[Tex/LaTex] How to make a document occupy more pages

marginsspacingtypography

As opposed to this question: Squeezing scientific paper to fit within page limits, I would like to find as many ways to make a document become longer without adding any real text.

The motivation for this is that for example a mathematical thesis is usually very thin and it might not look good. The "rules" are following:

The document should still "look good" (I mean, triple line-spacing or \textwidth=0.3\paperwitdh are not the options).
The typography should be correct in the final document.

I would like the ideas to be accompanied by a package name or a code snippet that allows them.

I know that the question might be vague and allows lots of "stupid" solutions. But I hope that everybody feels what they would use and what they would not.

Best Answer

These are some additional ideas, assuming that you do not need to abide by a standard layout.

Use something like the tufte-book class (it has a very wide right margin, you can make it a bit wider as well) and it still looks good.
Have full page epigraphs to separate chapters from other text and possible full page pictures. (Tufte does that at the beginning of his books).
Index almost any word you can think of.
KILL justification. All the document must be typeset ragged right.
Adjust lists and all vertical spacing.
Increase the interword spacing.
Increase the spacing after stops.
Have all sectioning at larger sized fonts.
Section the document down to paragraph (and modify) the sectioning command to start on a new line rather than as a block.
Use toc levels 7
Input chapter 3 again as the chapter before last and if anyone notices blame it on the typographical devil or the TeX engine.
If you have any computer code, include it as an appendix
Have a colophon explaining the use of LaTeX to typeset the thesis and import the source and the log as a listing.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Spacing around image

I'm by no means an expert on the matter but I did notice a couple of things in your example:

Your figure is "starting" at the same point as the paragraph is: I personally find this distracting (weird at the very least), I'd leave a couple of "full" paragraph lines before starting to warp the figure around it (think of it as an orphan of sorts)
Your paragraph is ending "too soon": like in the previous point, this looks off, maybe allow for more than a single line of text below it?

Now to your question proper, this is what I'd do:

The top of the figure should be aligned (near) to the x-height of the line it wraps around of (ie. the image should be a "continuation" of sorts to the very first line of the wrapping paragraph). Setting it to exactly the x-height may leave too little space between the image and the previous (non-wrapped) line.
The bottom of the figure should be (near) the baseline of the last line it wraps (same reasoning as before).

This deals with the vertical spacing. As for the horizontal spacing:

In the first place, the amount of left and right space will depend on where the wrapped image will actually be typeset: to the left, right, or center (think two columns) of the block. That being said, I'd leave something close to 1 em between the image and the block (in your example).
the space to leave to the side of the image that lies close to the margin is a bit trickier: like protrusion, it will depend on the actual image. I think that a framed image (like yours) is best treated like a very big "M" would for protrusion, so the amount of space needed will be close to a standard separation (ie. one m space); were your image to be non-framed then maybe this distance could be decreased.

On a side note, maybe there are other tactics you could try:

I think that there's a critical point of sorts: you could leave an "excessive" space of a \qquad around the image and it would look "ok" (in terms of whether the spacing is off or not relative to each other)... of course this may be too much space and look awful in the block.
Maybe you could try letting the image "overflow" to the margin altogether: allow for 1/3 of the image to protrude to the right. This would make the point of whether the spacing to the margin is off or not moot.

I agree with @egreg in that these look pretty bad most of the times, but acknowledge that there may be situations in which this is just the thing to have.

Once more, this is just an amateur's opinion on the matter.

[Tex/LaTex] Multi-column spacing of many equation-like environments

Skipping over minor details, this may be accomplished with a tabular:

\usepackage{array}
\newcolumntype{C}{>{$\displaystyle}c<{$}}
\newcommand{\onecol}[1]{\multicolumn{2}{C}{#1}}

The above code should go in the preamble. Then the big thing can be set by

\begin{figure}
\centering
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{2} % adjust here for interrow spacing
\begin{tabular}{CC}
\onecol{Formula for first line} \\
\onecol{Formula for second line} \\
\onecol{Formula for third line} \\
Left formula & right formula (row 4)\\
Left formula & right formula (row 5)\\
...
\end{tabular}
\caption{Sequent calculus formulation}\label{fig:seqcalc}
\end{figure}

Instead of setting \arraystretch you can define

\newcommand\mystrut{\vrule width 0pt height 24pt depth 24pt}

and insert \mystrut in a cell in each row but the first and the last. Adjust the dimensions to suit.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Spacing around image

[Tex/LaTex] Multi-column spacing of many equation-like environments

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