Hot answers tagged warnings
39
It is worth noting that TeX doesn't make the value judgements here.
The user, or more likely, the class file on behalf of the user, has set constraints on the amount by which boxes may overflow, the amount of stretching allowed on short pages etc. TeX only warns if these user-set constraints are exceeded.
So if you are setting difficult material with lots ...
36
Since this question comes up so often, I thought I'd try to supplement ArTourter's correct answer with a more general comment.
What does a question mark mean
It means that somewhere along the line the combination of LaTeX and BibTeX has failed to find and format the citation data you need for the citation: LaTeX can see you want to cite something, but ...
33
General tips
Use as few packages as possible,
Call the packages in particular order,
Use many small documents instead of one big one,
Comment your code,
Write readable code,
Concentrate on the content, not on the appearance.
General tips somewhat explained
That's because packages tend to conflict and go obsolete. (See How to keep up with packages and ...
29
Use the package refcheck. It is
Intended to check references in a document, looking for numbered but
unlabelled equations, for labels which are not used in the text, for
unused bibliography references.
Note that it checks for labels that are not used in the text but not for tables and figures that are not labelled. Thus if you got a table or figure ...
27
Loading the strict package prevents using LaTeX's declarations as environments.
Loading the fixltx2e package fixes some LaTeX2e errors.
fixmath changes LaTeX's default math style to comply with some international standards, specifically regarding Greek letters, see package description.
There are many packages improving LaTeX's standard behavior, for example ...
27
The LaTeX system has 3 levels of messages and TeX itself has another 2.
LaTeX Error ... stops the processing because something is seriously broken. Sometimes it is possible to continue but in most cases it is best to correct the error directly and reprocess the document
LaTeX Warning ... is only displayed on the terminal and in the transcript file and ...
26
The first answer doesn't really help somebody fix the problem, though. Take a look at:
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=overfull
and
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Formatting#Hyphenation
to learn about \tolerance, \pretolerance, and \hyphenpenalty and how they affect the overfull/underfull behavior. Also, if you're fixing the ...
25
There are commands \GenericInfo, \GenericWarning and \GenericError. For class and package writers there are also \Class… and \Package… equivalents, described in the clsguide.
An example:
\documentclass{minimal}
\GenericWarning{}{A simple warning}
\GenericError{(cont.)\space\space}
{This is a\MessageBreak
multi-line error\MessageBreak
message}
...
23
TeX puts elements (letters, lines, paragraphs, pictures,...) in boxes and joins them together on pages using glue (put between them) that can stretch, e.g., to make sure that lines are justified, or that pages are filled to their specified height. In the first example, the line is put in a hbox (horizontal box, or box with material arranged horizontally with ...
22
Programing
fixltx2e is essential
etoolbox provides some functionality that one can only get from hacking LaTeX kernel or using the internal macros otherwise. Also it provides some useful document and environment hooks
xspace is a tiny but useful macro for defining text oriented macros
geometry, typearea, etc, use one and only one of them. The same ...
21
This message means that a line of your document is too long to fit within the horizontal space on the page, and TeX couldn't find a good way to break it apart. This will usually result in text hanging out past the margin, possibly even running off the side of the page. Common causes are long words without proper hyphenation information and long displayed ...
21
I am not sure if this is possible with old fashioned TeX/pdfTeX, but it is with LuaTeX (of course, it is!)
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{luatexbase,luacode}
\overfullrule 5pt
\begin{luacode}
magentabox = function(head)
while head do
if head.id == 0 or head.id == 1 then
-- go through the hlists (the rows)
magentabox(head.head)
...
20
The log message you quoted is a sort of "summary" of earlier, more detailed warnings, telling you exactly which references are undefined/multiply defined. Scroll up through the log file and you should find more detailed messages that look like the one below:
LaTeX Warning: Label `foo' multiply defined.
20
To avoid messing up anything else in a document, siunitx is set up to avoid loading font packages and the like. As such, it uses its 'own' version of the \textminus and \textmu, and sets up a minimal amount of support for that. However, that confuses microtype, as you've seen (it should be harmless). Loading textcomp 'fixes' this as siunitx then uses the ...
19
Yes, you should definitely take care of them.
Overfull \hbox messages tell you that some line sticks out over the right margin;
Underfull \hbox messages tell you that some line is poorly typeset (or that you've improperly used \\ to leave a vertical space (for example, typing two \\ in a row);
Underfull \vbox messages usually tell you that a page is poorly ...
19
As David Carlisle and egreg said, you can use the draft option in most classes.
If you wish to do it by hand (for example, you need a final option to check for another package's rendering) or tune it, you can use
\overfullrule=1mm
in the document preamble.
18
Use \texorpdfstring; the first argument can contain (La)TeX code and the second one (text only), will be used for the bookmarks:
\section[this is a very long title I want to break manually]{\texorpdfstring{this is a very long title I\\ want to break manually}{this is a very long title I want to break manually}}
If a ToC is to be produced and the break ...
18
The refcheck package might be useful here.
The following MWE has a figure that is not referenced, so the refcheck puts a warning in your pdf with ? surrounding it.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{refcheck}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\rule{20pt}{30pt}
\caption{}
\label{fig:myfig}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
As soon as you ...
18
The way I understand it, a warning is issued, when the output file (PDF) is usable, but some constraints could not be enforced, i.e. it doesn't conform to the actual code.
A few (common) examples:
Overfull/underful box: obviously the document can eventually be opened, but it will not be compliant with the code, e.g. it will conflict with the badness ...
17
The fixed strings in TeX itself are handled in an array maintained in the string pool file which I haven't seen since I last compiled TeX last century sometime but there is a copy on CTAN. That is a superset of the (fragments of) error messages, but is what you would want to change if you really wanted to compile a tex with localised messages.
Also the ...
16
Youd did not change the float specifier, LaTeX did that for you and informed you. The reason is, that you provided just the optional placement argument h or !h for a float (figure or table), but the float didn't fit on the current page. It had to be put on top of the next page, corresponding to a placement argument t.
I recommend to use at least ht as ...
16
In the abstract it is nearly impossible to give advice on "underfull vbox" messages. They indicate a severe visual problem but often they are acceptable even if the number is high. However, 10000 is a value that should always be visually checked as it means infinitely bad (in TeX's eyes).
Here is the general advice that I give in the LaTeX Companion 2ed on ...
16
Add
\usepackage{lmodern}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lm
to your document preamble.
Fonts are typically available only in certain sizes/increments. As an example, the basic article document class loads only the following sizes (from size10.clo):
\tiny @ 5pt;
\scriptsize @ 7pt;
\footnotesize @ 8pt;
\small @ 9pt;
\normalsize @ 10pt;
\large @ 12pt;
\Large @ ...
15
Well, I've found a way to show the undefull boxes in the pdf. Nothing is impossible with luatex!
The process is a bit convoluted, but it works (at least in my minimal examples). But let see first the results. This is a little example document I prepared which produces a couple of Underfull vboxes.
The example
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
...
15
Copied from a TeX pearl by Paweł Jackowski. In his words, never underestimate TeX's bells and whistles.
\def\ooops{\hbox to\wd0{\setbox0=\hbox to\wd0{\unhbox0}%
\unhbox0 \ifnum\badness>10000 \rlap{\tiny\quad Ooops!}\fi}}
\interlinepenalty=-50000 % force the break between each two lines
\maxdeadcycles=50 % allow upto 50 \outputs with no ...
15
Fonts in LaTeX are characterized by four independent attributes:
Encoding
Family
Series
Shape
The encoding refers to the "output encoding"; commonly used ones are OT1 (classical TeX fonts) and T1 (Cork encoding for European languages), but also TS1 is found (Text Symbols); other encodings are T2A T2B T2C (for cyrillic), T3 (IPA glyphs), T4 (African ...
14
I assume you get this warning because your tabular is (a little bit) wider than your \textwidth. Solutions include:
enlarging the \textwidth a little
narrowing down the tabular by a little
adding \hfuzz=0.64pt somewhere in the preamble
The \hfuzz setting specifies the maximum amount of box-overflow before a warning message will be issued.
14
One way to avoid the problem is to change the (invisible) numbering style of the title page:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[pdfpagelabels]{hyperref}
\title{[Title]}
\author{N.N.}
\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{Alph}
\begin{titlepage}
\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}
\end{titlepage}
\pagenumbering{arabic}
...
14
The warning for missing font-specific settings is not a bug but a new feature in the latest microtype version. The fallback settings, which are used for fonts unknown to microtype, are by nature incomplete, quite conservative and in no way guaranteed to match all possible fonts; therefore, microtype now draws the user's attention to this potential source of ...
14
PDF has a feature called "Page Groups" (PDF Reference, section 11.4.7). These descibe transparency effects between top-level objects on one page. When pdfTeX (or LuaTeX or XeTeX) includes a page from a PDF, it converts all pages into "Form XObjects" (section 8.10.1). pdfTeX also converts the Page Groups into /Group entries of the XObjects.
The problem now ...
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