Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!olivea!orc!bbn.com!nic!chaos.cs.brandeis.edu!SOMMER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
From: sommer@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Need non-fixed-width parbox in LaTeX
Message-ID: <009410A2.333A9240@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>
Date: 11 Dec 90 23:55:38 GMT
References: <1568@abekrd.UUCP>
Sender: @chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
Reply-To: sommer@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Organization: Brandeis University
Lines: 27

In article <1568@abekrd.UUCP>, garyb@abekrd.UUCP (Gary Bartlett) writes:
>I need to format a piece of text in a parbox (because I need to specify
>where the line breaks are to occur) but I want the final box to be only as
>wide as the largest line of text.  I cannot figure out how to achieve this.
>
>eg - the text to be formatted:
>
>	this is line 1 \\
>	this is a longer line 2 \\
>	the end
>
>I will always specify where the line breaks are to occur so I don't need
>LaTeX to split the lines for me. Theoretically therefore, I don't need to
>specify a width. Unfortunately, \parbox demands a width. I don't know the
>width of the longest line before hand either. Can anyone see a way around
>this?

Don Hosek posted two different solutions. I'm only a LaTeX amateur, but I
think this will work, too (see LaTeX manual, p. 95):

\newlength{\boxwidth} % or whatever you want to call it

\settowidth{\boxwidth}{this is a longer line 2} % your longest line

\parbox{\boxwidth}{this is line 1 \\ this is a longer line 2 \\ the end}

I think it should work with centering, etc., thrown in, too.