On Wed, 30 Mar 2016, Aidan Nichol wrote:

I have been looking at various options for controlling how figures are placed on a page and based on answers to similar questions in this mailing list I tried various options. The most flexible one seems to be using tables e.g.

\setupexternalfigures[location={default}]

\starttext

\placefigure[]{}{\externalfigure[hacker][height=1in]}

\startxtable[frame=off,align=low] \startxrow \startxcell[ny=2] \placefigure[force][]{left twoup}{\externalfigure[mill][height=4in]} \stopxcell \startxcell \placefigure[force][]{the first}{\externalfigure[spider][height=1.5in]} \stopxcell \stopxrow \startxrow \startxcell \placefigure[force][]{the second}{\externalfigure[cow][height=1.5in]} \stopxcell \stopxrow \stopxtable

It seems to work well except that figure numbers are being skipped. In this example hacker=1 mill=8, spider=9 and cow=10. Varying the contents of the table reveals that It is skipping two times the number of figures in the table.

Is this an invalid combination of features I’m using or am I doing something wrong?

The contents of a table are typeset multiple times to get an idea of the height and width. Here is one option: \useMPlibrary[dum] \starttext \bTABLE[frame=off,align=low] \bTR \bTD[ny=2] \placefigure[here,\iftrialtypesetting nonumber \fi] []{left twoup}{\externalfigure[mill][width=2in,height=4in]} \eTD \bTD \placefigure[here,\iftrialtypesetting nonumber \fi] []{the first}{\externalfigure[spider][width=2in,height=2in]} \eTD \eTR \bTR \bTD \placefigure[here,\iftrialtypesetting nonumber \fi] []{the second}{\externalfigure[cow][width=2in,height=2in]} \eTD \eTR \eTABLE \stoptext Aditya