Cfrgtkky

Is there a way to make text size and alignment automatically "best fit" on a page? So that a large amount of text will be constrained on the page in a small font, but a small amount of text can be of larger font and centered properly?

The best way I found to fit lots of text on a page is with:

begin{minipage}{width}

...

end{minipage}

newpage

...but when there is a smaller amount of text, the font remains small and is awkwardly aligned at the top of the page, whereas I'd like it to be centered vertically and horizontally. I tried vfill with minipage, but it makes no difference.

For smaller amounts of text, I succeeded with:

mbox{}

vfill

begin{center}

....

end{center}

vfill

newpage

This centered the text perfectly, but I couldn't constrain a large block to one page with this. I tried combining minipage and mbox, but minipage overrode the vfill spacing and the alignment was screwed up again for small amounts of text.

Okay, TeX isn't really designed with this in mind. That said, it can be done (sort of).

documentclass{article}

usepackage{lmodern}

newdimenfontdim

newdimenupperfontdim

newdimenlowerfontdim

newififmoreiterations

fontdim12pt

makeatletter

defbuildbox{%

        setbox0vbox{fontsize{fontdim}{1.2fontdim}%

                      selectfont

                      centering

                      stuff}%

        dimen@ht0

        advancedimen@dp0

        %message{Total height: thedimen@^^J}

}



newcommandfillthepage[1]{%

        protected@edefstuff{#1}%

        buildbox

        % Compute upper and lower bounds

        ifdimdimen@>textheight

                loop

                        fontdim.5fontdim

                        buildbox

                ifdimdimen@>textheight

                repeat

                lowerfontdimfontdim

                upperfontdim2fontdim

                fontdim1.5fontdim

        else

                loop

                        fontdim2fontdim

                        buildbox

                ifdimdimen@<textheight

                repeat

                upperfontdimfontdim

                lowerfontdim.5fontdim

                fontdim.75fontdim

        fi

        % Now try to find the optimum size

        loop

                %message{Bounds: thelowerfontdimspace

                %         thefontdimspace theupperfontdim^^J}

                buildbox

                ifdimdimen@>textheight

                        moreiterationstrue

                        upperfontdimfontdim

                        advancefontdimlowerfontdim

                        fontdim.5fontdim

                else

                        advancedimen@-textheight

                        ifdimdimen@<10pt

                                lowerfontdimfontdim

                                advancefontdimupperfontdim

                                fontdim.5fontdim

                                dimen@upperfontdim

                                advancedimen@-lowerfontdim

                                ifdimdimen@<.2pt

                                        moreiterationsfalse

                                else

                                        moreiterationstrue

                                fi

                        else

                                moreiterationsfalse

                        fi

                fi

        ifmoreiterations

        repeat

        % build the page

        newpage

        null

        vfill

        box0

        vfill

}

makeatother

usepackage{lipsum}

begin{document}

fillthepage{lipsum}

fillthepage{lipsum[1]}

fillthepage{Very little}

end{document}

You can uncomment out the messages if you want to see how it decides on the font sizes to use. It doesn't make any effort to constrain horizontal size, so if you don't give it enough text to work with, you'll run off the right side of the page. (Try fillthepage{X} for an example of that.)

It's pretty much essential that you use a vector font, otherwise it'll tend to go back and forth between two font sizes, spewing warnings and probably never converge. That's why I have the usepackage{lmodern}.

I'm sure there are (many) cases where this doesn't work, but it was sort of fun to write.

Edit: Maybe that protected@edef should just be a def. I was originally thinking expanding it would be better, but now I'm not so sure

I'm not quite sure what you are actually trying to do. But "but minipage overrode the vfill spacing" sounds as if you have put the vfill inside the minipage. This makes only sense if you give the minipage a specific height (which is possible with an optional argument). If you want to move the minipage itself the vfill must go outside.

You can use varwidth to get a minipage which adjust its width to its content. You can use resizebox to scale a minipage to a given width.

Btw: Center things horizontally is in general a well-defined conzept: Chars, boxes and words have only one width and the reference point one wants to use is clear. This is different when you want to center things vertically. Chars and boxes have height and depth. Do you want to center a "A" along the baseline or along a line somewhere in the middle of the char? You can see the problem if you remove the [b] in the last example.

documentclass{article}

usepackage{varwidth,lipsum,graphics}

begin{document}

vspace*{fill}



{centering

 begin{minipage}{0.5textwidth}

  lipsum[1]

 end{minipage}

par}





vfill



newpage

vspace*{fill}



{centering

 begin{varwidth}{0.5textwidth}

  abc

 end{varwidth}

par}





vfill

newpage

vspace*{fill}



{centering

 begin{minipage}{0.5textwidth}

  centering abc\cdeaddff

 end{minipage}

par}





vfill



newpage

vspace*{fill}



{centering

 resizebox{textwidth}{!}{%

 .begin{varwidth}[b]{0.5textwidth}

  abc

 end{varwidth}}

par}

vfill

end{document}

fitting library from tcolorbox allows to adjust a given text to some width and height. Default font size is never enlarged, but you can start with a large font size (fit basedim) which will be reduced until all text fits in desired box.

documentclass{article}

usepackage{lmodern}

usepackage[most]{tcolorbox}

usepackage{lipsum}



tcbset{valign=center, halign=center}



begin{document}

begin{tcolorbox}[fit to height=.4textheight, fit basedim=50pt]

lipsum[1]

end{tcolorbox}



begin{tcolorbox}[fit to height=.4textheight, fit basedim=50pt]

lipsum[1-5]

end{tcolorbox}

end{document}