LaTeX: Finding width of a given text and adding a horizontal space of that width

latexmboxspace

I would like to add a white space of exactly the width of a given text. I could use \hspace{}, but then I need the width that given piece of text is going to use in my LaTeX document.

Another idea is to create an invisible box containing the text. Like \mbox{text}, but invisible. As I am pretty sure that I cannot just tell LaTeX not to print that particular box, I am sure that there is another solution.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

You’re searching for \hphantom which creates a horizontal phantom box:

\par Here is some text
\par \hphantom{Here is some} more text.

Will result in something like this:

Here is some text
             more text

Related Solutions

Example for a simple LaTeX glossary

Well, there is a glossaries package on CTAN. Read the pdf documentation.

Check if you already have it in your installation, if not install it, and put \usepackage{glossaries} in the preamble of you document and it will be available to you.

It looks like you need \usepackage{glossaries} and \makeglossaries in the preamble, and some number of \newglossaryentry and \newacronym calls (it is not immediately clear to me if these only go in the premble or can go in the document text). Finally, you will need one or more \printglossary calls in the text. Use \gsl to connect glossary entries on the argument with the pages they occur on.

Processing the file will have to include a call to makeglossaries followed by at least one more invokation of latex.

In addition to the samples mentioned in the documentation there is a Stack Overflow question which includes a minimal file making use of glossaries. You may be particularly interested in the acronym glossary.

LaTeX – vertical space equivalent of \makebox

The box command LaTeX offers for doing vertical adjustments is \raisebox:

\raisebox{distance}[extend-above][extend-below]{insert your text here...}

With the distance parameter, you can specify a offset to raise or lower the text, and extend-above and extend-below parameters can be used to add additional space. This command is for example great for positioning a small amount of text with a small font size in a line with a bigger font size.

Simple additional vertical spaces can also be created with the \vspace*{distance} command, which inserts an additional vertical space. (The starred version also adds the space on the beginning and end, the normal version only adds space between text blocks). You might put that on the end of your paragraph or at the end of your own command to add some spacer afterwards (or before).

But for longer text extracts, I would recommend to use the \minipage environment:

\begin{minipage}[position][height][inner-pos]{width}
    insert your long text here
\end{minipage}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Example for a simple LaTeX glossary

LaTeX – vertical space equivalent of \makebox

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