Message-Id: <199312141646.AA26467@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Tue, 14 Dec 93 09:34:32 -0700
From: Michal Jaegermann <michal@GORTEL.PHYS.UALBERTA.CA>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: ideas for floats
Status: R


I am very far from claiming that LaTeX float decisions are perfect,
or that they will not give an occasional trouble.  Although, in most
cases I have seen changes in parameters like \floatpagefraction
and \topfraction resolved problems pretty quickly and painlessly;
(for some reasons page 178 in LaTeX Book seems to be read exceedingly
rare).

Still, there is a solution which seems to be even less popular.

   If you do not want your pictures to float, then DO NOT make them
   into floats!

This obviously means that some manual intervention will likely be
required, but in practice this may happen less often then one may
expect.  If an automatic tool is clearly inappriopriate (a quoted
example with over 100 hours spent fighting with floats) then it
is time to get your hands dirty.  Hammering nails with a power saw
maybe will get job done after a while, but it is a clear waste
of resources.

   Michal