summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/FAQ-en/html/FAQ-parskip.html
blob: 720812e1a3b4ec53347c385bd7ebee55477d9f8d (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label parskip</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Zero paragraph indent</h3>
<p/>The conventional way of typesetting running text has no separation
between paragraphs, and the first line of each paragraph in a block of
text indented.
<p/>In contrast, one common convention for typewritten text was to have no
indentation of paragraphs; such a style is often required for
&#8220;brutalist&#8221; publications such as technical manuals, and in styles
that hanker after typewritten manuscripts, such as
officially-specified dissertation formats.
<p/>Anyone can see, after no more than a moment&#8217;s thought, that if the
paragraph indent is zero, the paragraphs must be separated by blank
space: otherwise it is sometimes going to be impossible to see the
breaks between paragraphs.
<p/>The simple-minded approach to zero paragraph indentation is thus:
<pre>
  \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
  \setlength{\parskip}{\baselineskip}
</pre>
and in the very simplest text, it&#8217;s a fine solution.
<p/>However, the non-zero <code>\</code><code>parskip</code> interferes with lists and the like,
and the result looks pretty awful.  The <i>parskip</i> package
patches things up to look reasonable; it&#8217;s not perfect, but it deals
with most problems.
<p/>The Netherlands Users&#8217; Group&#8217;s set of classes includes an
<i>article</i> equivalent (<i>artikel3</i>) and a <i>report</i>
equivalent (<i>rapport3</i>) whose design incorporates zero paragraph
indent and non-zero paragraph skip.
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>NTG classes</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass.zip">macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/ntgclass.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>parskip.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/parskip.zip">macros/latex/contrib/parskip</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/parskip/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/parskip.html">catalogue entry</a>
</dl>
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=parskip">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=parskip</a>
</body>