[texhax] determine remaining space

[William F. Adams]

On Sep 7, 2005, at 10:49 AM, Florian Knorn wrote:

> could anybody plz tell me a macro that returns the remaing space in the
> current text line ? like \remainingspace would contain the length like
> "3cm" if the remaining space to the end of the line is 3cm.
>
> now here is what i would like to be able to do with it.
>
> in my bibliography, i have a lot of urls. i would like to have them
> typeset like in the latex companion (2nd ed.). that is, the url is
> always the last entry in an bibliography item and right-aligned. it 
> goes
> into a new line if the remaining space in the line is not enough to 
> hold
> the entire url. if it is, the url stays in the same line.
>
> here is an example for that (where url fits)
>
> [1]  Author 1, Title bla bla blabla blabla
>      sept. 2004.        urlurlurlurlurlurl
>
> and here where it doesn't
>
> [1]  Author 1, Title bla bla blabla blabla
>      some more bla, sept. 2004.
>                         urlurlurlurlurlurl

Instead of trying to work it out manually, set it up so that TeX will 
place things where they should go automagically, say something like 
this:

\documentclass{minimal}

\setlength{\textwidth}{2.375in}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\begin{document}
\parfillskip=0pt[1]  Author 1, Title bla bla blabla blabla
      sept. 2004.  \hfill\allowbreak\strut\hfill      
\strut\hfill\hbox{{\hfill urlurlurlurlurlurl}}

\parfillskip=0pt plus 1fil
and here where it doesn't

\parfillskip=0pt[1]  Author 1, Title bla bla blabla blabla
      some more bla, sept. 2004.
                   \hfill\allowbreak\strut\hfill      
\strut\hfill\hbox{{\hfill urlurlurlurlurlurl}}

\parfillskip=0pt plus 1fil
This is an extra paragraph.
\end{document}

The key here is to restore \parfillskip after the paragraph ends.

William

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