ulem nesting of underlines: dimension too large error (but renders nicely)

Question

I have the following MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ulem}
\newcommand\deeperuline{\bgroup\markoverwith{\rule[-1.1ex]{2pt}{0.4pt}\ULon}
\begin{document}
This \deeperuline{does} work \uwave{nicely}.
This \deeperuline{gives \uwave{an} error} but renders nicely.
\end{document}

The intention is to have a sentence where a part is underlined wavy and another part (that contains the wavily underlined part) is underlined with a line that is deeper than a normal underline (so that it does not cross the wavy underline).

The above code produces the error "dimension too large" for the second sentence but both sentences render nicely. Is there anything I can do to silence that error?

I observed that error both in pdflatex and in xelatex.

Answer 1

For testing purposes, ulem.sty sets \ULdepth to \maxdimen and then you can't use it for doing arithmetic in a safe way.

However, since you want fixed depth of the underline, you can set the parameter to another value.

Set \ULdepth to \maxdimen.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ulem}

\newcommand\deeperuline{%
  \bgroup\ULdepth=\maxdimen \markoverwith{\rule[-1.1ex]{2pt}{0.4pt}}\ULon
}

\begin{document}

This \deeperuline{does} work \uwave{nicely}.
This \deeperuline{gives \uwave{an} error} but renders nicely.

\end{document}

I tested both with 1000pt and 0pt, getting the same result.