X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1325" "Tue" "15" "February" "1994" "18:39:30" "+0000" "Martyn Johnson" "Martyn.Johnson@cl.cam.ac.uk" nil "38" "Query about \\textheight computation" "^Date:" nil nil "2" nil nil nil nil]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/24.6.93) id AA01138; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:05:29 +0100 Received: from mail.cs.tu-berlin.de by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/03.06.93) id AA23902; Wed, 16 Feb 94 15:04:28 +0100 Received: from opal.cs.tu-berlin.de by mail.cs.tu-berlin.de with SMTP id AA27853 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4(mail.m4[1.12]) for ); Wed, 16 Feb 1994 14:53:49 +0100 Received: from tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de by opal.cs.tu-berlin.de with SMTP id AA03484 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4(fallback.m4[1.7]) for <@MAIL.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE:Schoepf@SC.ZIB-BERLIN.DE>); Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:48:16 +0100 Message-Id: <199402161248.AA03484@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de> Received: from TUBVM.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE by tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1056; Wed, 16 Feb 94 13:45:47 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (NJE origin MAILER@DHDURZ1) by TUBVM.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 1054; Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:45:47 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (NJE origin LISTSERV@DHDURZ1) by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3806; Tue, 15 Feb 1994 19:40:18 +0000 Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX2e Betatest Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 18:39:30 +0000 From: Martyn Johnson Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX2e Betatest To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-2E Subject: Query about \textheight computation Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1560 One of our LaTeX2e users remarked today: -------------------------------------------------------------------- The code that computes \textheight bothers me slightly - why use 1.5in for headers and footers, when the actual values are available ? ... \setlength\@tempdima{\paperheight} \addtolength\@tempdima{-2in} \addtolength\@tempdima{-1.5in} \divide\@tempdima\baselineskip \@tempcnta=\@tempdima \setlength\textheight{\@tempcnta\baselineskip} \fi \advance\textheight by \topskip I know that the slack is taken up by \topmargin, as calculated below, but for 12pt text on a4 paper this comes to about 40pt (20pt above and below the text) which is more than the rounding needed to get a whole number of \baselineskip's. \setlength\topmargin{\paperheight} \addtolength\topmargin{-2in} \addtolength\topmargin{-\headheight} \addtolength\topmargin{-\headsep} \addtolength\topmargin{-\textheight} \addtolength\topmargin{-\footskip} % this might be wrong! \addtolength\topmargin{-.5\topmargin} -------------------------------------------------------------------- The local maintainers can't see why it's done like that either, and the commented version doesn't explain it. Can anybody shed any light on this? Martyn Johnson maj@cl.cam.ac.uk University of Cambridge Computer Lab Cambridge UK