Message-Id: <199312201808.AA16133@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Fri, 17 Dec 93 16:52:13 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      another forward: floats and LAMSTEX
Status: R


From:	VZDMZA::IN%"rfehren@hexi6.msd.anl.gov" 17-DEC-1993 00:00:21.93
To:	IN%"MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE"
CC:	
Subj:	floats & modularity in TeX & LAMSTEX

Received: from achilles.ctd.anl.gov by VzdmzA.ZDV.Uni-Mainz.DE (PMDF #12046) id
 <01H6KDXMY6O0000ECF@VzdmzA.ZDV.Uni-Mainz.DE>; Thu, 16 Dec 1993 23:57 +0200
Received: from hexi.msd.anl.gov by achilles.ctd.anl.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id
 AA01238; Thu, 16 Dec 93 16:43:39 CST
Received: from tesera.msd.anl.gov by hexi.msd.anl.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA28428;
 Thu, 16 Dec 93 16:43:37 CST
Received: by tesera.msd.anl.gov (16.8/GeneV4) id AA17452; Thu,
 16 Dec 93 16:43:17 -0600
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 93 16:43:17 -0600
From: rfehren@hexi6.msd.anl.gov (Roland Fehrenbacher x5532)
Subject: floats & modularity in TeX & LAMSTEX
To: MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE
Message-id: <9312162243.AA17452@tesera.msd.anl.gov>
X-Envelope-to: MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE


Please forward this to LATEX-L. I also had problems to put things to the list
directly. Thanks.

(1) Concerning the issue of placing figures in LATEX, I just have a small
remark. Even though I really do not like LATEX (the old version) I am still
interested in what is going to happen with this package in the future. What I
actually use is LAMSTEX, a package which combines many features of LATEX with
the standard AMSTEX stuff. It is written by Spivak, the author of AMSTEX. Now
my intention here is not to convert people from LATEX to LAMSTEX, but to point
out that LAMSTEX has an excellent algorithm for figure placing, which leaves
the choice of automatic or manual placement, and is very accurate, even when
dealing with many figures. I wrote a couple of papers, and my thesis with it,
and never had any complaints, whereas I had a lot of trouble when I used LATEX
for my diploma thesis a couple of years back. I believe whoever wants to have a
go in changing the figure placement for LATEX should consult LAMSTEX first.

(2) The second point concerns the modularity in tex. Gabriel Valiente Feruglio
wrote that parsing a DVI file is probably a little difficult for TEX which is
maybe true. However there exists a small program called dvipaste with which  it
is very simple to paste a dvi file into another dvi file. Again this is being
done in LAMSTEX, and is not very difficult.

LAMSTEX can be found on the satndard TEX archives in the macros directory.

Roland Fehrenbacher
223-B237
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL 60439