Re: Alignment question

From: F J Franklin (F.J.Franklin@sheffield.ac.uk)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 03:08:00 EDT

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    > > It's often desirable to have part of a line of text
    > > left-aligned and part right-aligned. This is common
    > > in the contents and index pages of books. When we
    > > have tables there will be a table-abuse way to do this
    > > but is there a way now? Perhaps with some kind of
    > > special tab?
    >
    > I've always wondered what the correct way to do that in
    > a word processor (or LaTeX, for that matter) would be.

    TeX handles spacing very cleverly. A 'space' has no intrinsic width, so
    the width of a space can be made flexible. You can specify fixed-size
    spaces in TeX, but spaces between words have a preferred (but not fixed)
    width and some spaces are arbitrarily wide. TeX then tries to fit the line
    to page width and, if there's room, inter-word spaces are given their
    preferred space and the 'gap' space expands to fill what's left.

    (It's ages since I read about this.)

    Frank

    Francis James Franklin
    F.J.Franklin@shef.ac.uk

    "No, she really likes me. She told me I look like Britney Spears, and why
    would you say that to somebody you don't like?"
                                                               --- Elle Woods



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