Create n minipages side by side on the same line, fail informatively if there's a minipage "spill"

Question

I'm trying to create n minipages side by side on the same line. In the following example n is 6.

In the example below, the line below the section title is supposed to be displayed, roughly as

Column A    Column B     Column C     Column D    Column E    Column F

but instead it is displayed as

Column A    Column B     Column C     Column D    Column E
                         Column F

with the minipage containing Column F spilling over to the next line. I set each minipage's width to \xfp{0.99/6.0}, figuring that this would give me a "safety margin" in case 1.0/6.0 as a floating point converted to decimal is slightly bigger than 1/6.

So I have a few questions:

• Why is the Column F minipage spilling over to the next line?
• Is there a way to fix it so that the minipages are all on the same line?
• Is there a way of expressing something kind of like a "constraint" where, in the event that a document with all the minipages on the same line cannot be produced, the document will fail to render with an error message?

Here is the full document.

% !TEX TS-program = lualatex

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{a4paper}

\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage{calc}

\usepackage{xfp}

\title{Foo}
\author{Bar}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\section{6 Minipages Spanning One Line}

\noindent\centering{
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column A
\end{minipage} %
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column B
\end{minipage} %
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column C
\end{minipage} %
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column D
\end{minipage} %
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column E
\end{minipage} %
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column F
\end{minipage} %
%
}
\end{document}

As far as I can tell the suggestions in the related questions (given below) mostly have to do with stray newlines between tables (which are commented out in my example) or involve non-trivial objects like tables or lists inside each of the minipages. Neither question talks about having your document fail to render in an informative way instead of having a table spill onto the next line.

I've also tried adding lines consisting only of \hfill % after each \end{minipage}, but without any success

• tables side-by-side using minipage
• Problem with side-by-side tables
• Putting Figures Side-By-Side Using Minipage

Answer 1

You still have a space after your minipages:

\end{minipage} %
              ^ Here is a space

If you omit it, the minipages are typeset correctly.

To have the mini pages fill the entire line (due to your safety margin), use \hfill between the minipage.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}


\usepackage{xfp}

\begin{document}

\noindent\centering{
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column A
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column B
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column C
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column D
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column E
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{\fpeval{0.99 / 6.0} \linewidth}
Column F
\end{minipage}%
%
}
\end{document}

Answer 2

This is not an answer to your question but an alternative proposal for side by side minipages. You can build them with a tcbraster or tcbitemize from tcolorbox.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[most]{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\newcommand{\mytab}[1][A]{\begin{tabular}{cc}
\toprule
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Column #1}\\
\midrule 
a & b\\ c & d\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tcbitemize}[enhanced, empty, size=tight, raster columns=6]
\tcbitem \mytab
\tcbitem \mytab[B]
\tcbitem \mytab[C]
\tcbitem \mytab[D]
\tcbitem \mytab[E]
\tcbitem \mytab[F]
\end{tcbitemize}
\end{document}

Answer 3

You might try the tabularx package which, essentially, uses minipages to hold text. It also automatically calculates the width of the column based on the width you supply, \textwidth in this case:

% !TEX TS-program = lualatex

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}
\usepackage{tabularx}

\title{Foo}
\author{Bar}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\section{6 Minipages Spanning One Line}

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{XXXXXX}
Column A&
Column B&
Column C&
Column D&
Column E&
Column F
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}