[Tex/LaTex] Change \textwidth after first page in scrlttr2

marginsscrlttr2

I am looking for an automated mechanism to change the effective \textwidth at the first pagebreak of a letter in scrpage2. I've tried \afterpage and \nextpage (ideally they would be set within \firsthead), both without success. I do not want to use the geometry package because firstly, IMO scrlttr2 should work with a change of KOMAoptions and friends and secondly, it does not seem to work anyways if used within scrlttr2 and the KOMA layout. Ideas and suggestions are very welcome.

Here's a MNWE. Page 2 and following should have a wider text block than the first page — but doesn't.

\documentclass{scrlttr2}%
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lipsum,afterpage}%
\setlength{\textwidth}{125mm}%
\nexthead{%
  \global\areaset{170mm}{\textheight}%
  \global\KOMAoptions{DIV=areaset}%
  \global\recalctypearea%
}
\afterpage{%
  \global\areaset{170mm}{\textheight}%
  \global\KOMAoptions{DIV=areaset}%
  \global\recalctypearea%
}
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Receipient}
  \opening{Dear receipient,}
  \lipsum[1-6]
  \closing{Yours}
\end{letter}
\end{document}

And BTW, I genuinely think that this is not covered by Change \textwidth and \textheight in mid-document and related questions and instead somehow relates to the internals of the KOMA classes.

Best Answer

Here is now a working example. It still requires a manual \pagebreak in the main text of the letter, but according to explanations by @DavidCarlisle, see above, this is at good as it can get without resorting to more powerful systems like luatex.

\documentclass{scrlttr2}%
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lipsum,afterpage}%
\setlength{\textwidth}{125mm}%
\firstfoot{%
  \afterpage{%
    \global\setlength{\textwidth}{17cm}%
    \global\setlength{\columnwidth}{\textwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\hsize}{\columnwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\linewidth}{\hsize}}%
}

\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Receipient}
  \opening{Dear receipient,}
  \lipsum[1-2]
  \pagebreak % enfore the page break, otherwise afterpage will take
  % effect too late, i.e. after first broken paragraph on page 2.
  \lipsum[3-12]
  \closing{Yours}
\end{letter}
\end{document}

In this example the text body on the first page has a width of 12.5cm and on of 17cm on all following pages. If you want this to work in documents containing multiple letters, you should reset \textwidth on every "first page," e.g. using

\firsthead{%
    \global\setlength{\textwidth}{12.5cm}%
    \global\setlength{\columnwidth}{\textwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\hsize}{\columnwidth}%
    \global\setlength{\linewidth}{\hsize}%
}

in the preamble.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Change page layout after first page

In the model that TeX uses there is no way to achieve your goal other than manually or in very very restricted contexts. As TeX is first generating paragraphs and only at the end of a paragraph checking whether or not to cut a page you will always end up on the second page with some part of the paragraph already been typeset (and thus to the width of the previous page).

You can achieve your goal by manually splitting the paragraph yourself (and effectively restarting a new one (with different settings afterwards)). I.e., if you know what the last word on the first page is you can put special command at this point, say, \EndOfFirstPage. The define this command in the preamble or in your class file as follows:

\newcommand\EndOfFirstPage{%
  \setlength\parfillskip{0pt}%  line should end at the right
  \par                       %  finish paragraph for now
  \setlength\parfillskip{0pt plus 1fil}% default again
  \pagebreak
   ...                        % <--- change your geometry settings here
  \noindent                   % new paragraph on the new page that claims to be
                              % a continuation
}

Of course, whenever you later change the text of the first page you may need to move the split point around. Or you could combine the above with your approach using the atbegshi package for setting the geometry and the \EndOfFirstPage only to produce the split. This has the advantage that the geometry would be nearly correct even if the command is not there to indicate the split (only the par at the page break wrong) and you could delay adding \EndOfFirstPage to a time when you are mostly done with the editing.

Automatic methods would involve keeping track of where you are on the page (how many more lines would fit) somehow capturing each paragraph untypeset, trial typesetting it to find out how long it would be, then if necessary generating a complex \parshape so that the lines of the last paragraph on the page change width on the page boundary.

Bottom line, such thing doesn't exist and it is not something that is in any way easy or even possible to be worked out reliably (non of the experts in the last 20 years overcame that limitation). We now think that we do have code for it in the LaTeX3 project but so far only an idea (and one that wouldn't work with current 2e's output routine, so this isn't going to help easily).

[Tex/LaTex] Initial page numbers wrong

You get three times a page 1 in the front matter: in the report class the titlepage environment which is used also by abstract resets the page number to 1.

I suggest you to use the book class with its \frontmatter and \mainmatter commands, with \chapter{\abstractname} for the abstract in the front matter.

However also the report class can be used, after patching the relevant commands; I show only the important parts, add the rest to suit. It's probably better to \usepackage[<options>]{geometry} for setting the page parameters and \usepackage{setspace} for the interline spacing.

Remember the \clearpage command before \pagenumbering{arabic}.

\documentclass[12pt]{report}

%%% PATCHES %%%
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
% Patch `titlepage` not to reset the page number
\patchcmd{\titlepage}{\setcounter{page}\@ne}{}{}{}
\patchcmd{\endtitlepage}{\setcounter{page}\@ne}{}{}{}

% Patch `abstract` so that it shows the page number
\patchcmd{\abstract}{\titlepage}{\titlepage\thispagestyle{plain}}{}{}
\makeatother
%%% END PATCHES %%%

\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{roman}
\begin{titlepage}
abc
\end{titlepage}
\begin{abstract}
dddd
\end{abstract}

\tableofcontents

\clearpage %%%%% <---- IMPORTANT
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\pagestyle{myheadings} \markright{}
\chapter{A}

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Change page layout after first page

[Tex/LaTex] Initial page numbers wrong

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