General ⇒ Ragged Right Justification cancels Indentation

[SaneAssasin]

Hello everyone,

I am writing a document using the "mla13" package and when I compile, it is all justified and not ragged right, as the style demands. I entered \raggedrightin the preamble, which solved the problem, but now the first line of the paragraph is not indented and entering \indent does not change it.

A minimal working example:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mla13}

\title{Title}
\firstname{First name}
\lastname{Last Name}
\professor{Professor}
\class{Class}
\raggedright

\begin{document}
\makeheader
This minimal working example will hopefully show the issue I am having where I seem to be unable to have both ragged right and first paragraph indentation.
\end{document}

Any suggestions? Thank you!

[localghost]

The problem is not related to the package at all. Let's take a look at the definition of \raggedright in the LaTeX kernel (file »latex.ltx«).

Code: Select all

\def\raggedright{%
  \let\\\@centercr\@rightskip\@flushglue \rightskip\@rightskip
  \leftskip\z@skip
  \parindent\z@}

Note the last line where \parindent is set to 0pt. You can preserve its value by saving it into another length register before using \raggedright.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newlength{\saveparindent}
\setlength{\saveparindent}{\parindent}
\raggedright
\setlength{\parindent}{\saveparindent}

\begin{document}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{document}

You could also set \parindent by hand. But since it varies with the chosen font size, this is the most convenient way.


Remarks:

• When using a package that is not listed on CTAN, please give link where to find it to make a problem comprehensible.

Thorsten

[DarrenG]

Just wanted to say I found this very useful and used it verbatim. Many thanks.