Text Formatting ⇒ fancybox | Two adjacent framed Boxes with same Height

[EmilioLazo]

Hello!

I'm trying to achieve having two cells the same height in order to frame them with an ovalbox but don't know how to do this. I did try with an \ovalbox outside of a \parbox (what I call "first try"), and the same but with a tabular outside (second try). Also, following a trick found in [1] I did try with \raisebox and {lrbox} also without success.

What I want is a way to have two adjacent boxes with equal heights to frame them with \ovalbox, \framebox or \shadowbox (something like vertical centering the smallest box). Both texts inside boxes are arbitrary and comes from commands defined with \newcommand and generally I don't know which one is the tallest.

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\usepackage[vmargin={3cm,3cm},hmargin={1cm,1cm},footskip=0pt,headsep=0pt,headheight=0pt]{geometry}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\begin{document}
% First try
\ovalbox{%
\parbox{8cm}{%
some text
}}
\hfill
\ovalbox{%
\parbox{8cm}{%
some different \par
text
}}

% Second try
\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{ll}
\ovalbox{%
\parbox{8cm}{%
some text
}}
&
\ovalbox{%
\parbox{8cm}{%
some different \par
text
}}
\end{tabular*}

\end{document}

Thanks in advance to anyone which points me in the right direction!

[1] LaTeX/Tables – Wikibooks, open books for an open world

[Juanjo]

Since you don't know the heights of every chunk of text, you should first measure it. Then you can write boxes with the right height. The following example may give you some insights:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\usepackage[vmargin={3cm,3cm},hmargin={1cm,1cm},noheadfoot]{geometry}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\begin{document}

% Auxiliary lengths and box
\newlength{\TotalHeightI}
\newlength{\TotalHeightII}
\newsavebox{\TemporaryBox}

% Macros that yield the text inside the two boxes
\newcommand{\SomeText}{Text text text}
\newcommand{\SomeWords}{Words words words \par More words words \par And even more words}

% It is assumed that the boxes width will be 8cm. Change as needed.
% We first measure the total height of every box
\sbox{\TemporaryBox}{\parbox{8cm}{\SomeText}}
\setlength{\TotalHeightI}{\dimexpr\dp\TemporaryBox+\ht\TemporaryBox}
\sbox{\TemporaryBox}{\parbox{8cm}{\SomeWords}}
\setlength{\TotalHeightII}{\dimexpr\dp\TemporaryBox+\ht\TemporaryBox}

% We actually write the boxes with the correct total height
\ifdim\the\TotalHeightI<\the\TotalHeightII
   \ovalbox{\parbox[c][\TotalHeightII][c]{8cm}{\SomeText}}\hfill
   \ovalbox{\parbox[c][\TotalHeightII][c]{8cm}{\SomeWords}}
\else
   \ovalbox{\parbox[c][\TotalHeightI][c]{8cm}{\SomeText}}\hfill
   \ovalbox{\parbox[c][\TotalHeightI][c]{8cm}{\SomeWords}}
\fi

\end{document}