Text Formatting ⇒ Jump to a certain Position

[Laurentius]

Is it possible to jump to an horizontal position measured from the margin (even if one has begun on a line)? And if so, can the current horizontal position be read off some variable?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Sure, you could use textpos, esopic, atbegshi or everyshi for absolute positioning.

Just note that LaTeX is a macro language for typesetting text using styles, an author should not need to manually position text. Perhaps a layout software would be good for such a purpose.

If I need absolute positioning and if I would like to use the current position for referring to that, I would use TikZ, its current page node and its overlay feature.

Stefan

[Laurentius]

What would you use to move to the next vertical position without returning to the horizotal home position? I realize it can be solved by measuring the length of the current line and adding it to the next, but was hoping for a more elegant solution.

(I mean the kind of line break that sometimes occurs in poetry.)