Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
If Jane Doe has the eyes of an Eagle, and has her font size at 1 (smallest), how much text flows past the logjammed element, before it STOPS flowing past it?
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I'm not sure I understand the question, so I'll elaborate on how I see it working, and then perhaps I'll have answered the question.
The large item to be displayed (picture, diagram, table, etc) has an optimal position marked in the text.
The layout engine lays out text in pages until it gets to this item's optimal position marker. If there's room for the item on the current page when the layout engine gets to it, the layout engine lays out just enough additional text from past the item to make the item appear at the bottom of the current page.
Alternatively, there isn't enough space for the item on the current page. So the layout engine lays out enough text from past the item to fill that page, and then puts the item at the top of the next page.
In either case, the additional text that is moved from after the item to before the item is less than one page of text.
(TeX is clever enough to backtrack and undo text layout to fit the item at the top of the page on which its optimal position would have gone if that's 'better'. But we don't really need that.)