Starting text after chapter at the same height

[Tony]

Hi!

I'm starting each chapter with an epigraph. As expected, some of the
quotations i use are longer than others, so the text after the
epigraph does not start at the same height in the page. Is there any
way to set the text so it starts at the same height in every chapter
(let's say it, start the text 10cm from the bottom of the page, for
example). I have tried using \vfill and \vspace but it is more like a
try-and-error procedure. Or is this the only way?

Regards,

Tony

[Peter Flynn]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:36 AM, Tony <tony.r....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi!

I'm starting each chapter with an epigraph. As expected, some of the
quotations i use are longer than others, so the text after the
epigraph does not start at the same height in the page. Is there any
way to set the text so it starts at the same height in every chapter

Yes, set it in a \vbox of a fixed height (so that the same height is used by all chapters; this means you need to set the height to the height of the largest epigraph you will use), eg

\chapter{Stuff}
\epigraph{blah blah}

where \epigraph is defined something like:

\newcommand{\epigraph}[1]{\vbox to2cm{\noindent\small\itshape#1\par\vfill}}

However, as chapter titles can also be long, and run to more than one line, you may want to take them into account as well, and rewrite \@chapter entirely so that it typesets the chapter title and the epigraph as a single block of known height, so that the text always starts in the same place. That way you could write

\chapter[short version]{Something very long}{An epigraph text here}

If you need to provide a proper citation for epigraphs, you'd need a fourth argument. If it needs to be optional (some epigraphs have them and others don't) then you need to use the xargs package...and it just gets more and more complex the more you need to automate :-)

///Peter