[Tex/LaTex] How to effectively debug overfull \hbox warnings

boxesdebuggingwarnings

I still haven't found out how to effectively solve Overfull \hbox (0.80913pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active warnings.

For instance, this piece of latex generates such a warning and I am stumped why:

\newcommand\Header{%
\noindent\makebox[\textwidth][l]{
\parbox{0.5\textwidth}{\contactinfo}
\parbox{0.5\textwidth}{%
\hfill\includegraphics[height=25pt]{logo}}}\par\vskip1ex%
\par\ColTopRule\par}

\contactinfo is defined as follows:

\newcommand\contactinfo{\fontsize{8pt}{8}\selectfont\headerfnt Streetname 12324 \\ PostalCode City \\ +31655555555555}

Error:

*geometry detected driver: pdftex*
<logo.eps>
Overfull \hbox (0.80913pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active
 [] 
[1] <logo.eps>
Overfull \hbox (0.80913pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active
 [] 
[2] <logo.eps>
Overfull \hbox (0.80913pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active
 [] 
[3] <logo.eps>
Overfull \hbox (0.80913pt too wide) has occurred while \output is active
 []

Expected output is:

Streetname 12324                                       here comes
PostalCode City                                          the logo
+31655555555555                                     right aligned
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I mean, both boxes have a length of 0.5\textwidth, the text is obviously smaller than this, as is the logo. How come it still generates such a warning? And how can I found out why?

Best Answer

To answer the general question about how to debug the box warnings add

\showboxdepth=\maxdimen
\showboxbreadth=\maxdimen

or if that is too much information

\showboxdepth=5
\showboxbreadth=5

and then whenever TeX is showing box information in the log it will show you a representation of the contents of the box.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Overfull/Underfull \hbox warnings when compiling the document

Let's start with a quote from Knuth's TeXbook (Chapter 11)

TeX makes complicated pages by starting with simple individual characters and putting together in larger units, and putting these together in still larger units, and so on.

Whenever you look at a (La)TeX document, imagine putting on a pair of glasses that allows you to 'x-ray' the page's structure- what you would see is that each page is made up of boxes.

In particular, there are horizontal boxes (hboxes) and vertical boxes (vboxes). TeX is able to make beautiful documents by making the content of each box fit 'ideally' using its stretchable glue. When something simply will not fit, either because it is too big or too small, then you get overfull and underfull boxes respectively.

When TeX encounters such situations, it is kind enough to tell you in the .log file so that you can make a decision for yourself as to whether you need to make changes; ultimately, you have to decide if you think they mean anything bad. Note that TeX will also give you a badness rating, with 10000 being the worst.

If you prefer a more visual approach, then you can load the draft option to your documentclass, for example

 \documentclass[draft]{article}

which ensures that your output is highlighted with black boxes in any of the offending areas.

For more details see any of the 'related' links on the right hand side of this page, perhaps starting with What does "overfull hbox" mean?

In terms of your 'specific' case, it sounds like one of your graphs is over-stretching its boundaries- perhaps it is going over a minipage, or into the page margin. If you're happy with the output, then you typically don't have to worry too much (unless the people viewing your document are also going to grep your .log file).

[Tex/LaTex] Overfull \vbox and wrong page layout

If one of the tabulars after the \chapter is too long to fit in the remaining space of the page, since tabular doesn't admit page breaks, the warning is generated since LaTeX can't fit the table in the page, and the tabular will be pushed to the next page; this of course, makes all the text following the tabular to be pushed also, leaving a white gap on the page.

You should consider either surrounding the tabular inside a floating table environment, so it will float to a page where it fits (possibly the last page), or using longtable from the longtable package to allow page breaks instead of tabular.

Here's your code using longtable with l option for left alignment (of course, the alignment option can be changed to c (which is the default) or r):

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{letterpaper}
\usepackage{remreset}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\title{\Huge\textbf{Report}}
\author{di \textbf{Mengops}}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand \thesection {\@arabic\c@section}
\@removefromreset{section}{chapter}
\makeatother
%remove "chapter"

\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\chapter}{\if@openright\cleardoublepage\else\clearpage\fi}{}{}{}
\makeatother
%avoid new page

\begin{document}
\maketitle 

\chapter*{first title}
Per i seguenti circuiti abbiamo calcolato il punto di BIAS. \textbf{Punto di Bias} ovvero il punto di Lavoro del BJT. La sua scelta è cruciale poichè va ad influire sulla capacità del circuito di amplificare il segnale di Input. Con un solo transistor (\textbf{Alplificatore di classe A}) si sceglie il punto di BIAS a metà della Retta di Carico in modo da poter amplificare in egual modo sia il segnale positivo che quello negativo.

\chapter*{title 1}

{\Large
\begin{tabular}{c|c|c|c}
table
\end{tabular}\par}


\chapter*{title 2}


{\Large
\begin{longtable}[l]{c|c|c|c}
\hline
\multicolumn{4}{c}{Tabella Circuito 1}\\
\hline
 & Teorico& Reale& Spice\\
\hline
$R_B$& $2.2 M\Omega$& $2.237 M\Omega$& $2.2 M\Omega$\\
\hline
$R_C$& $5.6 k\Omega$& $5.555 k\Omega$& $56 k\Omega$\\
\hline
$I_B$& $5 \mu A$& $k\Omega$& $5.15622 \mu A$\\
\hline
$I_C$& $1 \mu A$& $k\Omega$& $1.082 \mu A$\\
\hline
$V_{RC}$& $V$& $7.079 V$& $6.0594 V$\\
\hline
$V_{RB}$& $11.3 V$& $11.388 V$& $11.344 V$\\
\hline
$V_{BE}$& $0.7 V$& $0.615 V$& $0.656 V$\\
\hline
$V_{CE}$& $V$& $4.896 V$& $5.94 V$\\
\hline
\end{longtable}\par}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Not related to the question, but the booktabs package might be of interest for you; it offers you some features to increase the quality of your tables (it discourages the use of vertical rules).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Overfull/Underfull \hbox warnings when compiling the document

[Tex/LaTex] Overfull \vbox and wrong page layout

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