Underfull vbox and typearea warnings with Koma-Script and a5paper

Question

I have this in the preamble:

\documentclass[a5paper]{scrbook}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[light,oldstylenums,largesmallcaps]{kpfonts}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\renewcommand*{\chapterpagestyle}{empty}

I'm getting this warning:

Maybe no optimal type area settings!
(typearea)                The maximum limit of line width is about 18%
(typearea)                larger than the heuristically detected line width.
(typearea)                You may e.g. increase DIV, decrease fontsize
(typearea)                or change the papersize.

and

underfull vbox (badness 10000)

If I set the paper size to a4, the warnings disappear. But the point is I want to use a5 paper size! Thank you for your help.

@Caramdir: I 've already read What are underfull hboxes and vboxes and how can I get rid of them?, and the KOMA-Script manual. I understand the concepts, but it is hard to avoid these warnings in the practice. I've tried with DIV=10 or higher value, but it is the same or worst. The (purely empirical) solution I've found: to adjust the font size to 10pt. Thanks a lot. — Gastón, Mar 16 '11 at 14:56

score 13 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

The typearea warning is just to tell you that the author of the typearea package thinks that the automatically generated layout won't look good. Try adding DIV=10 (or a higher value) to the class options. The KOMA-Script manual has an explanation of how typearea calculates the text layout by dividing the page into DIV many parts.

The underfull vbox means that on some page (the error should say where) there is not enough material to make it full enough. This usually happens when there is some large chunk of material that cannot be broken up (e.g. a multiline equation), so that TeX has to move it to the next page entirely. With A5 pages this sort of thing gets harder to avoid. See also What are underfull hboxes and vboxes and how can I get rid of them?.

Underfull vbox and typearea warnings with Koma-Script and a5paper

1 Answers1