List-like paragraphs without a list env

Question

I have a document with a set of paragraphs where each paragraph has a label/caption.
I need an unusual behavior:

• The label should be on the same line as the first line of the paragraph
• The paragraph should be indented, but the label should be not indented (ie. placed on the left of the paragraph some distance)
• If the label is larger than the indent, it should bump the first line a bit to fit (and there should be a space between the two)

So far I'm doing this with a description list env:

\begin{description}[leftmargin=3em,style=nextline,itemsep=1ex]

This works really well, but there's one problem: I can't use wrapfig, because wrapfig doesn't play with lists.

Is there a way to do the same thing without the environment description so that I can use wrapfig too?

Answer 1

The following defines a very simple minded fakedescription environment (one could further enhance it by instead of defining custom lengths for the spacing pick up the spaces defined by LaTeX (or enumitem) for the real description environment). It should work with wrapfig (the following has a small demonstration using wrapfig, but I did no extensive testing whatsoever).

\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\makeatletter
\newlength\fakedescription@indent
\newlength\fakedescription@labelsep
\newlength\fakedescription@itemsep
\newlength\fakedescription@topsep
\newcommand\fakeitem[1][]
  {%
    \GenericError{}
      {Error: Usage of \string\fakeitem\space outside of fakedescription}
      {}
      {}%
  }
\AtBeginDocument
  {% setting AtBeginDocument since earlier we can't rely on em being correct
    \fakedescription@indent=3em
    \fakedescription@labelsep=1em
    \fakedescription@itemsep=\smallskipamount
    \fakedescription@topsep=\medskipamount
  }
\newenvironment{fakedescription}
  {%
    \par
    \vspace\fakedescription@topsep
    \renewcommand\fakeitem[1][]
      {%
        \par
        \vskip\fakedescription@itemsep
        \noindent\kern-\fakedescription@indent
        \sbox0{\textbf{##1}}%
        \ifdim\wd0>\dimexpr
                   \fakedescription@indent-\fakedescription@labelsep\relax
          \usebox0\kern\fakedescription@labelsep
        \else
          \makebox[\fakedescription@indent][l]{\usebox0}%
        \fi
        \ignorespaces
      }%
    \advance\leftskip\fakedescription@indent
    \ignorespaces
  }
  {%
    \par
    \vspace\fakedescription@topsep
    @endpetrue
  }
\makeatother
\usepackage[]{graphicx}
\usepackage{duckuments}
\begin{document}
\blindduck[-]
\begin{wrapfigure}{r}[0pt]{5cm}
  \includegraphics[width=5cm]{example-image-duck}
\end{wrapfigure}
\begin{fakedescription}
  \fakeitem[A] the first one letter of the Latin alphabet
  \fakeitem[AB] the first two letters of the Latin alphabet
  \fakeitem[ABC] the first three letters of the Latin alphabet
  \fakeitem[ABCD] the first four letters of the Latin alphabet
  \fakeitem[ABCDE] the first five letters of the Latin alphabet
  \fakeitem[story] \blindduck[-]
\end{fakedescription}
\blindduck[-]
\end{document}