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    First published on Monday, Oct 28, 2024 and last modified on Friday, Mar 7, 2025

    C.13 Lengths, Spaces, and Boxes

    François Chaplais

    1 Lengths, Spaces, and Boxes

    1.1 Preamble

    As a general remark, any LaTeX command that is defined by a physical dimension makes little sense when the document dimensions are not known in advance, which is the case in responsive design, which LaTeX2Web uses. Another case against such commands is that they often mix matter with style, which is not the way LaTeX2Web operates.

    1.2 Length

    The dimension commands are ignored. This includes \fill, \stretch, \newlength, \setlength, \addtolength, \settowidth, \settoheight, and \settodepth.

    1.3 Space

    Spacing commands are ignored. Specifically,

    • \hspace

    • \vspace

    • \hfill

    • \dotfill

    • \hrulefill

    • \bigskip

    • \medskip

    • \smallskip

    and their starred forms are ignored.

    1.4 Boxes

    The \mbox and \makebox have no effect. This means that the content of the boxed is treated as if there was no box.

    \fbox and \framebox are implemented, only for inline text.

    Bin related commands are deleted, i.e.,

    • \sbox

    • \savebox

    • \usebox

    \rule is replaced by a standard HTML line.

    \raisebox has no effect.

    1.4.1 The LaTeX2Web grid system, \parbox and minipage

    \parbox is converted to a minipage environment. The minipage environment itself is implemented using the LaTeX2Web grid system (see below). Each minipage is treated as a gridItem; successive minipage environments are detected to create multiple gridItems inside a single grid.

    The following LaTeX code

    \begin{grid}
\begin{gridItem}
content1
\end{gridItem}
\begin{gridItem}
content2
\end{gridItem}
\end{grid}

    will create two boxes with the respective LaTeX contents content1 and content2 inside. These blocks will "wrap" if the width of the device is too narrow to display them together; else they will be next to each other horizontally.

    The \begin{grid} command has two optional parameters as follows : \begin{grid}[numberOfBoxes][verticalAlignment].

    • the numberOfBoxes argument is an integer which roughly corresponds to the maximum of boxes on a row (this is how it works for images; tables are different). In detail, it gives the maximum width of each box. The default is 2. Tables are different from images because their content determines their width.

    • verticalAlignment states how, within a row, boxes should be aligned vertically : top, bottom, or center. The default is center.

    The div environment lets you create a box that has full text width.