Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
And more importantly, how to ensure that related text and element stay remotely together? IF you're discussing Figure 2, in the text, and it flows past the element to the top of page 1--or even further--and the graphic is now on page 3, you're accomplishing a "prettier" layout at the expense of usability, aren't you?
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Perhaps considering a specific example will explain things better.
Let's have a text that contains a mention of Figure 1, and Figure 1 is (for one particular rendering page size) 1/3 of a page high.
In this layout, the mention of Fig.1 ends up half way down the page, and the paragraph it's in ends very shortly afterwards, and is followed by the Fig 1 optimal placement marker.
In this case, Fig.1 gets place on the page at its optimal position, and the text continues following it and onto the next page. No problem
Now consider what would happen at present if the paragraph it's in ends closer to the end of the rendered page than 1/3 from the bottom. There's no room for the image, so the bottom of the page is left blank - no Fig.1 until you move to the next page, when it appears at the top of the page, folowed by the text that comes after it.
With vertically floating images, the text from after Fig.1 would be laid out at the bottom of the page down to the end of the page, and then Fig.1 would again appear at the top of the very next page, followed by the remainder of the text that followed it originally.
Fig.1 ends up in exactly the same place as it would with current rendering engines. It's just that there isn't a nasty gap at the bottom of the preceding page.
In no circumstances would Fig.1 appear later than the very next page.
(Clearly, one of us is missing something. If it's me, please carry on - if I'm not understanding this, I'd like to know!)