[rfc-i] Should figures float?

[touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch)]

On 7/11/2014 11:40 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Joe Touch <touch at isi.edu
> <mailto:touch at isi.edu>> wrote:
>
>     FWIW, 'float' is a lot more complex than it seems. The float is
>     often tethered, i.e., there are constraints as to how far away from
>     the original section the float can occur. Typically it has to stay
>     within the smallest numbered subsection and can't precede it's first
>     reference unless on the same page.
>
>     I don't know whether any of that can be supported automatically
>     within XML.
>
>
> It is trivial to support it in XML. Its acting on it to produce a
> presentation that is hard.

I'm not sure what that means. Unless it's supported in systems that 
produce output from XML, it's just a tag - and tags can be *intended* to 
mean anything.

> Doing it in lineprinter format is quite easy. In fact I might add it
> anyway. But adding it to HTML is hard because you would typically want
> to place constraints such as 'the image must come after this point in
> the text but must come before the next major section.

That's a requirement for lineprinter too. What you're saying is that it 
is NOT supported, but that you might be able to add support. I think 
that will be very difficult, for the reasons I noted.

> Doing that in HTML is non trivial. It might be possible with some CSS
> magic like putting in a control to make a soft break and dump out all
> pending figures before a section break.

That just puts all the figures at the end of a section regardless of 
when they appear in the source, which is not what "float" means.

> But it might not be possible at
> all without writing a custom text formatter for the PDF output.

Yup.

Joe