The memoir class - The UK TeX Archive

2.4. The typeblockThe monospaced fonts, Courier and Typewriter have no place in high quality typesettingexcept when typesetting computer code or the like, or when trying to fake text writtenon a real typewriter. Ignoring these, a quick glance at the Table shows that Bookman is abroad font while Times is narrow as befits its original design intent for typesetting narrowcolumns in newspapers. Computer Modern tends towards the narrow end of the range.\xlvchars \lxvcharsBased on Table 2.3, the two lengths \xlvchars and \lxvchars are initially set to approximatelythe lengths of a line of text with 45 or 65 characters, respectively, for ComputerModern Roman in the type size selected for the document.If you are using a different font or size you can use something like the following tocalculate and print out the length for you.\newlength{\mylen}% a length\newcommand{\alphabet}{abc...xyz} % the lowercase alphabet\begingroup% keep font change local% font specification e.g., \Large\sffamily\settowidth{\mylen}{\alphabet}The length of this alphabet is \the\mylen. % print in document\typeout{The length of the Large sans alphabetis \the\mylen}% put in log file\endgroup% end the groupingThe \typeout macro prints its argument to the terminal and the log file. There is, however,an easier method.\setxlvchars[〈fontspec〉]\setlxvchars[〈fontspec〉]The macros \setxlvchars and \setlxvchars, which were suggested by MortenHøgholm, set the lengths \xlvchars and \lxvchars respecively for the font 〈fontspec〉.The default for 〈fontspec〉 is \normalfont. For example, the values of \lxvchars and\xlvchars after calling:\setlxvchars \setxlvchars[\small\sffamily]are: \lxvchars = 305.42249pt, and \xlvchars = 190.52705pt.Morten Høgholm 1 also commented:. . . I was defining some environments that had to have \parindent as theirindentation. For some reason I just wrote 1.5em instead of \parindent becauseI ‘knew’ that was the value. What I had overlooked was that I hadloaded the mathpazo package [Pug02], thus, among other things, altering\parindent. Conclusion: the environment would use 1.5em = 18.0pt, whereasthe \parindent was only 17.607pt.This, and other related situations can be avoided if one places\RequirePackage{〈font-package〉}\normalfontbefore \documentclass.Note that, in general, it is inadviseable to put any commands before \documentclass.The height of the typeblock should be equivalent to an integral number of lines.1 Private communication15