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.
Related
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.
I'm trying to typeset something in LaTeX and I would like to know if I'm doing it right. The basic idea is that section number hangs in the left margin. The number takes the height of the header+2 lines for a chapter heading, +1 line for section heading, and has the same height as the header for subsections, and is aligned to the top of the heading. See the following image to get an idea of what I'm talking about:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8404/bladld.png
My approach is using titlesec and doing something like this:
\titleformat{\chapter}%
{\Huge\bfseries\sffamily}% format
{\vbox to 16pt{\llap{% label
\fontsize{3em}{0}\selectfont{\thechapter}%
\hskip 9pt%
}}}%
{0pt}% horizontal sep
{}% before
\titlespacing*{\chapter}%
{0pt}% left
{-2em}% before
{0pt}% after
But this solution has some hacks that I would rather avoid. The \vbox height for instance, is found by trial and error. Visually, it looks almost right...
Try using the memoir document class. That has a ton of options for doing exactly this kind of thing, and it's much neater...
There's a hangnum style and for sections, there's a \hangsecnum option, but that only puts the number in the margin: it doesn't make it bigger. Memoir is also fabulously documented. So I expect all everything you need will be there. The code for hangnum is on p.88 of the fantastic memoir manual. So from there and from later examples you should get all the pointers you need to get what you want...
How can I fully justify a block of text (like MS Word does, not only on the right and not only on the left but on both sides)?
I want to justify some texts (mainly arabic text) adjusted to certain screen size (some handheld device screen actually, and its text viewer doesn't have this function) and save this text as justified. So I can reload and reuse it again elsewhere.
(The problem with MS word is, that if you copy the justified text from MS Word and paste it to another editor it'll copy it un-justified).
Update : for now I'm thinking of doing it like this:
get-a-word
get-word-width
add-word-to-total-Word and add-Word-width-to-total-word-width
check if total-Word-width = myscreen-width then continue
else if total-Word-width is between myscree-wdith and (myscreen-width -3) then
add-spaces-To-total-word until it = myscreen-width
This is what I'm thinking now, but I put this question up and hope to see if there is a better solution, or somebody else already implemented it.
PS: I hope I have made my question clear and I'm sorry for bad expression if there is.
edit1 : changed the title to make it more clear.
If you want to justify plain text, you can only add extra spaces to the lines to get them align on the left and right. Unfortunately the character widths differ in fonts; so doing it this way will only work for a certain font, unless you limit yourself to monospaced fonts where all characters have the same size.
If you want a result like in Word, adding spaces won't cut it. Word will not add spaces, but stretch and shrink the existing spaces. This information is lost when you copy and paste it into another app.
Either way, justifying is an optimization problem. If you are interested in a good solution and its implementation: have a look a TeX. For an implementation that works on plain text with monospaced fonts have a look at par
There are some API calls that may help:
ExtTextOut and GetCharacterPlacement
Look at the GCP_JUSTIFY flag for GetCharacterPlacement
ExtTextOut is used by Canvas.TextRect
The problem you are going to face is always going to be differences in the rendering of the font. Word handles full justification by adjusting kerning as well as adjusting the number of pixels between words by a few (either way). The end result is lined up both margins. This pixel adjustment is done BOTH ways, and as evenly as possible.
To properly handle this in your portable device you will have to also perform the same algorithm for the display of the text there.
If this is not possible, then the ONLY way you can even get somewhat close would be to add whitespace between words.
As has been pointed out in other answers Word does full justification by stretching the existing spaces often by very small amounts. This is only possible if you have full control over how your text is drawn on the screen (which word - or any other windows program has).
You only real option in this regard would be to implement your own text viewer on the platform you are targeting. Eg you would need to draw the text on the screen yourself (any platform that allows games should allow you to draw on the screen). However this seems like an awful lot of trouble to get justified text.
Sorry couldn't be of more help.
What column setting do you use in the IDE for the vertical edge. I use 80 columns in line mode, but I wanted to know if this is common or is there a more common standard? I have seen other options like background mode, but found it too distracting.
Vertical Edge, for those who are unfamiliar, is a line or an area which marks off the section where the code can be written. Anything beyond may not format the best way in other code readers or makes code readability tougher. Please correct if my understanding is inaccurate.
Widescreen monitors and a preference for a smaller font so I get more vertical lines makes 80 a little lacking on the wide side.
I don't have a vertical column setting. Any coding lines (usually ifs) that may be too wide, I split at logical operators. For text lines, its a bit more nebulous where I actually split them but split them conservative.
Note: Your question appears to be the same as: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/903754/do-you-still-limit-line-length-in-code and question 746853 (which I can't hyperlink to as I am a "new user")
the following latex input:
\rule{1cm}{1cm}\\
\rule{1cm}{1cm}
leaves a gap of about .35mm between the boxes. what is the length that defines this gap?
Edit: I was only partly right at first, but GoogleBooks knew. It pointed me at A Beginner's Book of TeX
By Raymond Seroul, Silvio Levy, Silvio Vieira Ferreira Levy, which says:
Three variables control this behavior \baselineskip, \lineskip and \lineskiplimit.
The default separation of lines is \baselineskip, but boxes are not allowed to come closer than \lineskiplimit. If they would, the vertical spacing is adjusted until \lineskip space lies between them...