9

I have a little tikzpicture drawn with a Bezier curve, that I use in the text. I noticed that it has an unusual amount of horizontal white space, more than e.g. a circle:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\begin{document}
    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \draw (0,0) .. controls (a) and ($2*(a -| 0,0)-(a)$) .. (0,0);
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum

    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \draw (0,0) circle [radius=0.4cm];
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum
\end{document}

I think that the white space comes from the coordinates that are used in the controls-syntax of the Bezier curves:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\begin{document}
    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \draw (0,0) .. controls (a) and ($2*(a -| 0,0)-(a)$) .. (0,0);
        \node[red] at (a)                  {$\cdot$};
        \node[red] at ($2*(a -| 0,0)-(a)$) {$\cdot$};
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum
\end{document}

But just adding the coordinate to e.g. the circle picture doesn't give that extra white space! What's going on here? How can I avoid that?

Turion
  • 4,622
  • Related but not dupe : http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/43621/bounding-box-is-larger-than-expected-when-drawing-a-curved-path – percusse Apr 13 '15 at 18:15
  • The circle picture doesn't get the extra white space as the the picture's bounding box is only updated when a coordinate is used in a path. It you use \path (a); after the coordinate is defined, the bounding box will be updated. – Mark Wibrow Apr 14 '15 at 07:15

1 Answers1

6

Based on What type of curve is used by Tikz when I "bend" an edge?, your example code can be changed to:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc,decorations.pathreplacing,shapes.misc}
\tikzset{
    show control points/.style={
        decoration={show path construction, curveto code={
                \draw [blue, dashed]
                    (\tikzinputsegmentfirst) -- (\tikzinputsegmentsupporta)
                    node [at end, cross out, draw, solid, red, inner sep=2pt]{};
                \draw [blue, dashed]
                    (\tikzinputsegmentsupportb) -- (\tikzinputsegmentlast)
                    node [at start, cross out, draw, solid, red, inner sep=2pt]{};
            }
        },
        postaction=decorate
    },
}
\begin{document}
    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \draw[show control points] (0,0) .. controls (a) and ($2*(a -| 0,0)-(a)$) .. (0,0);
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum

    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \draw[show control points] (0,0) circle [radius=0.4cm];
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum
\end{document}

This shows the Bezier control points which look like this:

Bezier control points

Note that the bounding box for a TikZ figure includes all of the control points. You can use \useasboundingbox to fix this:

    Lorem
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \coordinate (a) at (-1,2);
        \useasboundingbox (-.2,0) rectangle (.2,1.5);
        \draw[show control points] (0,0) .. controls (a) and ($2*(a -| 0,0)-(a)$) .. (0,0);
    \end{tikzpicture}
    ipsum

which yields:

Changing the bounding box.

Community
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sgmoye
  • 8,586