Spreading letters evenly across a line from margin to margin

Question

I wish to achieve something that can be easily accomplished by simply pressing this button in Microsoft Word:

So that I could make something like this:

What I've seen so far on this forum either spreads words instead of letters across the page, or statically define the spacing between letters using sodef from the soul package to mimic such effect instead of truly stretch the text to reach both ends.

I wonder if there is a single command in LaTeX that could achieve what that button can in Word.

Answer 1

Replace spaces by {} (so a double space will appear) and put a space after each letter.

Caveat Accented letters won't work. For that much more work is needed unless you use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}

\ExplSyntaxOn

\NewDocumentCommand{\widen}{mm}
 {
  \tl_set:Nx \l_tmpa_tl { #2 }
  \tl_replace_all:Nnn \l_tmpa_tl { ~ } { {} }
  \noindent
  \makebox[\textwidth][s]
   {
    \skip_set:Nn \spaceskip { 0pt plus 1fill }
    #1 \tl_map_inline:Nn \l_tmpa_tl { ##1 ~ } \unskip
   }
 }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\newcommand{\mytext}{SOMETHING BIG}

\begin{document}

\widen{\huge}{SOMETHING BIG}

\bigskip

\widen{\large}{\mytext}

\end{document}

Final note: the fact that something is easy with word processors and difficult with TeX is usually a clear sign that it's something rather dubious from the typographer's point of view.

Answer 2

Here is one option using LaTeX's \makebox with a stretched alignment:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paper=a6paper]{geometry}% Just for this example
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}% Just for this example
\begin{document}

\sffamily
\makebox[\linewidth][s]{\LARGE\bfseries S O M E T H I N G {} B I G}

\makebox[\linewidth][s]{s o m e t h i n g {} s m a l l}


\bigskip

\newlength{\somethingbig}
\settowidth{\somethingbig}{\LARGE\bfseries SOMETHING BIG}

{\LARGE\bfseries SOMETHING BIG}

\makebox[\somethingbig][s]{s o m e t h i n g {} s m a l l}

\end{document}

Answer 3

Here is a complete solution with lualatex using directlua:

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setromanfont{Rockwell Extra Bold}

\newcommand\distributed[1]{%
  \makebox[\linewidth][s]{%
    \directlua{
      letters = {}
      for letter in string.gmatch("#1", ".") do
        if letter == " " then
          table.insert(letters, "{}")
        else
          table.insert(letters, letter)
        end
      end
      tex.sprint(table.concat(letters, " "))
    }%
  }%
}

\begin{document}
  \noindent{\Huge\bfseries\distributed{Hello World}}
  \distributed{Some more text}
\end{document}

This is the result:

Answer 4

Adapting my answer at How to repeat over all characters in a string?. I had to modify it to not do the added \hfill prior to the first character.

As Werner points out, this approach cannot in general accept a macro as part of its argument.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand\chariterate[1]{\chariteratehelpX#1 \relax\relax}
\def\chariteratehelpX#1#2\relax\relax{#1\chariteratehelpA#2\relax\relax}
\def\chariteratehelpA#1 #2\relax{%
  \chariteratehelpB#1\relax\relax%
  \ifx\relax#2\else\hfill\chariteratehelpA#2\relax\fi
}
\def\chariteratehelpB#1#2\relax{%
  \charop{#1}%
  \ifx\relax#2\else
    \chariteratehelpB#2\relax%
  \fi
}
\def\charop#1{\hfill#1}
\begin{document}
\sffamily
\noindent{\Huge\chariterate{SOMETHING BIG}}

\noindent{\scriptsize\chariterate{something small}}

\lipsum[1]
\end{document}