[OS X TeX] Underfull \vbox

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 24 juin 07 à 16:25, Roussanka Loukanova a écrit :

> Does anybody know how to resolve in a good way the problem causing  
> following warning in the output (and log) file:
>
> Underfull \vbox (badness 10000) has occurred while \output is  
> active [2]
>
> I only got that it is due to the location of  \section{...} about  
> the end of a page and that LaTeX is outputting the section title at  
> at the beginning of the next new page. But if I force the \section 
> {...} on a new page by
>
> \newpage
> \section{...}
>
> the warning disappears.
>
> Is there a better solution? Is it just better to leave the warning  
> without attempts to get rid of it?

I don't think you should worry about the warning, LaTeX seems to be  
doing the right thing: moving the new section to the next page, even  
if that means leaving a bit too much blank space on the previous page  
than it would like too.

As always, you can also redefine LaTeX's standards, which would mean  
with the article class changing the default from article.cls:

\newcommand\section{\@startsection {section}{1}{\z@}%
                                    {-3.5ex \@plus -1ex \@minus -.2ex}%
                                    {2.3ex \@plus.2ex}%
                                    {\normalfont\Large\bfseries}}

Here the second line defines spacing before a new section, with the  
plus and minus quantities defining the amount of stretchable and  
shrinkable space LaTeX can add and remove, respectively, in order to  
abide by its criteria about how much vertical blank space is allowed  
on a page.

You could try something like:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\section}{\@startsection{section}{1}{0pt}%
   {-3.5ex plus .1\textheight minus .05\textheight}
   {2.3ex plus .05\textheight}%
   {\normalfont\Large\bfseries}}
\makeatother

Beware though: that might change page breaks significantly for the  
whole of your document.

Bruno Voisin
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