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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Indentation of paragraphs versus space between paragraphs
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.202453.20115@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 16 Mar 91 20:24:53 GMT
References: <1991Mar16.031634.14707@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Lines: 40

eao@point.mps.ohio-state.edu (Ed Overman) writes:

>I would like to hear some suggestions on, what is to me, the most annoying
>result of indentation.  That is, when I am using  \item{...}...  and then
>begin a new paragraph.  It is often VERY difficult to determine where the
>new paragraph begins. 

I think that in this case you don't want a new paragraph to be
indented at all. The reason for indenting is making the start visible,
and it's effect is the opposite.
Note that LaTeX (the standard styles, that is, not my own styles)
use a small indentation (1 quad, very traditionally. Note: although
he is thanked in the preface of the book, Richard Southall assures
me that he had nothing to do with the distribution styles :-),
and a larger ones for lists. Result: recognisable paragraphs,
and a hopelessly messy layout. U-G-L-Y.

>>eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout):
>>So how about indenting pars that are top of page, and
>>using parskip for the rest? I can do that in TeX.

>OK!  I'll bite, Victor.  How? (since TeX may very well be working on the
>previous page when it begins the new paragraph)

Actually, this took me almost half an hour to program.
Here's the idea: let \everypar generate \par\penalty-\specialvalue,
and let \output test for an \outputpenalty of -\specialvalue
(where \mathchardef\specialvalue=10001 or so).
If that is the case, then test what remove one box (the empty
line of the paragraph) and one glue (\parskip) from the
page, and see if the result is \topskip. If so, the page is
empty, and you do \noindent, otherwise it isn't
and you \leavevmode.

Elementary, my dear Overman. (And in case you suspected, yes,
I was waiting for someone to bite. This newsgroup is just as
important for its entertainment value as for its information
content.)

Victor.