[texhax] \mark causing a blank line

Stan texforeverything at att.net
Tue Jun 23 17:26:57 CEST 2015


On Sun, 21 Jun 2015 18:22:14 -0500, Donald Arseneau <asnd at triumf.ca> wrote:

> On Sat, June 20, 2015 3:45 pm, Stan wrote:
>
>> This sentence's length and the use of a mark create an unexpected blank
>> line below for some reason..... \mark{mark}
>>
>> Removing one period after ``reason'', or the space before the mark,  
>> makes
>> the blank line disappear. (I'm not saying that putting a space there  
>> makes
>> sense.) Does anyone know why this happens? My only guess is that the  
>> mark
>> prevents the space before it from being removed when TeX breaks the text
>> into lines. I'm not sure if this is a bug, but it seems odd, at least.
>
> Not at all odd.  There is a line-break before the \mark and the
> \mark appears on a line by itself.  The same would happen for \hbox{}
> or \vadjust{}.  (In fact, \mark works quite a bit like \vadjust in that
> it migrates to the vertical list.)

There's a big difference to me between what happens with \hbox{} and what  
happens with \vadjust, since \hbox{} creates something (sure, it's an  
empty thing, but still a thing) that gets put in the horizontal list and  
is meant to stay there. Is there a reason to treat things that migrate to  
the vertical list in the same way in this context? (Not trying to sound  
antagonistic. Just curious.)


Stan


More information about the texhax mailing list