Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!ll-xn!cogen
From: cogen@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (cogen)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Latex help
Message-ID: <1573@xn.LL.MIT.EDU>
Date: 18 Oct 89 13:41:38 GMT
Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA
Lines: 26

What do you suppose the appropriate newsgroup for tex and latex questions is? I
can't find any likely candidates. But latex is a very awkward and confusing
system that gives many people trouble.

Here're some of my problems.

1: I want less than 1 inch blank space at the top of my page. \topskip is
already 0, and negative numbers don't seem to have any further effect.

2: I don't like the title produced by \maketitle in article style. It takes too
much space. Are there parameters controlling the spacing between top of page,
title, author, date, and beginning of text.

3: How do I obtain the text defined by a \title command, for use in a \markright
command? 

4. I want to move backwards by the width of a piece of text, so I can overprint
the same text slightly offset for a bold effect. I use \settowidth, but I can't
seem to negate the width. I do something like

\newcounter{thewidth}
the text\settowidth{\thewidth}{the text} \hspace{-\thewidth+0.1em}the text

but it seems to ignore the hspace.

4:: How can I find the answers to these questions myself?