[rfc-i] Should figures float?

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
> On 2014-07-11 03:29, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>
>> While reviewing the PDF draft, it occurred to me that most "modern"
>> solutions (at least back to LaTeX) allow figures to float, whereas
>> the assumption with XML2RFC has always been that the occur exactly
>> where <figure> is placed in the text, except for maybe inserting a page
>> feed to avoid splitting the artwork.
>>
>> For v3, are we going to allow for processors that are capable of
>> floating a figure? That would be a new attribute for <figure>
>> along the lines of float="true" or "false".
>
>
> I believe it's an interesting idea, but on the long list of things we still
> need to do it should be at the bottom.
>
> Also, I suspect that a simple flag isn't sufficient. Depending on whether
> the image (what about tables???) floats, we may need different text content.

My opinion in brief: definitively a +1 for having figures (and tables,
and [possibly] algorithms, and...) floating for paginated formats: the
result looks usually order of magnitude better than the result with
fixed position.   Should I take a decision, I would go for floating by
default + possibility of some adjustment via optional attributes (yes,
it is the LaTeX model... :-).
My personal experience  (> 20 years long) in writing scientific paper
is that in the 99% of the cases the automatic placement algorithm
makes a very good work, in the remaining 1% you may need some hand
tweaking (done at the very last moment, in our case before finalizing
the RFC).

I'm not sure if floating would be useful in non-paginated format.  I
would keep it, nevertheless, unless it turns out too much difficult to
implement.

Best regards,

Riccardo

>
> Best regards, Julian
>
>
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