When using the \halign
primitive, cells in the same column all have the same width. Hence, if one entry is very large (abcdefg
below), the others will be stretched to the same size. If an entry contains no glue, then it is not stretched. Namely,
\halign{#\cr abcdefg\cr a b\cr ab\cr}
gives
abcdefg
a b
ab
This can be emulated by applying \hbox to <wd>{...}
to each entry. However, when there is no glue, \halign
produces no Underfull hbox
warning, whereas \hbox to <wd>{...}
does.
-
Am I correct that
\halign
does the equivalent of\hbox to <dim>{...}
to resize the entries? -
I would like to avoid spurious
Underfull hbox
warnings. How can I test for the absence of glue in a\hbox
?
Best Answer
You can test whether an
\hbox
is underfull without getting a message using something likeso
\mybadness
will expand to 10000 if the\hbox to <wd>
is underfull. See the TeXbook, p. 229. By giving different values to<wd>
you can also test if the glue is infinite or not.