aboveglftskip in expex linguistic glosses

Question

First of all I am not an expert in using LaTeX, I just started a few months back.

I am using MiKTeX with the expex package for glossed linguistic examples. If we take a look at a glossed example, we see a space above the fourth line which is the free translation (\glft):

enter image description here

To get rid of the vertical spacing above the glft-line, the expex documentation advisies you to use the command "aboveglftskip=0pt" in the \begingl column. I used this command in my document, but it still gives me a gloss with spacing before \glft. I am using a weird template with a bunch of stuff in it, but it's likely to the beamer class. But even if I strip my document of everything, and do a normal beamer or article class, it doesn't work:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expex}

\begin{document}

\ex
\begingl[everyglpreamble=\it, belowglpreambleskip=0pt, aboveglftskip=0pt]
\gla batis-ne //
\glb feet-\sc{3.sg.poss}//
\glft`his/her feet'//
\endgl
\xe

\clearpage

\end{document}

According to the documentation, one can also use the command in the \glft line which I tried. It didn't work as well... Am I doing something wrong? I want to get rid of the vertical spacing above the glft line! I am also using the expex package in a paper I am writing and it's working fine there.

Welcome to TeX.SX! Please add your code in form of a minimal working example (MWE), starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}, and not images. — karlkoeller, Jan 10 '14 at 15:05
Welcome to TeX.SX! Please add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. Please don't just post screenshot of the code; otherwise people have to type it themselves to help you. You can edit your question to improve it. — jub0bs, Jan 10 '14 at 15:06
And anyway your code works fine for me. Do you have anything else in your document that can affect this behavior? — karlkoeller, Jan 10 '14 at 15:06
There is no need to add a thank you remark as accepting or upvoting answer do just that. Also adding your signature at the end is not necessary since you already have it in your post (lower right corner). Welcome again to TeX.SX. — azetina, Jan 10 '14 at 16:36
I also find no problem with your sample document. I wonder if perhaps you have an old version of expex around that is being used. Also, you should not use two-letter font commands (see Will two-letter font style commands (\bf , \it , …) ever be resurrected in LaTeX? ) and also these commands do not take arguments. (See Is there a difference between \textit and \itshape?). — Alan Munn, Jan 10 '14 at 16:52

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '14 at 01:35

To my eye, aboveglftskip=0pt doesn't get rid of all of the extra vertical space between the glosses and translation, even with the latest version of expex (2014/03/10 v5.0b); see below. To take care of this, I usually use a negative value of aboveglftskip (and belowglpreambleskip, which has the same problem), but this seems to me to be just a hack.

enter image description here

Produced by this code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expex}

\begin{document}

\ex
\begingl[everygla=]
\glpreamble XXXXXXXX (default) //
\gla XXXXXXXX //
\glb XXXXXXXX //
\glft XXXXXXXX (default)//
\endgl
\xe

\ex
\begingl[everygla=, belowglpreambleskip=0pt, aboveglftskip=0pt]
\glpreamble XXXXXXXX (0pt) //
\gla XXXXXXXX //
\glb XXXXXXXX //
\glft XXXXXXXX (0pt) //
\endgl
\xe

\ex
\begingl[everygla=, belowglpreambleskip=-0.5ex, aboveglftskip=-0.5ex]
\glpreamble XXXXXXXX (-0.5ex) //
\gla XXXXXXXX //
\glb XXXXXXXX //
\glft XXXXXXXX (-0.5ex) //
\endgl
\xe 

\clearpage

\end{document}

I get better results with -6pt using FreeSerif (XeLaTeX) with \parskip set to 6pt. 0.5ex seems to be not enough. I believe it's adding an extra parskip, but I haven't tracked down exactly what it's doing yet. — Jonathan W., Mar 10 '19 at 21:45
FYI, I've filed an issue at the expex repository about this: https://github.com/frampton/ExPex/issues/8 — Jonathan W., Mar 10 '19 at 21:51

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 12 '19 at 00:09

I filed an issue about this at the expex github repo, and the author reported a short-term work around.

TLDR: You can set \parskip to 0pt in Everyex (as below) and set a few other values to 0pt.

\lingset{Everyex={\parskip=0pt}}

The following MWE is a complete work-around:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expex}

\setlength{\parskip}{12pt}

\lingset{
    aboveglftskip=0pt,
    belowglpreambleskip=0pt,
    belowpreambleskip=0pt,
    extraglskip=0pt,
    Everyex={\parskip=0pt},
}

\begin{document}

\ex
\begingl[everygla={}]
\glpreamble XXXXXXXX //
\gla XXXXXXXX //
\glb XXXXXXXX //
\glft XXXXXXXX //
\endgl
\xe

\end{document}

It seems to result in evenly spaced lines:

Without extraglskip=0pt, it looks like this, with most extra space gone:

If Everyex={\parskip=0pt} is additionally removed, the following is the result, with lots of extra space (due to the 12pt \parskip):

aboveglftskip in expex linguistic glosses

2 Answers2

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