[Tex/LaTex] Is \baselineskip automatically defined

macros

Is \baselineskip automatically defined by LaTeX? What does it depend on?

I was going through the Wikibook section regarding lengths, and I just realized also that \bigskip and others are not dependent on the font size. Is this the same for baselineskip?

Best Answer

\baselineskip is a tex primitive, so it is always defined to be something (well unless someone goes \let\baselineskip\@undefined but even then the underlying register still has a value even if it is not accessible.

It is set in various places in LaTeX, most notably all font size commands end up executing

\fontsize{aaa}{bbb}\selectfont

in which case \baselineskip gets set to bbb times the current value of \baselinestretch.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to find out where a macro is defined

Oh, I find a much better way to do this, also with help of filehook (the code is somewhat tricky):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filehook,currfile}
\newwrite\finder
\immediate\openout\finder=\jobname.fnd

\def\searchmacro#1{
  \AtBeginOfFiles{%
    \ifdefined#1
      \expandafter\def\csname \currfilename:found\endcsname{}%
    \fi}
  \AtEndOfFiles{%
    \ifdefined#1
      \unless\ifcsname \currfilename:found\endcsname
        \immediate\write\finder{found in '\currfilename'}%
    \fi\fi}}

\searchmacro\url

\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
dummy
\end{document}

After compiling, we will get

found in 'url.sty'
found in 'hyperref.sty'

in \jobname.fnd. That is to say, \url is defined in url.sty, which is inputed by hyperref.sty.

[Tex/LaTex] Where is \@makefntext defined

With a little help of grep: The standard classes define this command:

For example article.cls

Within \maketitle:

\long\def\@makefntext##1{\parindent 1em\noindent
        \hb@xt@1.8em{%
            \hss\@textsuperscript{\normalfont\@thefnmark}}##1}%

Later on in the class:

\newcommand\@makefntext[1]{%
    \parindent 1em%
    \noindent
    \hb@xt@1.8em{\hss\@makefnmark}#1}

Inletter.cls

  \long\def\@makefntext#1{%
    \noindent
    \hangindent 5\p@
    \hb@xt@5\p@{\hss\@makefnmark}#1}

The definitions from book and report classes are equal to article.cls, for the KOMA classes the definition is somewhat different.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to find out where a macro is defined

[Tex/LaTex] Where is \@makefntext defined

Related Question