Remove horizontal spacing between \makebox and \dotfill

Question

I want to present some information in a format which has a scenario described then dotfill to a right aligned result. If the scenario+result would fill the line, I want it to break to the next line and dotfill the entire line with the result right aligned.

I can achieve this with \makebox, but that introduces unwanted spacing between the box and the dotfill so it isn't a continuous run of dots.

MWE:

\documentclass{scrreprt}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
    \item This is some text \dotfill Result
    \item This is some text which almost fills a line so dotfill does not produce an output \dotfill Result
    \item This is some text which does fill the line and a break occurs but dotfill doesn't dot \dotfill Result
    \item I would prefer that if the text fills the line, dotfill fills the next line before the result \makebox[3cm]{\dotfill}\dotfill Result
\end{description}
\end{document}

I've tried various combinations of \unskip and \ignorespaces, but they don't give the desired result. I can \kern-3pt the space away, but that feels hacky. I'd much prefer to generalise a solution to a command I can use instead of dotfill:

\NewDocumentCommand\myDotfill{}{\makebox[3cm]{\dotfill}\MAGICSPACEKILLER\dotfill}

Can anyone advise what I should put in a command to try to kill the unwanted horizontal space?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '23 at 23:36

a version of dotfill using a skip of minimum size 3cm rather than 0pt, and avoiding being discarded on a line break

\documentclass{scrreprt}
%\ShowCommand\dotfill
\NewDocumentCommand\mdotfill{}{%
\mbox{}\nobreak\cleaders \hbox to .44em{\hss .\hss }%
%\hfill
\hskip 3cm plus 1filll
 \kern 0pt\relax} 
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
    \item This is some text \dotfill Result
    \item This is some text which almost fills a line so dotfill does not produce an output \mdotfill Result
    \item This is some text which does fill the line and a break occurs but dotfill doesn't dot \mdotfill Result
    \item I would prefer that if the text fills the line, dotfill fills the next line before the result \mdotfill Result
\end{description}
\end{document}

Thanks David! I know I'm not supposed to use the comments for just that, but I wanted to specifically thank you for leaving your working in.
I can see that you used \ShowCommand to find the code for \dotfill, and replaced \hfill in it with \hskip 3cm plus 1filll which does exactly what I was looking for. — jw5801, Jul 06 '23 at 01:10

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 05 '23 at 23:32

For those instances where you want a full-width line at the end, insert a \parnopar before \dotfill.

\documentclass{scrreprt}
\newcommand{\parnopar}{\parfillskip=0pt\par\parskip=0pt\noindent}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
    \item This is some text \dotfill Result
    \item This is some text which almost fills a line so dotfill does not produce an output \dotfill Result
    \item This is some text which does fill the line and a break occurs but dotfill doesn't dot \par \dotfill Result
    \item I would prefer that if the text fills the line, dotfill fills the next line before the result \parnopar \dotfill Result
\end{description}
\end{document}

Thanks Werner - this works if I manually add it after compiling and realising that I need it, but David's answer above gives me a general solution that doesn't require any user intervention. — jw5801, Jul 06 '23 at 01:13

Remove horizontal spacing between \makebox and \dotfill

2 Answers2