How can I produce 3 centered columns, with the middle one fitting the width of its content?

Question

How can I produce a document similar to this, but cause the middle column to take up only as much space as it needs (rather than explicitly specifying a width), such that as much space as possible is available to the left and right columns?

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\fbox{\parbox{0.333\textwidth}{\centering Left content centered \\ between margin and title }}
\fbox{\parbox{0.333\textwidth}{\centering \Huge Title }}
\fbox{\parbox{0.333\textwidth}{\centering Right content \\ also centered }}

\end{document}

Answer 1

You can calculate the width for the contents and store it in an auxiliary length; then you can calculate the other two widths using this value (you need to take into account also \fboxsep and \fboxrule):

\documentclass{article}

\newlength\mylen
\newcommand\MyCont{\Huge Title}
\settowidth\mylen{\MyCont}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\fbox{\parbox{\dimexpr0.5\textwidth-0.5\mylen-3\fboxsep-3\fboxrule\relax}{\centering Left content centered \\ between margin and title }}%
\fbox{\parbox{\mylen}{\centering\MyCont}}%
\fbox{\parbox{\dimexpr0.5\textwidth-0.5\mylen-3\fboxsep-3\fboxrule\relax}{\centering Right content \\ also centered }}

\end{document}

Of course, if you are inetrested in producing tabular material, the best approach would be to use the tabularx package (as in zeroth's answer), or the tabu package. A little example with the latter:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabu} 

\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabu}{|X[c]|c|X[c]|}
Left content centered between margin and title &  \Huge Title &
    Right content  also centered
\end{tabu}
\end{document}

Answer 2

The package you can use for this is the tabularx. This lets you specify a tabular environment which needs a width argument. Furthermore a new column specifier, X, is introduced.

This new column type will take up the rest of the space available and divide that space amongst the X columns.

In your case this amounts to:

% \usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|>{\centering}X|c|>{\centering\arraybackslash}X|}
  o & o & o
  \\
  o & o & o  
\end{tabularx}

The \arraybackslash is a work around for the \cr which is not correctly interpreted. See the manual for more information.

This will yield: