Text Formatting ⇒ Renewenvironment -- Something's wrong...

[tjaenare]

Hi everybody,
I am trying to define a new way to quote text. The result should be a single-spaced, rightragged, and indented (not only the first line but the whole paragraph) text. As far as the result is concerened, I am satisfied. Nevertheless, every call of the new command causes the engine to report the following error:

LaTeX Error: Something's wrong -- perhaps a missing \item.
See the LaTeX manual ...

I have tried to understand where the error might be, but were unable to find out so far. Do you have an idea?

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,final,index=totoc,version=first,headsepline,oneside]{scrbook}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[dutch,ngerman,british]{babel}
\usepackage{setspace}


\begin{document}

\newcommand{\quotepre}{}\let\quotepre=\quote
\renewenvironment{quotepre}{\list{}{\rightmargin0pt\leftmargin4cm}\singlespacing\flushleft\small\item\relax}{\endlist}

\chapter{The UK and the Low Lands}

\begin{quotepre}
\textsl{\textbf{a lot of text}}
\end{quotepre}

\section{Introduction}

\begin{quotepre}
\textsl{God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland} 

British saying
\end{quotepre}

\end{document}

Thank you very much beforehand,
Alexander

[meho_r]

Put \flushleft after \item.

[localghost]

First of all thanks for the example which allowed working out a solution within a few minutes. Use the \raggedright switch instead. The code below should do what you are aiming at.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[%
  paper=a4,
  fontsize=11pt,
  index=totoc,
  version=first,
  headsepline,
  oneside
]{scrbook}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[dutch,ngerman,english]{babel}
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\newenvironment{quotepre}{%
  \list{}{%
    \rightmargin0pt%
    \leftmargin4cm%
  }
  \singlespacing
  \raggedright
  \small
  \item\relax
}{\endlist}

\begin{document}
  \chapter{The UK and the Low Lands}
    \begin{quotepre}
      \blindtext
    \end{quotepre}

    \section{Introduction}
      \begin{quotepre}
        \blindtext
      \end{quotepre}
\end{document}

Thorsten

[tjaenare]

Thanks a lot to both of you!
Both possibilities work out perfectly for me!
And I learned something new again... (though it is still a long way to go seeing what skills people here have!)