On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 12:18 -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, John O'Gorman wrote:
>
> > I have 6 books on Tex/LaTeX but not that one! Can you give us a brief
> > pointer to how to fix it (or is it not fixable)?
>
> John,
>
> Yes, it's fixable. Let me paraphrase from the book.
Thanks Rich. You have gone well beyond the call of duty!
I will study this and see where we get.
Just a comment though.
Helge was talking about using 2 minipages side-by-side (Which Kevin and
I have found to not top-align properly).Your excerpt features 2 parbox
structures side-by-side. Is the principle the same?
regards
John O'Gorman
>
> You want to place two parboxes of different heights side by side. Their
> first lines are to be aligned. Both (collectively) have their bottoms on the
> current line. What most of us do "intuitively" is,
>
> \begin{minipage}[b]{..}
> \parbox[t]{..}{..} \hfill \parbox[t]{..}{..}
> \end{minipage}
>
> This puts the boxes below the current line of text. "The reason for this is
> that each parbox or minipage is treated externally as a single character with
> its own height and depth above and below the baseline. As far as the outer
> minipage is concerned, it contains only two 'characters' on the same line,
> and that line is both the top and bottom one."
>
> The solution is to add a dummy second line to the outer box; to wit:
>
> \begin{minipage}[b]{..}
> \parbox[t]{..}{..} \hfill \parbox[t]{..}{..} \\ \mbox{}
> \end{minipage}
>
> Now, if you want to align two boxes on their bottom lines with the pair
> aligned at the top of the current text line, add the dummy box as the first
> line:
>
> \begin{minipage}[b]{..}
> \mbox{} \\ \parbox[t]{..}{..} \hfill \parbox[t]{..}{..}
> \end{minipage}
>
> This can be tweaked to align the boxes by their center, too.
>
> For the longest time I got by with Beatrix Sachs Lipkin's "LaTeX for
> Linux." Now I no longer use that, but I do use Guide to LaTeX, 4th edition,
> The LaTeX Companion, 2nd edition, and The LaTeX Graphics Companion, 1st
> edition (eagerly awaiting the 2nd edition). If it ain't in those (or I cannot
> find it there), I ask on the list.
Yes I have both of those along with Lamport's LaTeX book and Knuth's
TeXbook plus a couple of O'Reilly books.
>
> HTH,
>
> Rich
>
