What Causes Underfull and Overfull Boxes? In typesetting, text is arranged into rectangular blocks called boxes. When a line of text does not properly fill its allocated box, it can cause either an underfull or overfull box. An underfull box occurs when there is too much white space left at the end of a line…
The Hyphenation Problem LaTeX relies on an algorithm to automatically hyphenate words at the ends of lines as needed to produce visually appealing line breaks. However, the algorithm is not perfect and can sometimes produce awkward or ugly hyphenations that disrupt the reading flow. Common automatic hyphenation issues include: Hyphenating words that should not be…
When typesetting documents with LaTeX, you may encounter cryptic warnings about “overfull hboxes,” “underfull vboxes,” or “loose lines” even if your document looks perfectly fine visually. These warnings originate from LaTeX’s built-in tolerance settings that govern how strictly it evaluates the typographic quality of your content. However, the default settings are sometimes too rigid for…
Preventing Unwanted Page Breaks Using \\* to Prevent Page Breaks After Headings The \\* command allows you to prevent a page break after a heading or subheading. This helps keep headings at the top of pages and prevents orphaned subheadings at the bottom of pages. To use it, simply add \\* after the heading, like…
Understanding Underfull Boxes An underfull box in LaTeX refers to a line of text that does not properly fill the entire width allocated to it by the document’s margins. This can result in too much whitespace on some lines, leading to inconsistent spacing and odd gaps that disrupt the visual flow of text. Underfull boxes…
The Problem of Technical Debt in LaTeX Technical debt refers to the implicit cost of code or project architecture that is convenient in the short term but sets up a need for future refactoring. As LaTeX documents and codebases grow in size and complexity over time, the accumulation of technical debt can make them difficult…
Improving Readability of LaTeX Documents with Code Blocks LaTeX documents often contain code blocks to demonstrate programming concepts, data structures, algorithms, and more. Properly formatting these code blocks is essential for readability, legibility, and accessibility. This article will discuss several techniques for improving the presentation of code blocks in LaTeX documents, focusing on commenting, line…
The Pitfalls of Commenting Out Sections When working on complex LaTeX documents, you may find yourself needing to temporarily comment out large sections of code to test compilations or isolate issues. However, blindly commenting out chunks of text can lead to problematic errors. LaTeX code blocks often rely on meticulously formatted \begin{environment} and \end{environment} pairs…
The Burden of Manual Commenting The complex structure of large LaTeX documents requires extensive commenting to facilitate review, collaboration and iteration. However, manually adding descriptive comments throughout lengthy manuscripts is an extremely tedious and time-consuming task. Writers must continuously disrupt their workflow to insert explanatory notes, describe changes, pose questions or leave feedback. This greatly…
Defining the Problem The default Cartesian coordinate system used in TikZ 3d plots has limitations in terms of flexibility for specifying arbitrary orientations of the x, y, and z axes. In some cases, aligning the axes to key features or geometry constraints in a 3d model or mathematical construct requires a customized coordinate system. TikZ…