Problem with sizing side-by-side minipages

Question

I've been writing up my resume in LaTeX (for the flashiness and also to get better with LaTeX), and I've been having some trouble with one of the macros I wrote, called \nrccolstring.

\nrccolstring is supposed to take two text fields and make them into side-by-side miniboxes that span all of the space allocated for them. The first minibox is left-justified, and the second minibox is right-justified.

My macro works great when it's on the whole page, but it craps out on me when I nest it inside another minibox (such as the one I'm currently using to control columns).

When I run the attached code, I get the following output:

So what's up?

Why does it fail on the second macro? I get a couple of warnings (shown below), but the document compiles fine.

  Overfull \hbox (2.22221pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 33--34<br>
  Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 33--34

What's going on here? There's clearly something I don't understand about how the sizing of a minipage works.

Should I be using something other than miniboxes to achieve the effect?

I thought about using columns or a table originally, but I wanted something that would automatically size the cells to take the entire \textwidth and also make sure that the cells are wide enough (assuming the overall \textwidth is big enough to fit everything).

Thoughts?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[top=0.5in, bottom=0.5in, left=0.5in, right=0.5in]{geometry}

\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{blindtext}

%----------------------- Registers-----------------------------%
\newlength{\registera}
\newlength{\registerb}
%-------------------- Text Field Macros-------------------------%
\newcommand{\CompanyName}{This is a Fictional Company Name}
\newcommand{\Description}{\blindtext}

%-------------------- Formatting Macros------------------------%

\newcommand{\nrccolstring}[2]{
    \begingroup
    \setlength{\registera}{\widthof{\noindent \raggedright #1}}%
    \setlength{\registerb}{\dimexpr \textwidth - \registera \relax}%
    \noindent \begin{minipage}[t]{\registera}
        \noindent \raggedright #1\\ 
    \end{minipage}
    \noindent \begin{minipage}[t]{\registerb}
        \noindent \raggedleft #2\\
    \end{minipage}
\endgroup}

%------------------------ Body Text ---------------------------%

\begin{document}
    \blindtext
    \par \bigskip
    \par\nrccolstring{\textbf{\CompanyName}}{2011-Present} % Macro works here!
    \par
    \Description
    \par \bigskip

    \noindent \begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
        \par\nrccolstring{\textbf{\CompanyName}}{2011-Present}  % Macro doesn't work here!
        \par
        \Description
    \end{minipage}
    \noindent \begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
        \Description
    \end{minipage}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Here is an updated version of your current document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[top=0.5in, bottom=0.5in, left=0.5in, right=0.5in]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{calc,blindtext}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{calc,blindtext}

%----------------------- Registers-----------------------------%
\newlength{\registera}
\newlength{\registerb}
%-------------------- Text Field Macros-------------------------%
\newcommand{\CompanyName}{This is a Fictional Company Name}
\newcommand{\Description}{\blindtext}

%-------------------- Formatting Macros------------------------%

\newcommand{\nrccolstring}[2]{%
  \begingroup
  \setlength{\registera}{\widthof{#1}}%
  \setlength{\registerb}{\dimexpr \linewidth - \registera \relax}%
  \noindent\begin{minipage}[t]{\registera}
    \raggedright #1
  \end{minipage}%
  \begin{minipage}[t]{\registerb}
    \raggedleft #2
  \end{minipage}%
\endgroup}

%------------------------ Body Text ---------------------------%

\begin{document}
  \blindtext\par
  \bigskip
  \nrccolstring{\textbf{\CompanyName}}{2011-Present} % Macro works here!
  \par
  \Description\par
  \bigskip

  \noindent \begin{minipage}[t]{\dimexpr0.5\textwidth-0.5\columnsep}
    \nrccolstring{\textbf{\CompanyName}}{2011-Present}  % Macro doesn't work here!
    \par\Description
  \end{minipage}\hfill%
  \begin{minipage}[t]{\dimexpr0.5\textwidth-0.5\columnsep}
    \Description
  \end{minipage}
\end{document}

Most notable changes include:

• Using % to remove spurious spaces; LaTeX does ignore spaces in math mode, but not in text mode. It does ignore consecutive spaces, but single spaces are still visible/set. See What is the use of percent signs (%) at the end of lines?
• Using \linewidth instead of \textwidth. This allows for setting your \nrccolstring inside a minipage without it spilling over the box boundary.
• Removing \\ at the end of a paragraph.