Text Formatting ⇒ Indentation inside a new Environment

[Willie]

I want to use indentation in a new environment I created. However, I do want to enable page breaking inside the environment, so the the \minipage environment is not suitable choice for me.
How should I define the indentation?
I tried

Code: Select all

\addtolength{\textwidth}{-5cm}%

and also

Code: Select all

\addtolength{\parindent}{5cm}

but this seems to have no effect. What should I use?

[localghost]

Why don't you just show us what you did to define this new environment? Or is this top secret? At the moment nobody knows which structure this environment has or whereon it is based. So specific help will be very difficult if you don't give useful information.


Thorsten

[Willie]

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt,english]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\newenvironment{myEnv}{\addtolength{\parindent}{5cm}}{}

\begin{document}
	\blindtext
	
	\vspace{2ex}
	Here is the new environment, with left margin the same as regular text:
	\vspace{2ex}
	
	\begin{myEnv}
		\noindent\blindtext
	\end{myEnv}
	\vspace{2ex}
	
	\noindent Here is what I want to achieve with my new environment.
	The following text is all indented:
	
	\vspace{2ex}
	\begin{minipage}{\dimexpr\textwidth-\parindent}
		\blindtext
	\end{minipage}
\end{document}

[localghost]

You can try the below code to indent a complete paragraph without defining a new environment.

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\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\parindent0em

\begin{document}
  \hangindent2em
  \hangafter=0
  \blindtext

  \medskip
  \blindtext
\end{document}

If you want to indent longer passages of text with several paragraphs, you should think about an environment that is based on a list environment with customized settings.

[Willie]

Thanks, but I do want the indentation inside the environment. The environment was not created solely for this purpose, but I want the presented text to be indented. Is there a simple command to achieve that in the environment definitions? And how do I base my environment on a list if I want to? (btw. and I don't want this environment to be a list, i.e. to specify items with \item, as it has nothing to do with \items)

[localghost]

[…] The environment was not created solely for this purpose, but I want the presented text to be indented. […]

So please tell us for what purposes the environment is created. What is it for? What will it do? At the moment you only want indentation. For this single purpose you don't need a new environment. Just list all desired properties of your environment and we will see how we can implement them.

[Willie]

[…] The environment was not created solely for this purpose, but I want the presented text to be indented. […]

So please tell us for what purposes the environment is created. What is it for? What will it do? At the moment you only want indentation. For this single purpose you don't need a new environment. Just list all desired properties of your environment and we will see how we can implement them.

The purpose is not relevant for the answer, however the purpose is: an enviroments for writing "examples". I want it to behave just like minipages with respect to indentation, as in my code above, with the only difference it could be page-broken.

By the way, I tried to use parbox, which should be by my understanding the same as minipage but page-breakable. But that dosn't yield indentation either.

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\newenvironment{myEnv}{\begin{parbox}{0.7\textwidth}}{\end{parbox}}

[Stefan Kottwitz]

You could change \leftskip in that environment, such as here, where you can see indentation across a page break:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\parindent0em
\parskip\baselineskip
\begin{document}
\blindtext[3]
\par
\begingroup
\leftskip4em
\rightskip\leftskip
\blindtext[3]
\par
\endgroup
\blindtext
\end{document}

Source: Changing margins for just one paragraph.

Stefan

[Willie]

You could change \leftskip in that environment, such as here, where you can see indentation across a page break:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\parindent0em
\parskip\baselineskip
\begin{document}
\blindtext[3]
\par
\begingroup
\leftskip4em
\rightskip\leftskip
\blindtext[3]
\par
\endgroup
\blindtext
\end{document}

Source: Changing margins for just one paragraph.

Stefan

This DOES seem to be what I want. However I can't get it to work when defined inside my new environment. for example:

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\newenvironment{myEnv}{\leftskip4em \rightskip\leftskip}{}

Also, is there a way to make it work with a \parbox?
For example, the following definition:

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\newenvironment{myEnv}{\begin{parbox}{0.5\linewidth}}{\end{parbox}}

results with a right indentation, and I am looking for a left one

[Willie]

I have also posted this in tex.stackexchange, for further results and discussion of this.
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... nvironment