[Tex/LaTex] How to set leftmargin of description to width of a particular label in enumitem

descriptionenumitem

I'd like to make a timeline with a description environment.

If I use the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}

\begin{description}[leftmargin=*,label=0000]
\item[1987]Something really exciting happened in that year, but I’m not sure exactly what.
\item[1990]Bar
\end{description}

\end{document}

I get an error:

ERROR: Missing control sequence inserted.

--- TeX said ---
<inserted text> 
\inaccessible 
l.7 \begin{description}[leftmargin=*]

It seems that label=0000 doesn't work for description environments?

If I simply put leftmargin=2.8em (for this particular case), then I get what I want: the second line of the first item lines up with the first line:

But obviously I'd prefer to achieve this by giving the label to be measured dynamically.

Best Answer

Here are two ways:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{calc}

\begin{document}

\begin{description}[labelwidth =\widthof{\bfseries9999}, leftmargin = !]
\item[1987]Something really exciting happened in that year, but I’m not sure exactly what.
\item[1990]Bar
\end{description}
\bigskip

\begin{enumerate}[wide = 0pt, widest = {\bfseries9999}, leftmargin =*, font = \bfseries]
\item[1987]Something really exciting happened in that year, but I’m not sure exactly what.
\item[1990]Bar
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Line break after description label

The insertion of an empty item seems to give a better vertical spacing. One can define a myitemize environment that includes this empty item; that will prevent typing it for each description item:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{enumitem}

\newenvironment{myitemize}%
{\begin{itemize}\item[]}
{\end{itemize}}

\begin{document}

\begin{description}[style = sameline, leftmargin = 1em]
\item[Animals:]
  \begin{itemize}
  \item[]
  \item Dog
  \item Cat
  \item Fish
  \end{itemize}

\item[Colors:]
  \begin{myitemize}
  \item Red
  \item Green
  \item Blue
  \end{myitemize}
\end{description}

\end{document}

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] Label & reference description items with enumitem

I (like gernot in his comments to your question) see no problem with the syntax of \namedlabel. Nevertheless you can indeed define additional commands to mark parts of the item label to become not part of the reference. You can also define how automatic parts of the argument of \descriptionlabel should be interpreted while the expanding it to define the reference. And you could add a command to define which part of the argument should got to the reference. Here is an example that does automatically remove the \hfil from the reference (but not the font switch nor the :), manually removes the : or as an alternative defines the whole reference part:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[colorlinks=true,linkcolor=red]{hyperref}
\usepackage[nameinlink,noabbrev,capitalize]{cleveref}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\newlist{describe}{description}{1}
\setlist[describe,1]{%
  font=\normalfont\textsf,
  itemindent=0pt,
  wide,
  itemsep=0pt,topsep=2pt,
}

% Redefine Description List Items 
%    (source: http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/1248/13552)
\makeatletter
\let\orgdescriptionlabel\descriptionlabel
\newcommand*{\@restrictlabeltext}[1]{#1\protected@edef\@currentlabel{#1}}
\newcommand*{\nolabel}[1]{#1}%
\renewcommand*{\descriptionlabel}[1]{%
  \let\orglabel\label
  \let\label\@gobble
  \let\orig@hfil\hfil
  \def\hfil{}%
  \let\nolabel\@gobble
  \let\restrictlabeltext\@firstofone
  \phantomsection
  \protected@edef\@currentlabel{#1}%
  \let\hfil\orig@hfil
  \let\label\orglabel
  \let\restrictlabeltext\@restrictlabeltext
  \orgdescriptionlabel{#1}%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\Large
\section{Good eats}

\begin{describe}

\item [Fruit\nolabel{:}\label{item:fruit}] Oranges and apples.
\item [\restrictlabeltext{Vegetable}:\label{item:veggie}] Kale and potatoes. 

\end{describe}

\newpage 
Refer to \ref{item:veggie} above on \cpageref{item:veggie} or \ref{item:fruit}
on \cpageref{item:fruit}.

\end{document}

You could also make the : active and define it to be empty or \relax while the \protected@edef. You could even temporary redefine the font commands. But I don't think, that any of this suggestions are really better than your solution.

As an completely different alternative you could put the colon as part of the label format and patch \phantomsection and setting of \@currentlabel into the description list of enumitem:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[colorlinks=true,linkcolor=red]{hyperref}
\usepackage[nameinlink,noabbrev,capitalize]{cleveref}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{xpatch}

\newlist{describe}{description}{1}
\setlist[describe,1]{%
  font=\normalfont\textsf,
  itemindent=0pt,
  wide,
  itemsep=0pt,topsep=2pt,
  format={\normalfont\textsfcolor}
}
\newcommand*{\textsfcolor}[1]{\textsf{#1:}}
\makeatletter
\xpatchcmd{\enit@description@i}{%
  \labelsep\z@
}{%
  \phantomsection
  \let\org@label\label
  \let\label\@gobble
  \protected@edef\@currentlabel{##1}%
  \let\label\org@label
  \labelsep\z@
}{}{\undefined}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\Large
\section{Good eats}

\begin{describe}

\item [Fruit\label{item:fruit}] Oranges and apples.
\item [Vegetable\label{item:veggie}] Kale and potatoes. 

\end{describe}

\newpage 
Refer to \ref{item:veggie} above on \cpageref{item:veggie} or \ref{item:fruit}
on \cpageref{item:fruit}.

\end{document}

This will result in:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Line break after description label

[Tex/LaTex] Label & reference description items with enumitem

Related Question