[texhax] \subsubsection*{}

Philip G. Ratcliffe philip.ratcliffe at fastwebnet.it
Tue Jan 8 21:33:16 CET 2008


> > > Inevitably some author decided to use \subsubsection*{} 
> This results 
> > > in an unwanted space,
> > 
> > Hmm, this does look like an oversight in the basic LaTeX file and I 
> > would expect that someone else already has a solution (the same 
> > problem arises for any sectioning command that does not provide a 
> > number (as in the use of \paragraph below without my hack).  The 
> > problem seems to be the space inserted between the chapter/section 
> > number and the title even when the latter is absent.
> 
> Nonono. It is the space between the title and the paragraph 
> text. 

Quite right, my mistake.

> Furthermore, the title is not "absent":  It happens to 
> be a null string of text, but that is different from there 
> being no title at all.

Well, that may be the way LaTeX sees it but the naive (not an insult,
please!) user doesn't necessarily interpret things the same way and, indeed,
some macros do in fact thoughtfully check for "null strings" and make
adjustments accordingly.

> The space may have been unwanted, but it is not unexpected.  

Unexpected ... by the expert; unfortunately, not all users have the same ...
intuition.

> The user should have done his section differently.

Of course he should - it wasn't really even a section.  However, one might
just conceive of the odd user who might just need chapter/section numbers
but NO titles - the extra space would then still be inserted (expected,
unwanted or otherwise).  A kinder sectioning macro would allow for such
eventualities, would it not?

Cheers,  Phil



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