Increase white space between title and subtitle in scrartcl

Question

As the title says, how do I increase the space between the title and the subtitle in the scrartcl document class?

Answer 1

Update: Thanks to egreg's suggestion, here's a shorter patch. We don't need to identify the whole block since \vskip.5em is the only occurrence in the command definition. :)

We could patch \maketitle and replace the original \vskip value (.5em) by our our adjustment. Here's my humble attempt with the help of the amazing xpatch package:

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage{xpatch}

\newlength{\myspace}
\setlength{\myspace}{2em}

\makeatletter
\xpatchcmd{\@maketitle}{\vskip.5em}{\vskip\myspace}{}{}
\makeatother

\title{Title}
\subtitle{Subtitle}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

Hello world.

\end{document}

Note that we created a new length (\myspace) to hold our new value. The output is as expected:

Hope it helps. :)

Answer 2

Here is a solution, changing the whole \maketitle command.

\makeatletter
\renewcommand*{\@maketitle}{%
  \clearpage
  \let\footnote\thanks
  \ifx\@extratitle\@empty \else
    \noindent\@extratitle \next@tpage \if@twoside \null\next@tpage \fi
  \fi
  \setparsizes{\z@}{\z@}{\z@\@plus 1fil}\par@updaterelative
  \ifx\@titlehead\@empty \else
    \begin{minipage}[t]{\textwidth}
      \@titlehead
    \end{minipage}\par
  \fi
  \null
  \vskip 2em%
  \begin{center}%
    \ifx\@subject\@empty \else
      {\subject@font \@subject \par}
      \vskip 1.5em
    \fi
    {\titlefont\huge \@title \par}%
    \vskip 2em % original was \vskip .5em
    {\ifx\@subtitle\@empty\else\usekomafont{subtitle}\@subtitle\par\fi}%
    \vskip 1em
    {\Large
      \lineskip .5em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par
    }%
    \vskip 1em%
    {\Large \@date \par}%
    \vskip \z@ \@plus 1em
    {\Large \@publishers \par}
    \ifx\@dedication\@empty \else
      \vskip 2em
      {\Large \@dedication \par}
    \fi
  \end{center}%
  \par
  \vskip 2em
}%
\makeatother

The part that is interesting for you, is between \@title and \@subtitle marked with the comment.