CERN Accelerating science

Generalized parboxes and minipages

Sometimes it is helpful to predefine the vertical dimension of a paragraph box. For this LaTeXe has additional optional arguments for minipage and parbox.

\parbox[pos][height][inner-pos]{width}text    
\begin{minipage}[pos][height][inner-pos]{width}  
text  
\end{minipage}           

The inner-pos determines the position of text within the box. It can be t, c, b, or s. If not specified, the value of pos will be used. You can think of height and inner-pos as the vertical equivalent of the width and pos arguments of a \makebox. If you use the s position the text will be vertically stretched to fill the given height. Thus, in this case you are responsible for providing vertically stretchable space if necessary using, for example, \vspace or \vfill commands.

As with the other box commands you can use height, totalheight, and so on to refer to the natural dimensions of the box when specifying the optional argument.

xx \fbox{\parbox[b][1.5\height][s]
         {30mm}{Some text on top. \par\vfill 
                In the middle. \par\vfill
                And a few lines on the
                bottom of the box.}}
   \fbox{\parbox[b][\height+\baselineskip][s]
         {30mm}{This time a few lines on the
                top of the box. But only one
                line \par\vfill down here.}} xx