2

I need to typeset two columns of text running in parallel. I found the parcolumns package for this purpose. However, this package seems to indent the first paragraph with a noticeably larger indent than the rest. Please see the example below. I added the red line to make the misalignment clearer.

Why does this happen? Am I misusing the package?

enter image description here

Code to generate the above output:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{parcolumns}

\begin{document}
\begin{parcolumns}[rulebetween]{2}

\colchunk[1]{
foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo

foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo

foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo
}

\colchunk[2]{
foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo

foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo

foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo
}

\colplacechunks

\end{parcolumns}

\end{document}
Szabolcs
  • 2,685

1 Answers1

3

It's the linebreak after your \colchunk{ commands. Simply add a % comment char after the brace, or remove the linebreak, and the difference vanishes:

foo in two columns

Background: Just like two linebreaks anywhere trigger a paragraph change, a simple linebreak "counts" as a simple whitespace. The canonical question (and answer) for more information is: What is the use of percent signs (%) at the end of lines?

Community
  • 1
ojdo
  • 2,125
  • Thank you. Could you explain a bit more about in what way this linebreak causes extra spacing (or give me a link)? I'll accept after the initial 15 min limit elapses. – Szabolcs Jul 27 '16 at 09:24
  • @Szabolcs: I first added my response as a comment, but then moved it to the answer instead. – ojdo Jul 27 '16 at 10:22