# [texhax] latex help?

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu Apr 6 23:02:41 CEST 2006

Hi Anne,

So what I need is a way of telling latex to write the mbox on a new
line if the previous line cannot contain it properly.

I think what's happening is that an unbreakable formula, even a shortish
formula, is simply a hard thing to break lines around.  When TeX keeps
it at the end of the line (making a too-long line), I think it's because
it sees every alternative as worse.  To test this theory, try doing
\begin{sloppypar}
\mbox{$V=ZI$}
... rest of paragraph
\end{sloppypar}

And see if it moves down.  (I expect the spacing will be pretty awful.)

If this works out, since you don't want to use sloppypar around every
paragraph, the real solution might be to adjust some of TeX's line
breaking parameters, notably \tolerance, to allow looser paragraphs in
general.

By the way, I believe you can prohibit all breaks in formulas by setting
\relpenalty=10000
\binoppenalty=10000

However, you probably have other (displayed) equations where you really
do need to allow breaks at relations and operators, in which case this
wouldn't be the way to go.

Hope this helps a little,
karl

P.S. Did you do the poster at