[Tex/LaTex] Make the width of the figure (including 2 minipages) same as the paper

floatsminipage

I have 2 minipages side by side as follows:

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \fbox{
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      left part
      \end{minipage}
    \end{minipage}\hfill
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      right part
      \end{minipage}
    \end{minipage}}
  \captionof{figure}{An example program}\label{fig:An example program}
\end{figure}

Now the width of the whole figure is a little bit shorter than the width of the paper. I would like to make them exactly the same.

Could anyone tell me which parameter I could change to realize that?

Best Answer

Use \framebox instead of \fbox.

 \begin{figure}
  \centering
  \framebox[1\linewidth][t]{%
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      \begin{minipage}[t]{1\linewidth}%
      left part is going to be very big sentence that goes into two lines
      \end{minipage}%
    \end{minipage}\hfill
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      \begin{minipage}[t]{1\linewidth}%
      right part is going to be very big sentence that goes into two lines
      \end{minipage}%
    \end{minipage}}%
  \captionof{figure}{An example program}\label{fig:An example program}
\end{figure}

enter image description here

EDIT: As per Martin's comments on using \framebox and verbatim text/catcode changing material, this code will work as desired using \fbox

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \fbox{%
  \begin{minipage}[t]{1\linewidth-2\fboxsep-2\fboxrule}%
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      left part right part is going to be very big sentence that goes into two lines
    \end{minipage}\hfill
    \begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\linewidth}%
      right part right part is going to be very big sentence that goes into two lines
    \end{minipage}
    \end{minipage}}
  \captionof{figure}{An example program}\label{fig:An example program}
\end{figure}

However, you have to use

\usepackage{calc} % as per Stephan's advice.

for this to work properly.

PS. If you want this to go up to the paper width (do you really want to do that?), you have to reduce the margins to zero using geometry.

I am of the opinion that you can simply use \caption inside figure environment (instead of \captionof which will be used outside \figure environment)

enter image description here

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