Message-Id: <199312150241.AA15667@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
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Date:         Tue, 14 Dec 93 21:34:50 EST
From: Michael Barr <barr@TRIPLES.MATH.MCGILL.CA>
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Subject:      Re: ideas for floats
Status: R


> From: Michal Jaegermann <michal@GORTEL.PHYS.UALBERTA.CA>
> Subject:      Re: ideas for floats
>
> 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
>
Hear! Hear!

I have published 2 books with probably nearly 1000 diagrams and
not one float.  Yes, there are some short pages, a few, but if
I felt strongly about them I could have modified them a bit.
As it stands, they all go exactly where I put them and they
stay there.  No references to figure such and such since
each figure is where it belongs.  The short pages may violate
some esthetic ideas, but it makes the books much more readable.
There are a few that might have been floated, but they would
occupy a full page and I would want them to be on the page
facing (that is, preceding or following, depending on the parity,
the page that they were referred to).

Michael Barr