-517-355-7491