Removing extra vertical space in \maketitle with titling package

Question

Consider the following two LaTeX source files:

First, manually producing a title using a new environment (eww):

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\parindent0cm%
\newenvironment*{mytitle}{\begin{LARGE}\bf}{\end{LARGE}\\[1.5ex]}%
\begin{document}
\begin{mytitle}This is a test document\end{mytitle}
\end{document}

Secondly, redefining \maketitle using the titling package:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\parindent0cm%
\usepackage{titling}
\pretitle{\begin{LARGE}\bf}%
\posttitle{\end{LARGE}\\[1.5ex]}%
\preauthor{}%
\postauthor{}%
\predate{}%
\postdate{}%
\title{This is a test document}
\date{}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

Why does the second "proper" solution give substantially more vertical whitespace before the title? What can I do about it?

[ Context: I am turning a horrible "let's pretend LaTeX is a word processor" TeX template for a conference into a proper class, and I need to match the spacing. ]

Answer 1

The titling package defines a length \droptitle which needs to be set to a negative value to move it up. Adding

\setlength{\droptitle}{-1cm}

to your second example will give you the same result.

By the way, you should use \bfseries instead of \bf (see Will two-letter font style commands (\bf , \it , …) ever be resurrected in LaTeX?) and use \vspace{1.5ex} instead of \\[1.5ex]