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Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 00:28:11 +0100
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From: Stephan Hennig <mailing_list@ARCOR.DE>
Subject: Re: Extending the output routine to middle floats
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
In-Reply-To:  <18249.57441.391405.468407@morse.mittelbach-online.de>
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Status: R

Frank Mittelbach schrieb:

> Tackling the first question first, here are a bunch of specs that I can think
> of (without judging for the moment how well they would represent anything real
> life and how well they might work out in practice).
> 
>     * The ratio of t1 to t2 is fixed by the design and a float AAA can be
>       placed into the middle position if neither t1 nor t2 become too
>       small. (Downside of this kind of layout might be that the positioning of
>       the floats drastically varies from page to page.)
> 
>     * The end position of t1 is fixed (vertically) so that a middle float
>       always starts on the same point on a page. Further restriction then that
>       t2 is not getting smaller as a certain value.
> 
>     * The starting starting position of t2 is fixed so that the bottom of the
>       middle floats always appear on the same vertical position on the page,
>       again with some further restrictions to the size of t1 this time.
> 
>     * An obvious extension to the above could be that there are a list of
>       vertical starting points to choose from and some mechanism/logic to
>       select one of them
> 
>     * ...other ideas...
> 
> Questions:
> 
>     * What kind of other specs can you think of?
>     * What is wrong with the above? What is right with them?
>     * Which of the specs might be worth implementing (or not) for which reason?
>     * Other comments, ideas?

Just an idea ...

From a book or magazine designers point of view, all your rules work
best if only equally sized figures are used.  This give all pages (with
figures) a uniform look.

If there are differently sized figures, an alternative (more amateur
like) approach could be to optically fix the position of figures, i.e.,
fix the vertical middle of figures.  The intention is a bit like in your
alternative A, but likely with less drastic side effects.

I have no idea, if anything like that is done in practice.  It's just
one more alternative approach I can think of.

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig