General ⇒ empty line behaviour

[fib]

Hi,

There is a feature which I don't like too much in latex syntax and I wonder if there is a way to work round.

Normally pdflatex compiler interpret a double newline as a way to separate two paragraphs.

Code: Select all

EX.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, felis integer aliquam tempor velit velit, fringilla malesuada elit dui neque pretium qui, tempus proin lorem. Curabitur erat quis, mollis nunc metus dictumst nulla integer. 

Lorem dapibus pharetra quisque natus pretium sapien, nulla eget diam nec quisque ut, risus facilisis, veniam tristique libero. Libero sit aliquet ut venenatis, wisi morbi ut lacinia arcu tellus, dis vitae proin libero venenatis ultricies.

I would like to use white lines to improve the readability of my source code rather than to define a new paragraph.

Is it possible something like this?

Code: Select all

EX.
\begin{paragraph}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, felis integer aliquam tempor velit velit, fringilla malesuada elit dui neque pretium qui, tempus proin lorem. Curabitur erat quis, mollis nunc metus dictumst nulla integer. 
\end{paragraph}

\begin{paragraph}
Lorem dapibus pharetra quisque natus pretium sapien, nulla eget diam nec quisque ut, risus facilisis, veniam tristique libero. Libero sit aliquet ut venenatis, wisi morbi ut lacinia arcu tellus, dis vitae proin libero venenatis ultricies.
\end{paragraph}

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi fib,

welcome to the board!

You could redefine \endlinechar, such as by:

Code: Select all

\catcode\endlinechar=9\relax

Then you still could use \par to end paragraphs, but empty lines don't cause a paragraph break any more.

Complete example:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\catcode\endlinechar=9\relax
\begin{document}
EX.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, felis integer aliquam tempor velit velit, fringilla
malesuada elit dui neque pretium qui, tempus proin lorem. Curabitur erat
quis, mollis nunc metus dictumst nulla integer.

Lorem dapibus pharetra quisque natus pretium sapien, nulla eget diam nec
quisque ut, risus facilisis, veniam tristique libero. Libero sit aliquet ut venenatis,
wisi morbi ut lacinia arcu tellus, dis vitae proin libero venenatis ultricies.

\par
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, felis integer aliquam tempor velit velit, fringilla
malesuada elit dui neque pretium qui, tempus proin lorem. Curabitur erat
quis, mollis nunc metus dictumst nulla integer.
\end{document}

However, I would prefer to keep the meaning of empty lines, and for separating source code lines I would use lines which are empty except that they start with %. This is still very readable, and the paragraph break is commented out.

Stefan