Equally distribute text among a given amount of lines; automatically adjusting the width

Question

Given some text, I want to centrally align this text on a given amount of lines.

For example,

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi. Morbi
auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis vitae, ultricies et,
tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna. 
\end{document}

gives enter image description here However, I would like to advise LaTeX to distributed this text among 12 lines, whereby all lines (including the last one) have roughly the same width. Additionally, the output should be centered.

Is the number of lines known as a fixed amount in advance or is it in some way dynamic? — Joseph Wright, Mar 04 '15 at 14:43
@JosephWright The number of lines is fixed and known in advance. — Florian, Mar 04 '15 at 14:54
This is somewhat related to this question (regarding last line extending to right margin): http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/230840/artificially-improving-default-tex-algo-results-for-balancing-interword-spacing. — Steven B. Segletes, Mar 04 '15 at 15:12

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-04T15:25:45.300

10

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[latin]{babel}
\begin{document}
\sbox0{\indent Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi. Morbi
auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis vitae, ultricies et,
tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna.}
\begin{center}
\dimen0=\dimexpr\wd0/12\relax
\loop
\sbox2{\parbox[b]{\dimen0}{\parfillskip=0pt plus .1\hsize\unhcopy0}}
\ifdim\ht2>12\baselineskip
\advance\dimen0 1em
\repeat
\usebox2
\end{center}
\end{document}

If you change to

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[latin]{babel}
\begin{document}
\sbox0{Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi. Morbi
auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis vitae, ultricies et,
tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna.}
\begin{center}
\dimen0=\dimexpr\wd0/12\relax
\loop
\sbox2{\parbox[b]{\dimen0}{\centering\parfillskip=0pt \unhcopy0}}
\ifdim\ht2>12\baselineskip
\advance\dimen0 .5em
\repeat
\usebox2
\end{center}
\end{document}

Then you get

enter image description here

edited Mar 04 '15 at 15:25

answered Mar 04 '15 at 15:09

David Carlisle

757,742

lines don't have the same with – touhami Mar 04 '15 at 15:17
1

@touhami you mean the last line? I gave a bit of flexibility there, delete plus .1\hsize if that is not wanted. – David Carlisle Mar 04 '15 at 15:19
Sorry if this was not clear. Is it possible to not only center the box, but also the individual lines? Further, how can I get rid of the indentation on the first line? – Florian Mar 04 '15 at 15:19
Very nice. The use of iteration to achieve the text-fit reminds me of the related problem: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/123614/making-the-text-fit-in-a-specific-space-in-latex – Steven B. Segletes Mar 04 '15 at 15:19
@Florian Just add \centering before \parfillskip. – Steven B. Segletes Mar 04 '15 at 15:21
@Florian sure just add \centering inside the \parbox, it depends a bit whether you want to allow the last line to be short and whether you want indentation (ypur image in teh question showed an indent so I kept it) – David Carlisle Mar 04 '15 at 15:22
@Florian see update – David Carlisle Mar 04 '15 at 15:26
@Florian I went to some effort to manually add the indentation in the original version:-) note the explicit \indent in the \sbox :-) – David Carlisle Mar 04 '15 at 15:27

Equally distribute text among a given amount of lines; automatically adjusting the width

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