How to change the background color of \framebox?

Question

I'm trying to change a picture drawn using the plain picture environment and I need to change the background color of certain \framebox to lightgrey. Is it possible?

I know that there are more powerful environment like tikz, but the figure is quite complex, and I prefer to change the less I can.

For example, supposing to have this LaTeX code:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{picture}
\begin{document}
    \begin{figure}[hp]
    \begin{center}
      \setlength{\unitlength}{1cm}
      \begin{picture}(7,3)(0,0)
        \put( 4,3){\framebox(3,3){World}} % background = grey ??
        \put( 0,3){\framebox(3,3){Hello}}
      \end{picture}
    \end{center}
    \end{figure}
\end{document}

producing this figure:

enter image description here

How can I change that code in order to get this result:

enter image description here

with the minimal effort in term of code changes ?

I tried to use pstricks that is something like a superset of picture package, but I wasn't able to solve my issue...

score 21 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 12 '11 at 23:27

21

This is possible with \colorbox and the package xcolor. You need to add only one macro and to set \fboxsep to 0pt.

 \documentclass[12pt]{article}
    \usepackage{picture,xcolor}
    \begin{document}
        \begin{figure}[hp]
        \begin{center}
          \setlength{\unitlength}{1cm}
          \begin{picture}(7,3)(0,0)
            \setlength\fboxsep{0pt}
            \put( 4,3){\colorbox{gray!20}{\framebox(3,3){World}}} % 
            \put( 0,3){\framebox(3,3){Hello}}
          \end{picture}
        \end{center}
        \end{figure}
    \end{document}

enter image description here

edited Dec 12 '11 at 23:27

Werner

603,163

answered Dec 12 '11 at 23:05

Alain Matthes

95,075

5

xcolor also has the command \fcolorbox{<frame color>}{<background color>}{<text>}, which does this directly. According to the documentation, it takes care drawing the frame so that it is not overwritten by the background, so perhaps it is better than combining \colorbox and \framebox. Though I see now that the OP is using a particular version of \framebox in the picture package, so maybe this option isn't available here. – Ryan Reich Dec 12 '11 at 23:31
@RyanReich: Yes, and there's a little more that is required to use \fcolorbox to match \framebox - see my answer. – Werner Dec 12 '11 at 23:36
Yes I agréé with your comments – Alain Matthes Dec 13 '11 at 05:37
This is probably the less painful solution, thanks a lot! :) – digEmAll Dec 13 '11 at 07:14

Werner · Answer 2 · 2011-12-12T23:38:05.173

With a little bit of massaging, you can still use the picture environment to do this, without having to resort to more advanced techniques (like tikz/pgf or pstricks):

enter image description here

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor
\usepackage{picture}% http://ctan.org/pkg/picture
\begin{document}
    \begin{figure}[hp]
    \begin{center}
      \setlength{\unitlength}{1cm}
      \setlength{\fboxsep}{15mm}
      \begin{picture}(7,3)(0,0)
        \put( 4,4.5){\fcolorbox{black}{black!15}{\smash{\makebox[0pt]{\raisebox{-.5\height}{World}}}}} % background = 15% black
        \put( 0,3){\framebox(3,3){Hello}}
      \end{picture}
    \end{center}
    \end{figure}
\end{document}

The above uses \fcolorbox from xcolor to fill the background with some colour (black!15 or 15% black in this case). The whole idea is to typeset something without height/width in a box that has a 3cm width/height (or 15mm \fboxsep^*).

This answer attempts to duplicate the behaviour of \framebox from the picture package. @Altermundus' answer to add a background via the traditional \colorbox from xcolor is much cleaner.

^* I guess, if more precision is required, \setlength{\fboxsep}{\dimexpr 15mm-\fboxrule\relax} would probably be more appropriate.

I chose @Altermundus' answer because it requires less code changes, but thanks for the solution :) — digEmAll, Dec 13 '11 at 07:17

kiss my armpit · Answer 3 · 2011-12-12T23:03:02.490

4

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pstricks-add}

\begin{document}
    \begin{pspicture}[showgrid=false](11,5)
        \psset{linestyle=dashed,fillstyle=solid,opacity=0.5}
        \psTextFrame[fillcolor=red](0,0)(5,5){Counter}
        \psTextFrame[fillcolor=blue](6,0)(11,5){Terrorist}
    \end{pspicture}
\end{document}

enter image description here

edited Dec 12 '11 at 23:03

answered Dec 12 '11 at 22:54

kiss my armpit

36,086

Since the original \frameboxes were set at (3,3) and \unitlength was 1cm, you could duplicate this behaviour: Use \psset{...,unit=1cm} and \psTextFrame[..](0,0)(3,3){...}, ... – Werner Dec 12 '11 at 23:20
@Werner: I will use \psset{unit=0.6cm} to get the same dimension. – kiss my armpit Dec 12 '11 at 23:27
Right, I was too hasty in my comment there... – Werner Dec 12 '11 at 23:32
@CounterTerrorist: This solution is a bit too far from the original for me, anyway thanks for the help :) – digEmAll Dec 13 '11 at 17:56
@digEmAll: I just show some options that you can adjust. :) – kiss my armpit Dec 13 '11 at 18:33

How to change the background color of \framebox?

3 Answers3

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