Chapter title and abstract in the same page

Question

I'm writing a report and I need to write an abstract for the chapter after the chapter title in the same page. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can't just use the regular abstract environment provided by the report document class, since it puts it on a page of its own. However, a slight modification to that environment (or creating a similar one without the conditional page breaking) - provided below as chapabstract - works without problem:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{changepage}% http://ctan.org/pkg/changepage
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\makeatletter
\newenvironment{chapabstract}{%
    \begin{center}%
      \bfseries Chapter Abstract
    \end{center}}%
   {\par}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\chapter{First chapter}
\begin{chapabstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{chapabstract}
\section{A section}

%=====

\chapter{Second chapter}
\begin{adjustwidth}{1cm}{1cm}
\lipsum[1]
\end{adjustwidth}
\section{A section}
\end{document}

changepage also provides the adjustwidth environment (where you specify the left/right indent), which allows for setting of contents in a narrower context. These two could be combined, if needed.

Answer 2

I would rather use a list to define such environments to get the margins adjusted in one step and to be able to adjust indentation and paragraph separation.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\makeatletter
\newenvironment{summary}
               {\begin{center}\textbf{Abstract}\end{center}
                 \list{}{\listparindent 1em%
                        %\setlength{\leftmargin}{<value>} adjust if you need
                        \itemindent\listparindent
                        \rightmargin\leftmargin
                        \parsep\z@ \@plus\p@}%
                \item\relax}
               {\endlist}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Introduction}
\begin{summary}
\lipsum[3]
\end{summary}
\lipsum
\end{document}

I have allowed for a heading (but it looks ugly, so if you do not need it remove the \begin{center}...\end{center}. The left and right margin is the same as those found in the quotation environment to keep the style constant. If you need to change it use:

\setlength{\leftmargin}{<value>}

within the definition.