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From: avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Limit/adjust space between `items' in *TeX
Message-ID: <1126@decuac.DEC.COM>
Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 12:46:14 EST
Article-I.D.: decuac.1126
Posted: Tue Dec 16 12:46:14 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Dec-86 18:55:01 EST
Organization: DEC SWS, Landover, MD
Lines: 65

I posted a note regarding how to change the space in an item list in
SLiTeX as well as LaTeX.  Here are some answers received:

Fred
----

    From: rusty@weyl.Berkeley.EDU (Rusty Wright)
    
    1. The amount of space between items is \itemsep+\parsep; your Local
    Guide should have an errata sheet at the back that points this out.
    
    2. You can't simply do something like
    
    	\setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}
    	\setlength{\parsep}{0pt}
    	\begin{itemize}
    	...
    
    because the \begin{itemize} command contains commands that set the
    values of \itemsep and \parsep (see the definitions of \@listi,
    \@listii, et al.)  As the LaTeX book suggests, you must make up a new
    environment using the low-level \list command as in
    
    	\newenvironment{myitemize}{\begin{list}...}{\end{list}}
    
    which is then utilized with
    
    	\begin{myitemize}
    	\item
    	Blah blah blah ...
    	...
    	\end{myitemize}
    
    The LaTeX commands you'll need to study are \newenvironment and \list.
    
---
    From: crl@newton.physics.purdue.edu (Charles R. LaBrec)
    
    You can reduce the amount of spacing between lines in lists by
    adjusting \parskip .  The default at normal size is something like
    \parskip=30pt plus 18pt minus 9pt .  The small amount of shrink
    prohibits \parskip from ever getting smaller than 21pt.  When I need
    to squeeze, I set \parskip=10pt plus 30pt minus 10pt , or something
    like that.  I have often wondered why \parskip did not have a larger
    shrink component and why interlinepenalty isn't set to infinity, since
    splitting slides across pages is almost always undesirable.
---
    From: crl@newton.physics.purdue.edu (Charles R. LaBrec)
    
    In article <520@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> rusty@weyl.Berkeley.EDU (Rusty Wright) writes:
    >2. You can't simply do something like
    >	...
    >
    >because the \begin{itemize} command contains commands that set the
    >values of \itemsep and \parsep (see the definitions of \@listi,
    
    That's strange, because in my version of latex, it works fine to reset
    \parskip .  This is because the slides style defn of \@listi is:
    	\def\@listi{\parsep .5\parskip
    	\topsep \parsep
    	\itemsep\parskip
    	\partopsep 0pt}
    \parskip is not reset.  I've used this feature many a time.