Spacing Between environment

Question

I want to define an environment to detach text from the document. I would like to have one blank line before and after my quote. I defined the following environment:

\newenvironment{myenv}{
\bigskip\noindent\newline
}{\par\bigskip}

But it happens that I need to put two of theses environments, and I get a double blank line. Is there a way to put a definite distance to the last paragraph and not a number of lines?

Answer 1

\addvspace only inserts vertical space up to some maximum:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newenvironment{myenv}
  {\par\addvspace{\baselineskip}}% \begin{myenv}
  {\par\addvspace{\baselineskip}}% \end{myenv}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[4]
\begin{myenv}
\lipsum[4]
\end{myenv}
\begin{myenv}
\lipsum[4]
\end{myenv}
\lipsum[4]

\end{document}

You can add your own formatting of the environment contents in terms of the font shape, say.

Answer 2

I'd suggest you to use a \list (as many of the standard LaTeX2e environments do):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to generate text for the example

\newenvironment{myenv}
  {\list{}{\leftmargin=0pt}\item\relax}{\endlist}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[4]
\begin{myenv}
\lipsum[4]
\end{myenv}
\begin{myenv}
\lipsum[4]
\end{myenv}
\lipsum[4]

\end{document}