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Date:         Mon, 24 Aug 92 11:31:27 CET
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>
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Subject:      Re: skips around headings
Status: R


> frank asks if, in the case of two consecutive headings, the proper
> approach is to suppress the preskip of the second one, and keep
> only the postskip of the first.
>
> i think this is not necessarily the right thing to do.

This is something I agree with too, so maybe I have to rephrase my
question slightly: is it possible to come up with a decent scheme that
automatically calulates the proper amount of space from the two given
values (post from the first and pre from the second heading)?
 Or are there enough practial layouts that warrant the need for
handling this situation specially, eg introducing a further parameter
or the posibility to specify the function or whatever. There are
certainly enough possible special layouts that couldn't be specified
through a general mechanism, my question is: are they relevant? (Note,
that this is also not a question of ruling them out, rather making
them easy)

> posit the case where there are two headings, each on a line or lines
> by itself, but there is no extra postskip on either heading, the
> distinction being only in the size or font of the heading text.  (i
> believe this still qualifies in frank's terms, though the vertical
> skip between them has a zero dimension.)  to suppress the preskip of
> the second would mean that there is no additional space between the
> two, and i don't believe that would ordinarily be what is wanted.

Probably not, but then I guess using the preskip of the second looks
too large too.


If I sumarize we have so far:

 - take the max(preskip second, postskip first) proposed by Barbara

 - just use postskip first (done currently by \@startsection)

 - if I get the OU example right they also use the max of the two
skips

Barbara's second suggestion is the implementation of an additional
parameter which gets used instead of the others if headings follow in
sequence.

Frank