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.
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.
HTH,
Rich
--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) | Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
