The paralist
package provides compressed lists, the new environments are called compactitem
, compactenum
and compactdesc
. Use it just like the corresponding standard list environments. It can even keep lists within a paragraph.
The enumitem
provides more features but also compressed lists, for instance by
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{nolistsep,leftmargin=*}
\setlist
modifies all lists, \setitemize
just itemize
etc. It takes an optional parameter that stands for the level that should be changed, default it alters all levels. Since enumitem
allows a lot more customization I prefer it over paralist
, but the latter is easier to use and fits better to the question here.
There are two things going on in this situation. For those who know about LaTeX's list parameters, there is a \topsep
being added before the itemize list. The other is
that this item is starting in vertical mode, so a \partopsep
is also being added.
We thus need to do two things in this situation: (1) set \topsep
to zero for the list, via a redefinition \@listi
, and (2) clear \partopsep
.
The best way to do this is to add this to block begin
template. Here is an example, based on the essentials of your code.
\documentclass[10pt]{beamer}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usetheme{default}
\usecolortheme{crane}
\setbeamertemplate{itemize items}[square]
\setbeamercolor{item}{fg=black}
\setbeamercolor{frametitle}{fg=black}
\setbeamercolor{block title}{fg=black}
\setbeamercolor{title}{fg=black}
\setbeamercolor{block body}{bg=white}
\makeatletter
\addtobeamertemplate{block begin}{
\def\@listi{\leftmargin\leftmargini
\topsep 0pt
\parsep 0pt
\itemsep 3pt plus 2pt minus 3pt}
\partopsep 0pt
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{text vs. item blocks}
\begin{columns}[t]
\begin{column}{0.42\textwidth}
\begin{block}{text block}
block block block block block\vadjust{\hrule}
block block block block block
block block block block block
block block block block block
\end{block}
\end{column}
\begin{column}{0.48\textwidth}
\begin{block}{item block}
\begin{itemize}
\item item\vadjust{\hrule}
\item item
\item item
\end{itemize}
\end{block}
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
I have placed the blocks side-by-side and added the \vadjust{\hrule}
for illustration purposes. The values for \@listi
are based on beamers defaults which are
\def\@listi{\leftmargin\leftmargini
\topsep 3\p@ \@plus2\p@ \@minus2.5\p@
\parsep 0\p@
\itemsep3\p@ \@plus2\p@ \@minus3\p@}
\partopsep
has default value
2.0pt plus 1.0pt minus 1.0pt
If you want the individual lines to match up, then you should also put \itemsep
equal to 0pt
in the above code.
Beaware that if the titles of the two blocks have different heights/depths then theh body will move accordingly and you will loose your alignment again. You can cover yourself a little by adding an appropriate strut to your block titles.
Note that the above code also kills \topsep
for subsquent uses of itemize
within the same block. If this is a problem, you might try to just adjust \partopsep
to cancel out \topsep
and ensure that your subsequent lists in the block do not start in vertical mode.
Best Answer
Simply setting
\topsep
as is usual does not work in the beamer case. Instead you can redefine\@listii
as follows:See the file
beamerbaselocalstructure.sty
where you will find the formatting variables\@listi
,\@listii
and\@listiii
for formatting of lists at depths one, two and three, respectively.You can define macro that will set
\topsep
,\itemsep
to the same value (#2
) for lists of a given level as in the example below. This is particularly useful you want to scope the change of definition for just a single frame.}