[Tex/LaTex] How to fit text in a box of given size

boxesscalingtext manipulation

Say I want to typeset small piece of text as a logo/motto/slogan or whatever. The text is not much longer than "Lorem Ipsum Dolor". I want this to fit tightly in a box of certain size (e.g. 7x2cm). Two questions here, possibly related:

How can I typeset it so that the text fits a box with certain width? 
Assume fixed typeface size, and only the inter-word and inter-glyph 
distance is allowed to change.

A (possibly) more advanced version of this:

How can I fit the same text in a box with a given width AND height? 
Possibly also adjusting spacing and typeface size?

To illustrate:

Original Version:

Modified spacing, Q1.

Modified spacing plus scaling, Q2.

Sizes, font type, etc. are assumed to be arbitrary. I'm curious how can I do this conceptually. Bonus points for a parameterized macro to experiment with.

Also: I know there are many ways to do it without using TeX and friends (e.g. images, vector graphics, and what not), but I am only interested in ways how to typeset it with TeX, or popular macro packages.

Best Answer

To duplicate the answer I gave on the LaTeX Community site...

You could try \resizebox from the graphicx package. See its documentation, page 7:

\resizebox{1in}{!}{Some text}

This will give "Some text" which is exactly 1 inch long. The ! for the second argument means to vary the height by whatever it needs to in order to maintain the aspect ratio. If you did {!}{1in} it would be 1 inch tall instead. If you specify both parameters, it'll be stretched disproportionally so that it is exactly a rectangle of that size, and so on.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Restricting the length of a line of text while allowing line breaks

The answer to the question as posted is a bit fuzzy

Spaces tend to have a glue component that makes predicting their actual width rather hard unless you remove the glue by using \spaceskip & \xspaceskip
Do you really mean 'restrict' or do you mean 'expand'? If there is too much text for 3cm, there is no way to meet the requirements.
The three words, when on one line, will have two intermediate spaces. When on two lines, there will be only one space. It will be quite difficult to make sure the total used space in both cases is identical (in fact, I no idea how to do that in TeX82).
Do you really want the extra room to be filled with \hfill?

Anyway, you could try something like this:

\newdimen\mydimen
\mydimen=3cm
\setbox0=\hbox {Lorem Ipsum Dolor}\advance\mydimen-\wd0 \unhbox0\hskip\mydimen

which may or may not give you something that is exactly 3cm, depending on the rest of the paragraph.

A much more precise solution would be possible using node processing in LuaTeX, but there are not that many hooks in TeX82's line breaking routine that can really alter its behaviour.

[Tex/LaTex] Fit text into given box by adjusting the fontsize

Using the suggestion in Fitting and centering text (both!) in a constrained area, together with Martin's answer that uses the environ package, the following provides the environment

\begin{fitbox}{<width>}{<height>}
  <stuff>
\end{fitbox}

which typesets <stuff> using a form of binary search to fit the text within the given height <height> while under a fixed width <width> constraint set by a minipage. This is required in order to maintain a proportionate scaling of the font and leading (\baselineskip).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{environ}% http://ctan.org/pkg/environ
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\newdimen\fontdim
\newdimen\upperfontdim
\newdimen\lowerfontdim
\newif\ifmoreiterations
\fontdim12pt

\makeatletter
\NewEnviron{fitbox}[2]{% \begin{fitbox}{<width>}{<height>} stuff \end{fitbox}
  \def\buildbox{%
    \setbox0\vbox{\hbox{\minipage{#1}%
      \fontsize{\fontdim}{1.2\fontdim}%
      \selectfont%
      \stuff%
    \endminipage}}%
    \dimen@\ht0
    \advance\dimen@\dp0
  }
  \def\stuff{\BODY}% Store environment body
  \buildbox
  % Compute upper and lower bounds
  \ifdim\dimen@>#2
    \loop
      \fontdim.5\fontdim % Reduce font size by half
      \buildbox
    \ifdim\dimen@>#2 \repeat
    \lowerfontdim\fontdim
    \upperfontdim2\fontdim
    \fontdim1.5\fontdim
  \else
    \loop
      \fontdim2\fontdim % Double font size
      \buildbox
    \ifdim\dimen@<#2 \repeat
    \upperfontdim\fontdim
    \lowerfontdim.5\fontdim
    \fontdim.75\fontdim
  \fi
  % Now try to find the optimum size
  \loop
    %\message{Bounds: \the\lowerfontdim\space
    %         \the\fontdim\space \the\upperfontdim^^J}
    \buildbox
    \ifdim\dimen@>#2
      \moreiterationstrue
      \upperfontdim\fontdim
      \advance\fontdim\lowerfontdim
      \fontdim.5\fontdim
    \else
      \advance\dimen@-#2
      \ifdim\dimen@<10pt
        \lowerfontdim\fontdim
        \advance\fontdim\upperfontdim
        \fontdim.5\fontdim
        \dimen@\upperfontdim
        \advance\dimen@-\lowerfontdim
        \ifdim\dimen@<.2pt
          \moreiterationsfalse
        \else
          \moreiterationstrue
        \fi
      \else
        \moreiterationsfalse
      \fi
    \fi
  \ifmoreiterations \repeat
  \box0% Typeset content
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{fitbox}{.5\textwidth}{0.5\textheight}
  \lipsum[1-2]
\end{fitbox}
\lipsum[2]

\clearpage

\lipsum[1]
\begin{fitbox}{300pt}{300pt}
  \lipsum[1-2]
\end{fitbox}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

In the figure below, two pages are typeset, each starting with \lipsum[1] and ending with \lipsum[2] to provide some frame of reference. The left page has a fitbox of dimension .5\textwidth x .5\textwidth while the page on the right is set at 300pt x 300pt (square).

Fixed-width-height box

Interestingly enough, I'm having trouble compiling this under TeXLive 2011. Although, there is no problem compiling it using the online LaTeX compiler ScribTeX, which runs TeXLive 2009. I don't know what the cause behind this is... This has been fixed by the replacement of \protected@edef\stuff{\BODY} with \def\stuff{\BODY}. The original code used this form since it provided two macros - one for parsing the content (called \fillthepage{<stuff>}) and another for updating a resized version of the content (called \buildbox). I assume the coding structure required this. However, with everything contained in a single environment fitbox above, this is not needed anymore.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Restricting the length of a line of text while allowing line breaks

[Tex/LaTex] Fit text into given box by adjusting the fontsize

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