Adjust white fill between paragraphs in LaTeX - latex

Latex seems to fill in white space between the paragraphs by default, to get every page to end at approx the same height (at least with the book and scrreprt class). This is all fine, but I have a couple of pages with only two paragraphs. Latex insists on putting in 2cm of white space between them, which looks bad. I know that I can use \raggedrift for the whole document, but I kind of like the white fill except for the pages with only two paragraphs. I have also tried to adjust manually with \vspace{-1cm}, but it doesn't seem to work.
Is there a way to set a maximum value to the height of white fill between paragraphs?

If your mostly-empty pages are because the following content starts on a new page (at the end of a chapter, for example), then the easiest way to fix it is probably to insert a vertical fill after your last paragraph. The vertical fill should expand to occupy the extra space, keeping the inter-paragraph fill small.
You can change the vertical space applied to every paragraph by setting the value of \parskip.

The solution is very simple. At the end of the last paragraph of the page, add '\vfill'. This will fill up the rest of the page, making the two paragraphs on it move as close to each other as they would normally.
I just tested it myself and it works.

Related

Vertically centered line in text with custom length

I am trying to create a vertically centered line inside normal text. I also want to control length and width of the line as the dash or "---" are to thin and/or short.
I want something like the math-command \rule{length}{width}, which is centered like a dash and not floored.
Example (not created with Latex)
Simply put, \rule can be raised just by specifying how high you want it.
\rule[0.5ex]{1in}{0.4pt}
raises a \rule{1in}{0.4pt} 0.5ex above the baseline.

Align UITextView Right and Left.

I have UITextView, which is left aligned.
When last word does not fit on current line it goes to next line leaving spaces on end of line.
which does not give good look and feel.
So, what I want that if words of particular line feels the spaces left at end.
i.e. Spaces between two words can dynamically varies.
Here I am giving example of Scenario:
The width of text view,never put off until (here tomorrow does not fit,so it goes to next line leaving spaces).
Tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
So, problem is it does look good.
What I want is:
The width of text view never put off, until (varying spaces shown by)
tomorrow -what -you -can
avoid --all -- together.
Thanks in Advance.
There is no setting for justified aligment for text you only have center, left and right. If you want justified aligment where every line has the same amount of characters or something like that you can format the text entered to have carriage returns after x amount of characters or words, or something like that.

What is a vertical tab?

What was the original historical use of the vertical tab character (\v in the C language, ASCII 11)?
Did it ever have a key on a keyboard? How did someone generate it?
Is there any language or system still in use today where the vertical tab character does something interesting and useful?
Vertical tab was used to speed up printer vertical movement. Some printers used special tab belts with various tab spots. This helped align content on forms. VT to header space, fill in header, VT to body area, fill in lines, VT to form footer. Generally it was coded in the program as a character constant. From the keyboard, it would be CTRL-K.
I don't believe anyone would have a reason to use it any more. Most forms are generated in a printer control language like postscript.
#Talvi Wilson noted it used in python '\v'.
print("hello\vworld")
Output:
hello
world
The above output appears to result in the default vertical size being one line. I have tested with perl "\013" and the same output occurs. This could be used to do line feed without a carriage return on devices with convert linefeed to carriage-return + linefeed.
Microsoft Word uses VT as a line separator in order to distinguish it from the normal new line function, which is used as a paragraph separator.
In the medical industry, VT is used as the start of frame character in the MLLP/LLP/HLLP protocols that are used to frame HL-7 data, which has been a standard for medical exchange since the late 80s and is still in wide use.
It was used during the typewriter era to move down a page to the next vertical stop, typically spaced 6 lines apart (much the same way horizontal tabs move along a line by 8 characters).
In modern day settings, the vt is of very little, if any, significance.
The ASCII vertical tab (\x0B)is still used in some databases and file formats as a new line WITHIN a field. For example:
In the .mer file format to allow new lines within a data field,
FileMaker databases can use vertical tabs as a linefeed (see https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/59096).
I have found that the VT char is used in pptx text boxes at the end of each line shown in the box in oder to adjust the text to the size of the box.
It seems to be automatically generated by powerpoint (not introduced by the user) in order to move the text to the next line and fix the complete text block to the text box. In the example below, in the position of §:
"This is a text §
inside a text box"
A vertical tab was the opposite of a line feed i.e. it went upwards by one line. It had nothing to do with tab positions. If you want to prove this, try it on an RS232 terminal.
similar to R0byn's experience, i was experimenting with a Powerpoint slide presentation and dumped out the main body of text on the slide, finding that all the places where one would typically find carriage return (ASCII 13/0x0d/^M) or line feed/new line (ASCII 10/0x0a/^J) characters, it uses vertical tab (ASCII 11/0x0b/^K) instead, presumably for the exact reason that dan04 described above for Word: to serve as a "newline" while staying within the same paragraph. good question though as i totally thought this character would be as useless as a teletype terminal today.
I believe it's still being used, not sure exactly. There might be even a key combination of it.
As English is written Left to Right, Arabic Right to Left, there are languages in world that are also written top to bottom. In that case a vertical tab might be useful same as the horizontal tab is used for English text.
I tried searching, but couldn't find anything useful yet.

dealing with large figures in Latex

I have a large figure that appears at the end of my document rather than in the section that I want to be in. Even \begin{figure}[h] doesn't help. Without scaling it down, how can I put it at the end of the section I want it in?
Using the afterpage package can be a good solution. However, using the option here you are trying to tell LaTeX where you want to put the image. Instead, you need to tell LaTeX where the image is good to be put:
use \begin{figure}[tb] for figures that fit well in a page with text (say, half of the text height for the figure and the other half for the text)
use \begin{figure}[p] for floats large enough to require a dedicated page.
Setting a proper option increase your chances to have the image almost where you want, having at the same time a good page layout.
If the figure is still too far from the page where it should be placed, you can set some "barriers" for floats positioning with the packages placeins or afterpage (already mentioned).
Here is a small tutorial for float placement. The thing you want to do is put an \afterpage{\clearpage} command at the end of the section. This will create an additional page after the current one and place the floats that are left in the queque there. If the float still doesn't get placed, you have to resize it. If you really don't want to resize it and it should fit on the page, then you could try changing the margins and text area temporarily (i.e. just for that one page) and see if that lets the float get placed.
i forget if it's the float or array package that provides this, but,
\begin{figure}[H]
...
\end{figure}
The upper case H will put the figure exactly where it is in your code.

How do I prevent LaTeX from padding spaces between paragraphs so that next section begins at top of next page?

I have a two-column paper where space restrictions are very tight.
I just looked at my last version of the manuscript and saw that the upper half contains a figure (as expected), but in the lower half there is a lot of vertical space between paragraphs (enough to squeeze 10 more lines), and that LaTeX probably added it so that in the beginning of the next page a new numbered section will begin at the top of the page.
I know there's a way to adjust this so LaTeX doesn't try so hard, but I'm not sure how. any help? Thanks!
The parameter that controls inter-paragraph spacing is called \parskip(See Paragraph Spacing ). You set it (with "rubber" values) using something like:
\setlength{\parskip}{1cm plus4mm minus3mm}
The defualt value of \parskip is class dependent. The "plus" and "minus" parts tell TeX how much it can adjust the value to improve the layout (that is they make the spacing elastic, thus the "rubber" designation). Reducing (or eliminating) the "plus" part of the rubber might help.
Watch out though, you can cause other layout artifacts if you constrain TeX too much.
Other things to think about:
The widow and club penalties probably apply section headings, and may be affecting TeX's layout choices (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/512967/how-can-one-keep-a-section-from-being-at-the-end-of-a-page-in-latex for a discussion).
You may also want to consider messing with \baselineskip which controls the allowed spacing between lines of text and can also have rubber values.
This is a common problem, and there are probably some fairly sophisticated treatments already prepared on CTAN.
\vfill before the new section worked perfectly for me.

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