Colorbox does not linebreak

Question

I'm new here, so I'm sorry for any mistakes or error in from my part.

I am trying to make colored textboxes that refer to colored blocks in a figure. My problem is that the colored box does not linebreak at the end of the page.

Does anyone know a way around it?

(I don't know how to make the in-post render of the tex-code, so I'll just attach a screenshot of how it looks like.)

\documentclass[a4paper]{article} 
\usepackage{xcolor}

\begin{document}

\colorbox[RGB]{0,209,0}{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.} \\
\colorbox[RGB]{232,209,82}{This block converts the vectors to three phase representation.} \\
\colorbox[RGB]{255,66,209}{The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.} \\
\colorbox[RGB]{97,189,252}{This is an ideal three level inverter.} \\
\colorbox[RGB]{255,128,0}{This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.}

\end{document}

(I use Texmaker, Miktex, Windows 10)

Code is never rendered in post here, so any output you see is typically just that: a screenshot. Welcome to the site! — Torbjørn T., Jun 01 '16 at 15:27

score 23 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 01 '16 at 15:46

You can use soul:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\newcommand{\ctext}[3][RGB]{%
  \begingroup
  \definecolor{hlcolor}{#1}{#2}\sethlcolor{hlcolor}%
  \hl{#3}%
  \endgroup
}

\begin{document}

\noindent
\ctext[RGB]{0,209,0}{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.} \\
\ctext[RGB]{232,209,82}{This block converts the vectors to three phase representation.} \\
\ctext[RGB]{255,66,209}{The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.} \\
\ctext[RGB]{97,189,252}{This is an ideal three level inverter.} \\
\ctext[RGB]{255,128,0}{This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.}

\end{document}

That's exactly what i needed. Other solutions just made the box to always be large. But I need the box to be as litle as possible. — Òscar Raya, Mar 23 '20 at 19:12
This seems to fail if I'm trying to color text involving \cite... — Jason Gross, Sep 18 '20 at 02:39

score 12 · Answer 2 · 2016-06-01T15:55:18.857

colorbox does not wrap automatically, put the text in a \parbox for a example and it will work:

Other ways: Use tcolorbox, for example:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article} 
\usepackage{xcolor}

\usepackage{showframe}
\usepackage[skins]{tcolorbox}

\tcbset{commonstyle/.style={boxrule=0pt,sharp corners,enhanced jigsaw,nobeforeafter,boxsep=0pt,left=\fboxsep,right=\fboxsep}}

\newtcolorbox{mycolorbox}[1][]{commonstyle,#1}


\newlength\myboxwidth

\setlength{\myboxwidth}{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep}

\begin{document}
\parindent=0em
\colorbox[RGB]{0,209,0}{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.} 

\colorbox[RGB]{232,209,82}{This block converts the vectors to three phase representation.} 

\colorbox[RGB]{255,66,209}{The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.} 

\colorbox[RGB]{97,189,252}{This is an ideal three level inverter.} 

\colorbox[RGB]{255,128,0}{This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.}

\begin{center}
With \verb!\parbox!
\end{center}
\colorbox[RGB]{0,209,0}{\parbox{\myboxwidth}{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.}} 

\colorbox[RGB]{232,209,82}{\parbox{\myboxwidth}{This block converts the vectors to three phase representation.}} 

\colorbox[RGB]{255,66,209}{\parbox{\myboxwidth}{The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.}} 

\colorbox[RGB]{97,189,252}{\parbox{\myboxwidth}{This is an ideal three level inverter.}} 

\colorbox[RGB]{255,128,0}{\parbox{\myboxwidth}{This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.}}

\definecolor{colorone}{RGB}{0,209,0}
\definecolor{colortwo}{RGB}{232,209,82}
\definecolor{colorthree}{RGB}{255,66,209}
\definecolor{colorfour}{RGB}{97,189,252}
\definecolor{colorfive}{RGB}{255,128,0}

\begin{center}
With \texttt{tcolorbox}
\end{center}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colorone]
This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.
\end{mycolorbox}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colortwo]
This block converts the vectors to three phase representation. 
\end{mycolorbox}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colorthree]
The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.
\end{mycolorbox}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colorfour]
This is an ideal three level inverter.
\end{mycolorbox}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colorfive]
This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.
\end{mycolorbox}

\begin{center}
With \texttt{tcolorbox} and shadows.
\end{center}

\begin{mycolorbox}[colback=colorone,drop lifted shadow]
This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.
\end{mycolorbox}

\end{document}

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 03 '20 at 06:18

If someone is using luatex and stumbling as well into the soul package there is an easy alternative with the package lua-ul

\documentclass[a4paper]{article} 
\usepackage{xcolor} 
\usepackage{luacolor,lua-ul} %for usage of style attributes - background color

\begin{document}

\highLight[{[RGB]{0,209,0}}]{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.} \\
\highLight[{[RGB]{232,209,82}}]{This block converts the vectors to three phase representation.} \\
\highLight[{[RGB]{255,66,209}}]{The Modulator that can perform sinus, symmetric or minswitch modulation, with fixed or random carrier wave frequency.} \\
\highLight[{[RGB]{97,189,252}}]{This is an ideal three level inverter.} \\
\highLight[{[RGB]{255,128,0}}]{This is a model of the grid connection and the load. It also calculates how much current is taken from the DC link.}

\end{document}

with the same results. I added it for the sake of completness this additional option.

If use xelatex, what should we do? – Y. zeng Sep 05 '22 at 05:09 — Y. zeng, Sep 05 '22 at 05:09

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 06 '21 at 06:54

Highlighting with the soul package did not work for me (citing, referencing threw errors in the tufte-book class) and I didn't get tcolorbox package to work either. Based on the answer of user31729 here, I worked out his simplified version using parbox:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article} 
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand{\hly}[1]{\colorbox{yellow}{\parbox{\textwidth}{#1}}}
\begin{document}
\hly{This block represents a generic three phase back emf, like a power line, as vectors.}
\end{document}

it doesn't really work, since what is after \hly is put in a new paragraph — hmitcs, Oct 04 '21 at 09:23

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 03 '23 at 14:22

1

Maybe you can use \hl of the package soul, no bugs appear such as those using \colorbox.

Here is an example:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{color,soul}
\begin{document}
\hl{This is a highlight, we can make a very long sentence more than one line, but the highlight result is also very good.}
\end{document}

Here are my compiled results:

edited Feb 03 '23 at 14:22

Jasper Habicht

48,848

answered Feb 03 '23 at 14:18

YAN BINGXIN

11

1

Isn't this basically the same as https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/312583/36296 ? – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Feb 03 '23 at 14:21
@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz You are right! just noticed, thanks! – YAN BINGXIN Feb 03 '23 at 14:25

Michael Listovski · Answer 6 · 2023-05-03T16:51:01.820

I personally don't like the accepted answer.

I used to define colorbox as new command \hll to wrap citations and references and used soul's \hl for highlighting normal text.

Now I use this:

\newcommand{\hll}[1]{\colorbox{yellow}{\parbox{\columnwidth}{#1}}}

\parbox is added to split colorbox into multiple lines and this works irrespective if there are citation and references in your text. You do need to specify the width of the paragraph above, this is for two column scientific journal, you can change it to \textwidth for normal page layout.

The only downside to this approach as that it wraps paragraphs a bit odd and does not split nicely across pages, but is simple and very easy to remove, which is not the case when you need to wrap citations and references separately.

This the more or less the same answer as the one offered by thomasl. — Jasper Habicht, May 03 '23 at 23:57

Colorbox does not linebreak

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