[texhax] symbol for triple vertical 'x'

[Barbara Beeton]

    > thanks for your help - I modified your code slightly to make the 'x's
    > smaller and it looks fine for my purposes
    >
    > \newcommand{\recur}{\hbox to 1ex{\hbox to0pt{\raisebox{0.9ex}{\sffamily
    > \tiny x}}%
    > \hbox to0pt{\raisebox{-0.3ex}{\sffamily \tiny x}}%
    > \hbox to0pt{\raisebox{0.3ex}{\sffamily \tiny x}}}}
    >
    >
    > There's just one strange bug: a blank line preceding a \recur starts a
    > new paragraph after the triple 'x' sign.
    > Has anyone got any ideas as to the cause of this phenomenon?

    It's something I've come across before but always been too lazy to fully
    understand: it's something to do with LaTeX's handling of \hbox's.  Anyway,
    none of the suggestions I made in the previous posting has this problem.
    
    Cordialmente,  Philip G. Ratcliffe

a blank line is a signal for a new paragraph.  always.
(in the absence of tricky code to make it behave otherwise.)

the paragraph break puts one into vertical mode.
when the first thing in vertical mode is an \hbox, tex
stays in vertical mode, hence the paragraph break after
\recur.

try putting \leavevmode before the first \hbox.

this will *usually* "do the right thing".  that is, it
will put you into horizontal (paragraph text) mode after
a paragraph break, but there may be some obscure situations
when it might do something unexpected elsewhere.
							-- bb