Welcome to the TeXnik website (under construction) LaTeX lengths |
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Introduction |
Stripping Unit with Glue |
A length register is in TeX defined by \dimen1=10pt \dimen2=0.7\dimen1There are 256 possible registers \dimen0 ... \dimen255 . For more information have a look at the TeXBook
or http://www.tug.org/utilities/plain/cseq.html#dimen-rp.
It is possible to define symbolic names for length registers:
\dimendef\myLength=2 \newdimen\myDimen \myDimen=3cmIn the first case \myLength is a synonym for dimen2 . In the second case we do not know which register TeX chooses, it takes the fisrt free one.
In LaTeX we call dimension registers still a length and define it by
\newlength{\myLength} \setlength{\myLength}{3cm} \addtolength{\myLength}{-1.3cm}It is possible to compare two lengthts with the TeX command \ifdim .
In the following example file the length \lThree depends to two other lenghts.
The \ifdim ... \else ... \fiwhere the \else part is optional. \the shows the value of a length.
It is also possible to define a macro which returns the greatest width of two lengths: \newcommand\greaterof[2]{\ifdim#1>#2#1\else#2\fi} [...] \parbox{\greaterof{\linewidth}{3in}}{ This shows you can use \greaterof anywhere you can use a length } Stripping the Unit and GlueIf you need only the number of a length without its unit then you can use one of the LaTeX macros. But none of these can handle lengthes with glue: |