31

Here, it is just a example. I have a line:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Now, I want to let LaTeX automatically wrap the line according to the width of the text block/margins.

Werner
  • 603,163
Frank Wang
  • 431
  • 2
    Does the text have no spaces at all? – Mico Nov 03 '11 at 10:08
  • 2
    thanks for your remind. there would be some space between words. – Frank Wang Nov 03 '11 at 10:57
  • 1
    Are your words really that long? Where do you want the breaks? Only at spaces, or within "words"? If within "words", how do you want to indicate continuation of a word? – Andrew Stacey Nov 03 '11 at 11:24
  • this is just an example. in my tex, these world may be some virtual word that make no sense. If within "words", i want to use '-' to indicate the continuation. – Frank Wang Nov 03 '11 at 11:32

4 Answers4

34

You are probably looking for something like the seqsplit package.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{seqsplit}

\begin{document}
  \seqsplit{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa}
\end{document}

Update:

For lines with spaces the \seqsplit command can of course be used several times.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{seqsplit}

\begin{document}
  \seqsplit{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa} \seqsplit{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa} \seqsplit{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa} \seqsplit{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa}
\end{document}
Thorsten Donig
  • 46,014
11

If a word is too long and it does not have a hyphenation pattern, the TeX engine does not know where to insert a break. You can force it by adding a minuscule amount of glue in-between the letters. TeX will then be able to insert a break. How much glue? As it happens even 1sp which is the smallest unit can do the trick (there are 65 536 scaled points in a point, which is less than the wavelength of visible light). All we need is a scanner to scan through the letters. Here is a minimal:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\parindent0pt
\makeatletter
\def\scanfunction#1{#1}
\let\tempa\@empty
\def\scan@letters#1#2{%
   \g@addto@macro{\tempa}{#1\hskip 0pt plus 1sp minus 1sp}%
   \ifx#2\@empty
     \else 
       \expandafter\scan@letters
   \fi
#2}

\def\scan#1{%
  \scan@letters #1\@empty
}
\scan{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa}
\tempa

\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Edit: egreg at chat brought to my attention that even hskip 0pt will also work.

yannisl
  • 117,160
  • This won't add a hyphenation character to indicate that the word has been split. Not sure if that is required though. – Peter Grill Nov 04 '11 at 15:30
  • @PeterGrill Yes it does not add one as the individual letters now represent words. For this type of example is difficult to understand what the OP wants. One can easily extend this method for example to break letters into groups of three and hyphenate at that point. – yannisl Nov 04 '11 at 17:40
  • @YiannisLazarides Can I force spaces to have width? It seems LaTeX squeezes all spaces to effectively be nonexistent when glue is applied to each character. Or maybe this has to do with your \@empty check. – Jonathan Komar Jun 23 '16 at 12:08
3

You can adapt the solution to Option to break urls with carriage-return symbol? which used the hyphenat pacakge to add a breakable character after each character.

Here is the output for various widths. The last paragraph width was chosen to ensure that the hyphen was not added if the break occurred at a space.

enter image description here

\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{hyphenat}
\usepackage{xstring}
\usepackage{forloop}

\newsavebox\MyBreakChar%
\sbox\MyBreakChar{\hyp}% char to display the break after non char
\newsavebox\MySpaceBreakChar%
\sbox\MySpaceBreakChar{}% char to display the break after space
\makeatletter%
\newcommand*{\BreakableChar}[1][\MyBreakChar]{%
  \leavevmode%
  \prw@zbreak%
  \discretionary{\usebox#1}{}{}%
  \prw@zbreak%
}%

\newcounter{index}%
\newcommand{\AddBreakableChars}[1]{%
  \StrLen{#1 }[\stringLength]%
  \forloop[1]{index}{1}{\value{index}<\stringLength}{%
    \StrChar{#1}{\value{index}}[\currentLetter]%
    \IfStrEq{\currentLetter}{ }
        {\currentLetter\BreakableChar[\MySpaceBreakChar]}%
        {\currentLetter\BreakableChar[\MyBreakChar]}%
  }%
}%

\newcommand*{\MyLongString}{aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa}%

\begin{document}
\parbox{4cm}{\AddBreakableChars{\MyLongString}}

\bigskip
\parbox{7cm}{\AddBreakableChars{\MyLongString}}

\bigskip
\parbox{9.1cm}{\AddBreakableChars{\MyLongString}}
\end{document}
Community
  • 1
Peter Grill
  • 223,288
0

If you are using Maple teX export as the source for your file, then just do a global change of {2d} to {3d}. Lines will wrap then.

Example:

This will not wrap:

\mapleinline{inert}{2d}{[animate, animate3d, animatecurve, arrow, changecoords, complexplot, complexplot3d, conformal, conformal3d, contourplot, contourplot3d, coordplot, coordplot3d, densityplot, display, dualaxisplot, fieldplot, fieldplot3d, gradplot, gradplot3d, implicitplot, implicitplot3d, inequal, interactive, interactiveparams, intersectplot, listcontplot, listcontplot3d, listdensityplot, listplot, listplot3d, loglogplot, logplot, matrixplot, multiple, odeplot, pareto, plotcompare, pointplot, pointplot3d, polarplot, polygonplot, polygonplot3d, polyhedra_supported, polyhedraplot, rootlocus, semilogplot, setcolors, setoptions, setoptions3d, spacecurve, sparsematrixplot, surfdata, textplot, textplot3d, tubeplot]}

but this will (changed 2d to 3d):

\mapleinline{inert}{3d}{[animate, animate3d, animatecurve, arrow, changecoords, complexplot, complexplot3d, conformal, conformal3d, contourplot, contourplot3d, coordplot, coordplot3d, densityplot, display, dualaxisplot, fieldplot, fieldplot3d, gradplot, gradplot3d, implicitplot, implicitplot3d, inequal, interactive, interactiveparams, intersectplot, listcontplot, listcontplot3d, listdensityplot, listplot, listplot3d, loglogplot, logplot, matrixplot, multiple, odeplot, pareto, plotcompare, pointplot, pointplot3d, polarplot, polygonplot, polygonplot3d, polyhedra_supported, polyhedraplot, rootlocus, semilogplot, setcolors, setoptions, setoptions3d, spacecurve, sparsematrixplot, surfdata, textplot, textplot3d, tubeplot]}
Phelype Oleinik
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Brian Hanley
  • 1