An environment with custom justification

Question

I would like to create an environment called "question" with one argument (being the question number) with a certain alignment/justification. How might I define one so that it comes out like how it does in one of the two ways here?

In the linked example, it is just the alignments that I am talking about (not the fonts, sizing, etc.).
There are two kinds of alignments here:

• One is like #5.66 where the question's body is in line with the end of "5.66".
• The other kind, like in #5.64, has the bodies of the questions (i),(ii), etc. in line with lettering, which is itself further right of the question number.

In each case how might I phrase my environment's definition?

Answer 1

This style of alignment is usually done with a list. And, in the world of lists, enumitem is king. Here's a short example of how this can be obtained (without much formatting):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\usepackage{enumitem}% http://ctan.org/pkg/enumitem
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[labelwidth=4em,labelsep=1em]
  \item[5.64] \lipsum[2]
  \item[5.66] Some short text
  \item[5.89] \lipsum[2]
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}​

Of course, with enumitem you can make these settings locally (as I did in my example) via an optional argument [...], or globally using \setlist. See the enumitem documentation for more information/detail.

Also, since it manages lists, the numbering is easily automated. In my example above, the numbering can be supplied manually using \item[...], or in an automated fashion without the optional argument to \item.

Nesting is also possible using the same approach:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\usepackage{enumitem}% http://ctan.org/pkg/enumitem
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[labelwidth=4em,labelsep=1em]
  \item[5.64] \lipsum[2]
  \item[5.66] Some short text
    \begin{enumerate}[label=(\roman*),labelwidth=2em,labelsep=.5em]
      \item Here is some text
      \item Here is some text
      \item Here is some text
    \end{enumerate}
  \item[5.89] \lipsum[2]
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}​