[Tex/LaTex] “Nice” way to list pro and contra aspects

horizontal alignmentlists

I am currently evaluating different alternatives and would like to present a few pro and contra arguments for each possibility. My first thought was to present these arguments side-by-side using two minipages of equal width, each containing a itemize environment.

But that seems a little hackish to me. Maybe there are packages or even standard environments that are suited to enumerate pro and contra arguments? If not, how would you do this in general?

If it matters: This is for a document using \documentclass{scrreprt}. Oh and sorry, for the tags, I couldn't think of better ones (maybe that's why Google couldn't quite help me with this …).

Best Answer

The following puts them in two columns in a sort-of table.

The tabularx package is used with the X column specification to make the table width exactly the line width.
The booktabs package and its command \toprule, \cmidrule and \bottomrule are for pretty horizontal lines (notice that optional arguments of \cmidrule in () are used to make the line broken in a nice way)
The lipsum package and \lipsum command only provides some dummy text and are not needed.
I make the points with no bullets and seperated by some vertical space (specified by > directive in the tabularx argument).

The code:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{>{\parskip1ex}X@{\kern4\tabcolsep}>{\parskip1ex}X}
\toprule
\hfil\bfseries Pros
&
\hfil\bfseries Cons
\\\cmidrule(r{3\tabcolsep}){1-1}\cmidrule(l{-\tabcolsep}){2-2}

%% PROS, seperated by empty line or \par
It's nice\par
\lipsum[1]
It's very nice\par

&

%% CONS, seperated by empty line or \par
It's ugly\par
It's really ugly\par
\lipsum[4]

\\\bottomrule
\end{tabularx}
\caption{Pros and cons of ...}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Screenshot

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Problem with \hbox inside list

\hbox is not a supported LaTeX command: you are supposed to use \makebox or in this case just \rule directly. (Note similarly that while the LaTeX \rule works the TeX primitive \hrule would fail in the same way as \hbox.

enter image description here

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
This is some text which shows the width of the whole page.
We must make sure it is long enough to occupy at least one whole line.
\begin{itemize}
\item 
Inside the itemize environment, the text is not so wide. 
\par
\hbox to \linewidth{\rule{\linewidth}{1pt}}
\par
\hspace*{0pt}\hbox to \linewidth{\rule{\linewidth}{1pt}}
\par
\rule{\linewidth}{1pt}
\par
\makebox[\linewidth]{\rule{\linewidth}{1pt}}
\end{itemize}
\end{document}

Technically what is going wrong is that LaTeX lists produce indentation by adjusting the paragraph shape, but \hbox does not start a paragraph it adds itself directly to the current vertical or horizontal list, with the result you see.

[Tex/LaTex] Create and center nice EBNF

The grammar environment is based on a list structure, which is naturally left aligned. One way to get a centering effect is to put the whole structure into a minipage inside a center environment.

The original command \alt is defined to be

 \\\llap{\textbar\quad}

i.e. this starts an new line and prints to the left of the new column a vertical bar followed by a space of one \quad = 1em. You can just define a similar command that removes the \llap so the vertical bar (and space) are not pushed out leftwards. However, I suggest a command that does a little more:

\newcommand{\indalt}[1][2]{\\\hspace*{#1em}\textbar\quad}

This provides by default 2em of extra space before the bar, but takes an optional argument so \indalt[0] will give no indent and \indent[4] will give an indent of 4em.

Sample output

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}

\usepackage[nounderscore]{syntax}

\shortverb{\|}
\setlength{\grammarindent}{2cm}
\newcommand{\indalt}[1][2]{\\\hspace*{#1em}\textbar\quad}

\begin{document}

\hrule

\begin{center}
  \begin{minipage}{0.8\linewidth}
    \begin{grammar}
      <stmt> ::= <stmt>; <stmt> | \textbf{skip} | $v := $ <expr>
      \indalt \textbf{input} $\vec{v}$ | \textbf{output} $\vec{v}$
      \indalt[4] \textbf{if} <expr> \textbf{then} <stmt> \textbf{else} <stmt>
      \indalt \textbf{while} <expr> <stmt>

      <expr> ::= $v$ | \textbf{tt} | \textbf{ff} | <expr> $\lor$
      <expr> | $\lnot$<expr>.
    \end{grammar}
  \end{minipage}
\end{center}
\end{document}

If you wish to redfine the \alt command itself you will have to do this in the grammar environment itself, as it is not defined globally.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Problem with \hbox inside list

[Tex/LaTex] Create and center nice EBNF

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