llncs and caption - underfull hbox

Question

I'm using the llncs document class and try to get two figures side-by-side. I found a solution, but I get a hbox underflow if my captions have a bad length. Here is a minimal example:

\documentclass{llncs}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.4\linewidth}
\caption{Fragwrdige Zusammengehrigkeit bei sehr grosen Clustern}% Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.4\linewidth}
\caption{Text}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

The PDF output seems to by OK, so I could ignore this warning. But I wonder if there is a correct solution for this problem. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Adding \usepackage[german]{babel} allows latex to break the words using German rules which brings the badness down to 1803.

Once the badness is below 10000 (= infinity) it's not really an error just a warning that it's a difficult paragraph. If there isn't a particular reason for wanting .4\linewidth You can adjust the space a bit, .45 appears to work, although there is no setting that can guarantee good linebreaks in all cases, especially in languages where the word length is typically large. I also added \hfill so the two minipages are flush either edge of the page.

\documentclass{llncs}
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\linewidth}
\caption{Fragwrdige Zusammengehrigkeit bei sehr grosen Clustern}% Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\linewidth}
\caption{Text}
\end{minipage}

\noindent X\dotfill X
\end{figure}

\end{document}