LaTeX users sometimes need to ensure that two or more blocks of text occupy the same amount of horizontal space on the page. To that end, the eqparbox package defines a new command, \eqparbox, which works just like \parbox, except that instead of specifying a width, one specifies a tag. All eqparboxes with the same tag -- regardless of where they are in the document -- will stretch to fit the widest eqparbox with that tag. This simple, equal-width mechanism can be used for a variety of alignment purposes, as is evidenced by the examples in eqparbox's documentation.

Version 2.0 makes better use of TeX's memory, allows numbers and symbols to appear in tags, preserves fonts across \\ boundaries, and eliminates some incorrect \global prefixes. The author is Scott Pakin.