General ⇒ Decrease margin on align environment

[mro]

Hi there,
I have some large formulas within align* environments.
I would like to keep the page as usual but move the align environment a few centimeters to the left (and obviously decrease the right "margin" in these locations).
Note that these environments extend over multiple pages in my case.
How can this be done easily?
Regards,
Marki

PS. I could decrease font size too, I know, but the fonts would need to be a lot smaller and I only have 30% very long lines, so that would be a bad deal. And yes, I have already put linebreaks wherever I can and I don't really want to put any more, as it doesn't make reading stuff easier because of opening/closing parentheses...)

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

have a look here: Centering wide tables or figures, instead of a table like in that example just use a wide minipage that contains the align* environment.

Stefan

[mro]

Note that this does not really seem to work for multi-page align blocks

[Juanjo]

I don't know if I've misunderstood the problem. I suppose that you have quite wide expressions and you'd like to use part of the margins to write them. If this is not the case, a bit of your code will be necessary to clarify the issue. If my hypothesis is correct, the following code may be helpful (cf. this thread for the original definition of MyBox environment):

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{framed,amsmath}

\usepackage{lipsum,color}
\definecolor{shadecolor}{rgb}{1,0.8,0.3}

\newenvironment{MyBox}{%
  \def\FrameCommand{\fcolorbox{black}{shadecolor}}%
  %\def\FrameCommand{}
  \MakeFramed{\setlength{\hsize}{1.3\textwidth} \FrameRestore}}%
{\endMakeFramed}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-4]
\begin{MyBox}
\allowdisplaybreaks
\begin{align*}
   a&=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z \\
    &=b+c+e+f+g+h+i+j+k+l+m+n+o+p+q+r+s+t+u+v+w+x+y+z 
 \end{align*}
\end{MyBox}
\end{document}

Instead of 1.3\textwidth, you may want to assign a suitable length to \hsize. Once fixed this length, you may turn color off. So, delete the actual definition of \FrameCommand and uncomment that lying right below. The lipsum and color packages can be also removed.

[mro]

Yes your hypothesis was correct.
My output looks kind of weird though using this environment. :-\

It always seems to look more or less like that no matter what I set for the \hsize.

I'm not sure what could be useful to diagnoze this. I am using a book document and also ps4pdf, but I don't suppose that matters much.

[Juanjo]

It seems that calcs.jpg shows part of the problematic align environment (a set of finite difference formulas?). Build a minimal working example with the corresponding code. Be sure you add the relevant part of the preamble to get the right font and textwidth. Then post everything here.

[mro]

So sorry for bothering you again.
I was missing a newline somewhere in the align block so things got messed up in there.
That error seems to have been less prominent without using the custom environment though.
Thanks again, your solution works just fine for now.

Marki