2

I can't fix this no matter how I set the parameters \pretolerance, \tolerance, and \emergencystretch.

Minimum Working Example with downloadable font using xelatex:

\documentclass[10pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[paperwidth=5.5in,paperheight=8.75in,left=1in,top=1in,right=0.75in,bottom=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{sorts_mill_goudy.otf}
\usepackage{fix-cm}
\usepackage{microtype}
\tolerance=2000
\emergencystretch=1in

\begin{document}

Vivamus est quam, maximus vulputate felis a, fringilla scelerisque sapien.

\vspace{2em}
\clearpage

\end{document}

Warning:

Underfull \hbox (badness 3503) in paragraph at lines 12--13
[]\EU1/sorts_mill_goudy.otf(0)/m/n/10 Vivamus est quam, maximus vulputate felis
 a, fringilla

Nothing I try will eliminate this warning except masking it with \hbadness. In my real-life case, by changing \pretolerance or \tolerance in either direction I can produce more warnings, but there are several persistent ones like this. Increasing \emergencystretch has no effect.

I've read all of the following, and still have no clue what else to try:

  1. how to suppress "Underfull \vbox (badness 10000) ... while \output is active"?
  2. What are underfull hboxes and vboxes and how can I get rid of them?
  3. http://www.tex.ac.uk/FAQ-overfull.html

It's definitely unlikely to occur... I had to try some 20 paragraphs of generated lorem ipsum before I could reproduce this without using my exact real-life text.

However, if there are just rare combinations of text that are impossible to typeset without errors, why does my project have 3 of them in 11,000 words while the last one I did has 0 in 60,000?

And above all, why doesn't increasing \emergencystretch satisfy it?

I feel frustrated and confused here, and strongly relate to the use of "black art" to describe this part of LaTeX (What's the difference between \tolerance and \badness ?).

Community
  • 1
Quartz
  • 117

1 Answers1

2

3503 isn't so bad.

Of course you are hyphenating mock latin with English hyphenation rules which doesn't help.

\emergencystretch adds (effective) extra stretch to help the line breaking but so that you know this emergency action has been taken, TeX still gives the original badness warning. So adding to this parameter makes the output look better but without curing the intrinsic badness calculation for the paragraph.

unrelated but you probably don't want fix-cm with xelatex (you are not using cm at all but even if you don't specify a font fontspec defaults to latin modern)

I don't have your font but here is one using latin modern with badness 2080

enter image description here

\documentclass[10pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[paperwidth=5.5in,paperheight=8.75in,left=1in,top=1in,right=0.75in,bottom=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fontspec}
%\setmainfont{sorts_mill_goudy.otf}
\usepackage{fix-cm}
\usepackage{microtype}
\tolerance=2000
\emergencystretch=1in

\begin{document}

Vius est quam, maximus vulputate felis a, fringilla scelerisque sapien.

\vspace{2em}
\clearpage

\end{document}

The problem here is basically that TeX can't hyphenate scelerisque so it's better to fix that rather than distort the spacing

enter image description here

Vius est quam, maximus vulputate felis a, fringilla scel\-er\-is\-que sapien.
David Carlisle
  • 757,742
  • Of course, the mock Latin is only illustrative; my real case is English and hyphenation doesn't help.

    So changing \emergencystretch can under no circumstances possibly effect warning output? It's great to know it's working properly ... I guess I just need to increase \hbadness then?

     – Quartz Nov 26 '15 at 02:15
  • I neglected to strip the fix-cm from my MWE, but it does seem to address warnings in my real example. I'm still pretty ignorant about its purpose and function TBH. – Quartz Nov 26 '15 at 02:34
  • @Quartz if hyphenation doesn't help then something is wrong. Look at your bad lines why is tex needing to stretch them so much? It must either be that the next word (or inline image or something) can not break as in the example here, or you have set \parfillskip so it does not stretch enough to fill the last, short, line of the paragraph. – David Carlisle Nov 26 '15 at 07:57
  • I haven't touched \parfillskip and can't seem to learn what it does. Just that it's something to the last line of the paragraph, but in my real case the offending line is the 1st of 5. It's only a badness of 1038, and it actually looks fine. Is it possible that it's just a better fit than the hyphenation would allow? – Quartz Nov 27 '15 at 15:56
  • @Quartz the thing to look at is the first word on the next line, why didn't that split to push a few letters back on to the previous line so it wasn't so underful. despite your comment that hyphenation doesn't help, I still assume hyphenation (or lack of it) is the issue here. – David Carlisle Nov 27 '15 at 16:01
  • What I mean by "hyphenation doesn't help" is that explicitly adding the hyphens using \- doesn't trigger hyphenation in the output. I'd love to make it hyphenate, but I guess I don't know how. – Quartz Nov 27 '15 at 16:09
  • If it helps, my real case (or one of them) is the text Public school in a lower-class neighborhood was a living nightmare for her. The line breaks between living and nightmare with a badness of 1038, even if I say liv\-ing night\-mare. – Quartz Nov 27 '15 at 16:13
  • @Quartz nighmare splits as night-mare anyway so that would't mke a difference. seems you are just very unlucky, I can't reproduce with standard fonts, with width set as here the line is loose but not so bad to make a warning, if I make it 0.01pt wider, it splits night-mare (and then makes an over-full box. You can't do much about it in that case, you can't really split as ni\-ght\-mare The obvious solution is to spell neighbourhood as in British English, then the U will nicely fill out the line:-) – David Carlisle Nov 27 '15 at 17:30
  • @Quartz \documentclass{article} \textwidth=277.25pt \begin{document} Public school in a lower-class neighborhood was a living nightmare for her. \end{document} – David Carlisle Nov 27 '15 at 17:30
  • So I was right, hyphenation doesn't help, this is just a rare combination of text that's impossible to typeset comfortably in my font with my \textwidth, and the only thing to do is change the text or increase \hbadness?

    Thanks for your help.

     – Quartz Nov 27 '15 at 17:48