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I want to define an environment, that uses \vskip to put some space before and after. Usually it will be used in the normal text, but sometimes I want to push to the bottom of a page with \vfill. When the environment is placed at the bottom of a page due to the current text on a page without \vfill the \vskip afterwards is ignored - but not when using \vfill.

Is there a way to get the same behaviour in both cases (ignoring the \vskip)?

Even without an environment this happens as the following MWE shows.

\documentclass{article} \begin{document} test \vfill % \vskip\baselineskip is added and causes a blank line at the bottom of the page % without that \vfill no space (glue) is inserted at the end (see below) test \vskip\baselineskip \end{document}

After a little search on this side I found the command \showoutput to see what's going on in the document. I tried to find out what is the reason for that difference and achieve what I want ... without any success. Here's the relevant part (I think) of \showoutput for that example. The difference is just a single line with or without \vfill.

...\hbox(6.15+0.11)x345.0, glue set 313.84fil, direction TLT ....\localpar .....\localinterlinepenalty=0 .....\localbrokenpenalty=0 .....\localleftbox=null .....\localrightbox=null ....\hbox(0.0+0.0)x15.0, direction TLT ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 t ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 e ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 s ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 t ....\penalty 10000 ....\glue(\parfillskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil ....\glue(\rightskip) 0.0 ...\glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill % That's the \vfill I guess ...\glue(\parskip) 0.0 plus 1.0 ...\glue(\parskip) 0.0 ...\glue(\baselineskip) 5.74 ...\hbox(6.15+0.11)x345.0, glue set 313.84fil, direction TLT ....\localpar .....\localinterlinepenalty=0 .....\localbrokenpenalty=0 .....\localleftbox=null .....\localrightbox=null ....\hbox(0.0+0.0)x15.0, direction TLT ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 t ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 e ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 s ....\TU/lmr/m/n/10 t ....\penalty 10000 ....\glue(\parfillskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil ....\glue(\rightskip) 0.0 ...\glue 12.0 % That's the \vskip I guess (it disappears without the \vfill) ...\glue -0.11 ...\glue 0.0 plus 1.0fil ...\glue 0.0 ...\glue 0.0 plus 0.0001fil

By the way, the same happens for \vspace or \addvspace instead of \vskip.

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  • \usepackge{showframe} shows no difference, \vfill doesn't expand until the page is done (full), which includes the blank line at the bottpm of the page. You can add a \pagebreak so that the blank line is now at the top of the next page. (and will be absorbed) Commented Aug 2, 2023 at 12:48

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I believe you should define two related environments: foo for normal appearance in the text block and foo* to move it at the bottom of the page.

\documentclass{article} \usepackage[a6paper,showframe]{geometry} \usepackage{lipsum} \newenvironment{foo}{% \par\addvspace{\baselineskip}\startfoo }{% \par\addvspace{\baselineskip}% } \newenvironment{foo*}{% \par\vfill\startfoo }{% \par } \newcommand{\startfoo}{\noindent\textbf{Foo.}\ \ignorespaces} \begin{document} \lipsum[1][1-5] \begin{foo} \lipsum[2][1-3] \end{foo} \lipsum[3][1-5] \clearpage \lipsum[1][1-5] \begin{foo*} \lipsum[2][1-3] \end{foo*} \end{document}

The packages I loaded in the preamble are just to produce a smaller picture showing the page margins. I provided a mock definition of the environment.

enter image description here

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