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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: \parindent rides again
Message-ID: <1991May6.170720.17483@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 6 May 91 17:07:20 GMT
References: <1991May6.151933.9484@rice.edu>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Lines: 32

dorai@titan.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram) writes:

>I'd like for my paragraphs to undergo \parindentation only when they
>have leading spaces -- or tabs -- in the source.  (While I'm in broad
>agreement with LaTeX's indentation policy -- I do want indented
>paragraphs most of the time --, the constant use of \noindent to
>suppress \parindentation at several crucial points drives me up the
>wall -- in addition to probably being against Hosek's Never Do
>Procedurally What You Can Do Structurally commandment.)

1/ Read my article in TUGboat about indentation for
a quite general way of doing things.

2/ Don't you think you're abusing TeX here? It is way
easier to step outside TeX and use a simply editor
command 1,$s/^  */\\indent / or something like that
to do what you want to.

>I've tried using \everypar to \futurelet the following character
>(after making spaces temporarily active) and check for spaceness, but
>it appears LaTeX's \sectioning commands -- and probably a host of
>others -- mess with \everypar too, occasioning too much crossfire.
>I'd be grateful for any ideas.

Oh you're using LaTeX? That has mechanisms for automating
indentation, and you're supposed to use these. Otherwise
you might just as well write your own macro package.
LaTeX has in its \@startsection command (and \@list et cetera)
all of the tools to prevent indentation *structurally*
at all the places where you want it.

Victor.