[Tex/LaTex] Description-like environment with fixed labels width

Question

Which is the right way to do something like 'description' list but with customizable and fixed-width labels? I.e. something like this:

Label:         Text text text text text text
               text text text text.
Longer label:  Text text text text text text
               Text text text text.

The way I see it to use two-column table (first columt for labels and second column for descriptions), but this solution seems ugly.
Is there any other way?

Answer 1

You can use the enumitem package to customize the description environment, e.g.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}[leftmargin=8em,style=nextline]
  \item[Something] Text. More text.More text.More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. 
  \item[Ought else] More text.
\end{description}
\end{document}

You can set this for all description environments (probably not desirable) with

\setlist[description]{leftmargin=8em,style=nextline}

or you can define your own list environment e.g.

\newlist{NewDesc}{description}{2}
\setlist[NewDesc]{leftmargin=8em,style=nextline}

and use as

\begin{NewDesc}
  \item[Something] Text. More text.More text.More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. More text. 
  \item[Ought else] More text.
\end{NewDesc}