🚀 go-pugleaf

Glen Barnett <barnett@agsm.unsw.edu.au> wrote:

> Sorry about crossposting, but I need to find an answer to this ASAP...
> 
> How do I change margins in LaTeX? 
> 
> I need to make a document with a 40mm left margin and a 30 mm right
> margin. My document is currently a report in 11 pt. I thought mucking
> about with a copy of the stuff that talks about margins in rep11.sty
> would fix it (I copied part of it to a new file, changed some numbers
> - specifically \oddsidemargin and \evensidemargin - and input that just
> after the \documentstyle line).

First thing: use \documentclass not \documentstyle.  If you're writing
new documents, you shouldn't be using 2.09 compatibility mode (for
speed's sake even if you don't care about anything else).

> It didn't seem to make any difference.
> 
> Am I totally barking up the wrong tree, or did I just miss something
> minor?

Hmm...  I'm not sure why you didn't see any change, but don't worry
about that now.  If you want to change margins, you should change
\oddsidemargin and \evensidemargin *and* \textwidth - \oddsidemargin and
\evensidemargin set the *left* margin (they are actually the size of the
left margin - 1 inch) - you need to change \textwidth to set the
right-hand margin to the value you want.  Ideally, this will be based on
the \paperwidth so you get the right result even if you change paper
size (although 40mm and 30mm margins are pretty silly on A5 paper).

> The LaTeX manual was particularly unhelpful on this point - yet 
> people must have to have different margins fairly often. Any pointers
> would be greatly appreciated. Presumably this is covered in a FAQ
> or something, so please point me toward anything that covers it.

Changing page layout parameters in LaTeX is quite involved - Lamport's
book tells you what the various paramters *are*; getting a decent
balance between them all calls for either: very baroque code (my rmpage
package); elegant code (geometry package) and a typographical designer;
or a typographical designer, a calculator, several hours, and a
headache.

For what you want to do, I suspect the geometry package is what you need
- it's available from your nearest CTAN mirror (mine's at
ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive; more than a short walk from where you
are).

(geometry's very nice if you have particular measured dimensions you
need to use - much better for this than any other package I've seen to
set page layout parameters, including my own effort which is something I
wrote for what *I* want to do.)

Rowland.

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