[OS X TeX] OT: where lines align

[Maarten Sneep]

On 18 nov 2004, at 10:42, Andreas Gschwendtner wrote:

> Short version: It is very hard (practically impossible) to do this 
> kind of "grid-typesetting" (where lines align over a page spread) in 
> LaTeX (if \flushbottom is active = all the pages are of the same 
> height). I think it is possible in ConTeXt, though. For some people, 
> this is the main reason for using ConTeXt and not LaTeX (AFAIK). I 
> know I read it somewhere in the ConTeXt documentation by Hans Hagen, 
> but don't remember where...

The file cont-enp.pdf, page 33, pdf-page 47, at least in the version I 
have on my hard-drive.
A quick google yields: 
http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/cont-enp.pdf

> Longer version: In TeX there is the concept of horizontal and vertical 
> "glue" (="flexible space"). This comes in very handy if you have lots 
> of small figures, tables and *formulas*. Because TeX was written for 
> mathematical typesetting primarily (= lots of formulas within the 
> text), it was not that much of a problem, if lines didn't align across 
> pages. In LaTeX, if you use the \flushbottom option (which is the 
> default for two-sided documents), you have very little (no?) control 
> over the amount of flexible space ("vertical glue") that is inserted 
> between paragraphs, headings, floats and so on. This sometimes leads 
> to very weird results if you have very short paragraphs and little 
> text but lots of headings and many floats and tables. I think this 
> behaviour is one of the biggest hindrances of producing really good 
> typography with LaTeX.

Make sure that the text-height is an exact multiple of the line-height 
of your normal body font line height. This will alleviate the problem 
to a great extend - at least when there is only /one/ disturbance on a 
page. Depending on the type of content, this may or may not be 
realistic. At least the last lines will align...

With the aid of the calc and geometry packages, one can use the 
following to get /exactly/ *45 lines* on a page:

\usepackage{calc,geometry}
\newlength{\scratchlength}
\setlength{\scratchlength}{\baselineskip*44+\topskip}
\geometry{textheight=\scratchlength}

%% I use an intermediate length, as I do know know for sure if geometry 
will work with calc, I normally use memoir, and that one doesn't, for 
sure.

HTMH,

Maarten

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