Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!daemon From: dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu (David M. Jones) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: I want indentation after a \section command Message-ID: <1990Oct5.005941.7173@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> Date: 5 Oct 90 00:59:41 GMT References: <0093D99C.7E11FCA0@QMD.PHY.NIST.GOV> Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius) Reply-To: dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu (David M. Jones) Organization: Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT Lines: 45 In-Reply-To: spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) The following tirade is offered in a spirit of gentle rebuke, and is meant to encourage a more user-friendly attitude in this group. No offense is intended toward either of the people whom I quote. I think there's a valuable lesson in humility in the following two responses to M. Scott Dewey's request for a modified \section command that doesn't suppress the indentation of the following paragraph. First, in article , Sebastian Rahtz said: >you should, I am afraid, go further back into LaTeX and look at the >long and detailed explanation of the \start@section macro in >latex.tex, and define your new section heading type in those terms. >I'm not offering to quote you the solution, but indentation after a >heading is one of the things you can set Then, in article <3961@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>, Piet van Oostrum said: >The proper way to do this is to write a new article-like style file (e.g. >by modifying copies of article.sty and art1[012].sty) [...] >You can't do it in a style option file, because the art1[012].sty files are >read in AFTER the style options. Both of these, of course, are wrong. The command is \@startsection, not \start@section and, as Areh Weiss has already pointed out, the art1[012].sty files are read in _before_ any others. The lesson? Don't be so quick to pontificate, especially when answering off the cuff without checking your answers first. Granted, neither of these errors was particularly dreadful, but I was more than a little annoyed by the tone of Mr. Rahtz's reply, which I found somewhat patronizing. It's frustrating enough to be learning your way around LaTeX's internals for the first time without having the experts give misleading information because they don't take the few seconds necessary to check their memories. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David M. Jones |"The earth's a prison -- one can't 17 Simpson Ave #1; Somerville, MA 02144 | get away from it.... I'm still ARPANET: dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu | too young to lack desires, Not UUCP: ...!mit-eddie!mit-athena!dmjones | young enough now for mere play." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------