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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label chngmargonfly</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Changing margins “on the fly”</h3>
<p>One of the surprises characteristic of TeX use is that you cannot
change the width or height of the text within the document, simply by
modifying the text size parameters; TeX can’t change the text width
on the fly, and LaTeX only ever looks at text height when starting
a new page.
<p>So the simple rule is that the parameters should only be
changed in the preamble of the document, i.e., before the
<code>\</code><code>begin{document}</code> statement (so before any typesetting has
happened.
<p>To adjust text width within a document we define an environment:
<blockquote>
<pre>
\newenvironment{changemargin}[2]{%
\begin{list}{}{%
\setlength{\topsep}{0pt}%
\setlength{\leftmargin}{#1}%
\setlength{\rightmargin}{#2}%
\setlength{\listparindent}{\parindent}%
\setlength{\itemindent}{\parindent}%
\setlength{\parsep}{\parskip}%
}%
\item[]}{\end{list}}
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
The environment takes two arguments, and will indent the left and
right margins, respectively, by the parameters’ values. Negative
values will cause the margins to be narrowed, so
<code>\</code><code>begin{changemargin}{-1cm}{-1cm}</code> narrows the left and right
margins by 1 centimetre.
<p>Given that TeX can’t do this, how does it work? — well, the
environment (which is a close relation of the LaTeX
<code>quote</code> environment) <em>doesn’t</em> change the text width
as far as TeX is concerned: it merely moves text around inside the
width that TeX believes in.
<p>The <i>chngpage</i> package provides ready-built commands to do the
above; it includes provision for changing the shifts applied to your
text according to whether you’re on an odd or an even page of a
two-sided document. The package’s documentation (in the file itself)
suggests a strategy for changing text dimensions between pages — as
mentioned above, changing the text dimensions within the body of a
page may lead to unpredictable results.
<p>Changing the vertical dimensions of a page is clunkier still: the
LaTeX command <code>\</code><code>enlargethispage</code> adjusts the size of the current
page by the size of its argument. Common uses are
<blockquote>
<pre>
\enlargethispage{\baselineskip}
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
to make the page one line longer, or
<blockquote>
<pre>
\enlargethispage{-\baselineskip}
</pre>
</blockquote><p>
to make the page one line shorter.
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>chngpage.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/misc/chngpage.sty">macros/latex/contrib/misc/chngpage.sty</a>
</dl>
<p><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=chngmargonfly">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=chngmargonfly</a>
</body>
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