Some questions on float combinations
Hi all, recently I finished typesetting a block of inset illustrations for a journal on history, which I first implemented in LaTeX and then moved to ConTeXt (I am using a version from TeXLive 2013 packaged with openSUSE 13.1). Basically I am greatly satisfied with the result, as the code looks much clearer now. However, I still see some things which can be done in LaTeX by a more natural way. First of all, is there a dedicated method to rotate an entire combination or floatcombination by 90 degrees? I see floats have a special option to control this, but float combinations don't (am I right here?). And if I enclose a float combination into a \rotate command, then the height of the rotated block seems to be incorrectly calculated, so that about a half of the block goes outside of the upper page boundary. Second, not all image combinations can be described by a simple matrix, and the documentation doesn't explain what to do in such more complex cases (nor the Wiki does). For example, in my document some pages have three images ordered in two columns: one relatively tall image side-by-side with two smaller ones. To make the things worse such combinations are usually placed on landscape pages. The obvious solution here seems to be to somewhow group two smaller images and then put them into a float combination. Unfortunately, this doesn't work, as floatcombination seems to ignore all enclosed boxing commands/environments and even nested float combinations. Finally I managed to achieve the desired layout by defining a set of parallel paragraphs, which fortunately worked even inside a \rotate command (columns and columnsets with embedded floats didn't). Still it would be nice to have a special interface allowing to combine floats and float combinations into larger blocks. -- Regards, Alexey Kryukov <anagnost at yandex dot ru> Moscow State University Faculty of History
On 1/3/2014 8:17 PM, Alexey Kryukov wrote:
Hi all,
recently I finished typesetting a block of inset illustrations for a journal on history, which I first implemented in LaTeX and then moved to ConTeXt (I am using a version from TeXLive 2013 packaged with openSUSE 13.1). Basically I am greatly satisfied with the result, as the code looks much clearer now. However, I still see some things which can be done in LaTeX by a more natural way.
First of all, is there a dedicated method to rotate an entire combination or floatcombination by 90 degrees? I see floats have a special option to control this, but float combinations don't (am I right here?). And if I enclose a float combination into a \rotate command, then the height of the rotated block seems to be incorrectly calculated, so that about a half of the block goes outside of the upper page boundary.
Second, not all image combinations can be described by a simple matrix, and the documentation doesn't explain what to do in such more complex cases (nor the Wiki does). For example, in my document some pages have three images ordered in two columns: one relatively tall image side-by-side with two smaller ones. To make the things worse such combinations are usually placed on landscape pages. The obvious solution here seems to be to somewhow group two smaller images and then put them into a float combination. Unfortunately, this doesn't work, as floatcombination seems to ignore all enclosed boxing commands/environments and even nested float combinations.
Finally I managed to achieve the desired layout by defining a set of parallel paragraphs, which fortunately worked even inside a \rotate command (columns and columnsets with embedded floats didn't). Still it would be nice to have a special interface allowing to combine floats and float combinations into larger blocks.
It all depends on it being floats or not (floatign indeed). One option is to package a set of floats in a bTABLE .. eTABLE and put a..z subcaptions under it that way and then have the whole as a float anyway ... you have more chance onan answer if you provide small examples Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:43:51 +0100 Hans Hagen wrote:
It all depends on it being floats or not (floatign indeed). One option is to package a set of floats in a bTABLE .. eTABLE and put a..z subcaptions under it that way and then have the whole as a float
Well, I actually don't need floats, because each image has a fixed position. However the problem is to get captions properly formatted and numbered. Again, in LaTeX it would be easy to output captions separately from the corresponding images, but I haven't found how to do that in ConTeXt. That's what causes me to use floats (and pack them into floatcombinations if necessary).
anyway ... you have more chance onan answer if you provide small examples
My code currently looks like the following: \defineparagraphs[DoubleL][n=2] \starttext \centerline{\rotate[rotation=90]{ \startDoubleL \placefigure[force] {My first caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=3in]} \nextDoubleL \placefigure[force] {My second caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=1in]} \placefigure[force] {My third caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=1in]} \stopDoubleL }} \stoptext As I have explained, this works, but it would prefer to use a floatcombination syntax to describe this type of layout just like I would use it for two images placed side-by-side. I. e. it would be nice if ConTeXt supported something like the following: \startfloatcombination[2*1] \placefigure[force] {My first caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=3in]} \startfloatcombination[1*2] \placefigure[force] {My second caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=1in]} \placefigure[force] {My third caption} {\externalfigure[dummy][width=1in,height=1in]} \stopfloatcombination \stopfloatcombination Another small problem is that combinations and floatcombinations, unlike single floats, have no 'rotation' parameter, so that I have to embed them into a rotation command. This seems just a bit inconsistent. -- Regards, Alexey Kryukov <anagnost at yandex dot ru> Moscow State University Faculty of History
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Hans Hagen