[Tex/LaTex] \RaggedRight makes document longer

horizontal alignmenthyphenationline-breakingragged2e

I have a document carefully written to fit in 4 pages; but when I added a \raggedright (or \RaggedRight with use of the ragged2e package) the length gets longer. Furthermore, suddenly the output isn't stable between moving from Web2c on my Linux machine, and a recent version of MiKTeX on my windows machine.

Here's a test case exhibiting the behaviour:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper,margin=20mm,nohead,foot=7mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{txfonts}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-35]
\end{document}

This produces something a touch over 4 pages and Web2c and MikTeX produce visually identical PDF files. But now consider:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper,margin=20mm,nohead,foot=7mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{txfonts}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}
\newlength{\saveparindent}
\setlength{\saveparindent}{\parindent}
\RaggedRight
\setlength{\parindent}{\saveparindent}
\lipsum[1-35]
\end{document}

On Web2c this adds two lines to the length of the document; but on MikTeX it adds 7 lines! What's going on?

Update: As some comments have very helpfully pointed out, package versions can make a difference, and unsurprisingly, this seems to be the case– my Web2C installation (outside my control!) is very out of date. However, the original question stands– why is there a different at all between using \RaggedRight and not?

Best Answer

\raggedright adds infinite glue (0pt plus 1fil) at the end of lines. As jon has commented, this will make hyphenation (next to) impossible, which will result in fewer words per line.

\RaggedRight, on the other hand, adds finite glue (the default is 0pt plus 2em), so hyphenation becomes possible again -- but this won't result in the same hyphenation/line-breaking patterns as with justified text. The reason is that lines that may feature acceptable (for TeX' line-breaking algorithm) interword spacing when using \RaggedRight would become too spaced out for justified text, so TeX will rather choose a solution with one more word squeezed into the respective line. This effect will occur more often if you use microtype and its font expansion feature.

The following example hopefully illustrates this:

With \raggedright (and microtype), the word "fermentum" won't be hypenated, but shifted as a whole to the fourth line of the paragraph.
\RaggedRight allows hyphenation ("fer-mentum").
Justified text plus microtype allows to fit the word "laoreet" in the first line, which in turn allows to fit "fermentum" as a whole in the third line, which will result in a paragraph one line shorter.
Justified text without microtype can't squeeze "laoreet" into the first line, which in turn means that hypenation ("fer-mentum") becomes the preferred solution in the third line. Contrary to \RaggedRight, the word "sed" will be part of the fourth line.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{ragged2e}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newlength{\saveparindent}
\setlength{\saveparindent}{\parindent}

\makeatletter
\g@addto@macro{\raggedright}{\setlength{\parindent}{\saveparindent}}
\g@addto@macro{\RaggedRight}{\setlength{\parindent}{\saveparindent}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\raggedright
\lipsum[6]

\RaggedRight
\lipsum[6]

\justifying
\lipsum[6]

\microtypesetup{activate=false}
\lipsum[6]

\end{document}

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Hbox overfull: automatic linebreaks on spaces

you've already separated the different elements, providing spaces between the distinct equations comprising each language and separately coding these equations as math (even though the space between the first two is, probably inadvertently, omitted). unfortunately, these spaces don't fall in a place that is optimal for tex to break the line.

the ultimate goal is for what is presented to be understood.

there are two parts to this recommendation.

first, the words "milk, curry, rice" are, as you say, constants, and as such should be in a text font, preferably not italic in this context, even though they're part of the math expression. as coded in your original, they are typeset as strings of variables multiplied together. these could be coded as \mathrm{<word>}, but that doesn't help with line breaking. it also wouldn't leave spaces after the commas, although in this situation, whether spaces are visible there or not wouldn't be misunderstood by a reader.

another way to approach these is to recognize them as text, and input them as, for example,

$\mathcal{C}_o=\{\text{milk, curry, rice}\}$

but this doesn't help with line breaking either, since in this context, the only "allowable" break is after the equals sign.

so, second part of suggestion, take advantage of the fact that a reader isn't likely to misunderstand what is meant if a line is broken within that string of constants, and (temporarily) terminate the math after the opening brace, and reinstate it for the ending brace:

$\mathcal{C}_o=\{$milk, curry, rice$\}$

to illustrate, using a forced line break for the "all math" instance, compare these two lines:

enter image description here

here's the input that produced the image:

\begin{itemize}
\item The language of enquiry $\mathcal{L}$ is given by
$\mathcal{C}_o=\{milk, curry, rice\}$,\\
$\mathcal{R}_o=\{TastesHot, IsWhite, ContainsSpice, ContainsSugar\}$,
$\mathcal{F}_o=\{\}$.
\item The language of enquiry $\mathcal{L}$ is given by
$\mathcal{C}_o=\{$milk, curry, rice$\}$,
$\mathcal{R}_o=\{$TastesHot, IsWhite, ContainsSpice, ContainsSugar$\}$,
$\mathcal{F}_o=\{\}$.
\end{itemize}

(by the way, that's hardly a minimal example.)

[Tex/LaTex] \raggedright removes paragraph indentation

The definition of \raggedright in the LaTeX kernel is

% latex.ltx, line 3974:
\def\raggedright{%
  \let\\\@centercr\@rightskip\@flushglue \rightskip\@rightskip
  \leftskip\z@skip
  \parindent\z@}

Thus you can say in your document preamble

\makeatletter
\newcommand\iraggedright{%
  \let\\\@centercr\@rightskip\@flushglue \rightskip\@rightskip
  \leftskip\z@skip}
\makeatother

removing the last instruction. Now \iraggedright will do what you want.

A different approach is to use ragged2e

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\setlength{\RaggedRightParindent}{\parindent}

\begin{document}
\RaggedRight

\lipsum[1-2]

\end{document}

enter image description here

Note that \RaggedRight is less strict than \raggedright in that it allows hyphenation, so making “less ragged” output.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Hbox overfull: automatic linebreaks on spaces

[Tex/LaTex] \raggedright removes paragraph indentation

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