# Framed mini pages with shared inside border?

So I have been trying to get two mini pages, side by side, in one box with a shared center border. The best I have gotten is

    \documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage[paperwidth = 8.5in, paperheight=11in, top=.75in, bottom=.75in,
left=1.25in, right=1.25in]{geometry}

\begin{document}
\setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}
\fbox{%
\hspace{.5em}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\textwidth}
\begin{center}
\Large Objects
\end{center}
1)HH optimization objects \\
$V(K,k)$\\
$k^\prime(K,k)$\\
\textbullet$c(K,k)$ \\
\textbullet $\mathcal{l}(K,k)$\\
\textbullet$n(K,k)$\\

\vspace{4mm}
2) Firms optimization objects
\end{minipage}%
\vline
\hspace{.5em}
\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\textwidth}
\setlength{\parindent}{1pc}
Given Blah Blah\\dsgsdg\\sdgsdg\\sgsdg
\end{minipage}
}
\end{document}


Which produces I think this is not too bad, and is certainly good enough for me, but I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions, comments, criticisms? (other than obviously adding vspace at the start and end of the mini pages).

So far I have also tried two individuals framed mini pages, but Latex puts space between their space. I could remove it with negative hspacebut it didn't look quite right. I also cannot use one frame and have fboxsep > 0 because then the vline doesn't meet the frame.

I realize I can also do this with tabular and/or align, probably. I planned on having a list inside, though (not sure If I will anymore or not. Bullets and newlines seem to work alright for my purposes), which seemed more troublesome than this approach.

Also, perhaps beamer would be better to use? I am not familiar with it though (and don't have the time to look into it right now), so I did not use it

• Why not use a tabular with p column type or tabularx with X columns?
– user11232
Oct 29 '15 at 2:36

You can use a tabular with p column or a tabularx with X column.

    \documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage[paperwidth = 8.5in, paperheight=11in, top=.75in, bottom=.75in,
left=1.25in, right=1.25in]{geometry}

\usepackage{tabularx}

\begin{document}
With \verb|tabularx|

\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|X|} \hline
\centering \Large Objects & Given Blah Blah \\
1)HH optimization objects \newline
$V(K,k)$\newline
$k^\prime(K,k)$\newline
\textbullet$c(K,k)$ \newline
\textbullet $\mathcal{l}(K,k)$\newline
\textbullet$n(K,k)$\newline
& dsgsdg\newline sdgsdg\newline sgsdg \\
2) Firms optimization objects & \\\hline
\end{tabularx}

\bigskip
With \verb|tabular|:

\noindent
\begin{tabular}{|p{\dimexpr0.5\linewidth-2\tabcolsep-2\arrayrulewidth\relax}
|p{\dimexpr0.5\linewidth-2\tabcolsep-2\arrayrulewidth\relax}|} \hline
\centering \Large Objects & Given Blah Blah \\
1)HH optimization objects \newline
$V(K,k)$\newline
$k^\prime(K,k)$\newline
\textbullet$c(K,k)$ \newline
\textbullet $\mathcal{l}(K,k)$\newline
\textbullet$n(K,k)$\newline
& dsgsdg\newline sdgsdg\newline sgsdg \\
2) Firms optimization objects & \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}


• And may be you need an enumerate and itemize in the first column which I didn't touch.
– user11232
Oct 29 '15 at 2:45
• Ah, I didn't realize that I could \newline in the same column continually and then go to the second column. I was doing one line with 2 columns, second line with 2 columns, and so on, which lead to problems/was annoying because everything on the left was single-line and on the right was multi-line for what I was doing. Oct 29 '15 at 16:22