[comp.text.tex] tricky problem with halign

landsbur@euclid.math.colostate.edu (Steve Landsburg) (11/26/90)

TeX will not change the value of \baselineskip within an \halign.  
I would like to find a way to effectively accomplish the same thing.
That is, I want to be able to control the baseline-to-baseline 
distance from one line to the next.

One way to do this is to insert appropriate \vskips between the
lines.  However, calculating the appropriate size of the \vskip
involves knowing the depth of the preceding line.  Unfortunately,
\prevdepth does not seem to work inside an \halign, even if it
is imbedded in a \noalign.

Is there a way to access the depth of the previous line within an
\halign?  Failing that, is there some other solution to my problem?

Email will be appreciated; I don't often read this group.  If you
think this is of sufficient general interest to post a reply, I'd
be grateful for email alerting me to it.

Thanks very much,

Lauren Feinstone, guest of Steve Landsburg
email to:  landsbur@euclid.math.colostate.edu