🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <16709@cisunx.UUCP> dcarson@cisunx.UUCP (David  Carson) writes:
>I need a little simple advice on alignment.  I'm trying to make a letterhead
>where the address appears on the right side of the page, but is not right-
>justified.  It should be left justified so that the longest line of the 
>address is flush with the right margin, like so:
>
>						John Doe             |
>						1600 Pennsylvania Ave|
>						Washington, D.C.     |
>						20002                |
>							       margin^
>
>First I tried using \halign without success.

In order to get \halign to work the way you want, you need to be sure
to use \halign to\hsize{...} so that the table will be as wide as the
page, then you need to be sure that the tabskip glue will stretch.

This works:

\tabskip=0pt plus1fill
\halign to\hsize{#\hfil\tabskip=0pt\cr
  John Doe\cr 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.\cr Washington, D.C.\cr 20002\cr}

Notice that the stretchy tabskip glue before the first column has a
higher order of infinity than the \hfil that right-justifies the
column.

I like to do letterheads that are a little fancier.
One of mine looks like this:

						(919) 490-6037
Greg McGary					(919) 493-5953 (FAX)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
						Suite 102
						4201 University Drive
						Durham, NC  27707
							
I do it like this:

  \font\rmX=cmr10
  \font\biXIV=cmti10 at 14.4pt
  \baselineskip=12pt\rmX
  \ialign to \hsize{#\hfil\tabskip=0pt plus1fill&\tabskip=0pt#\hfil\cr
			& (919) 490-6037\cr
  \biXIV Greg McGary	& (919) 493-5953 (FAX)\cr
  \noalign{\vskip4pt\hrule\vskip4pt}
			& Suite 102\cr
			& 4201 University Drive\cr
			& Durham, North Carolina~~27707\cr}

The two phone numbers in cmr10 have the proper interline spacing no matter
how tall the font used for the name happens to be.

>Is there a way in TeX to measure text?  Then I could do something like:
>
>\dimen1=\hsize
>\advance\dimen1 by-\measure<longest line of addr> %subtract the length of text
>\settabs\+\hskip<\dimen1>&\cr

Sure, put the text into a box then use one of several box-metric primitives:

\setbox0=\hbox{<longest line of addr>}

Now,
	\wd0 gives the box's width
	\ht0 gives the box's height
	\dp0 gives the box's depth.

-- Greg McGary
-- 4201 University Drive #102, Durham, NC 27707       voice: (919) 490-6037
-- {decvax,hplabs,seismo,mcnc}!duke!gm                 data: (919) 493-5953
--                                  gm@cs.duke.edu