[texhax] figures and text aligned

[Philip G. Ratcliffe]

Dear Herbert,

>        I know from experience with this list that we are supposed to
> be embarrassed when we ask a question which has an answer in the FAQ.

Well, that's not my intent, really - I'm simply trying to persuade
people to look there first.  Obviously, without a great deal of success
though.  I am sure there are many who do not even consider it whereas I
would imagine that I find somthing like at least ninety percent of the
cases have an answer there.

Moreover, I've just reread my answer - it doesn't sound that harsh to
me.  I've often been more polite in the past - but it didn't make me any
more effective.

> I also know from experience that using the FAQ is extremely difficult,
> or else I don't know how to use it. Even after seeing your response
> Philip, it took me about ten minutes to find the correct location of
> Q. 207. I used "flowing text" and then read through many entry titles
> in the reply.

Aha, well I use the pdf version (which can be downloaded from the same
place) and then simply scan the contents pages (the subects are grouped
rather well) or use the Acroread (I use version 6.0) search utility -
"figure" gets Q. 207 as the third entry (quick enough I'd say).

>        The fact is, the FAQ doesn't work right, because it is not
> organized properly. I don't mean this as a criticism, but rather as a
> comment. I also don't know for sure what to do about it.

That seems to be a general problem of FAQ lists - but I'd say that my
solution (above) works pretty well in this case.

>        I suspect that hooking up to a really powerful local search
> engine, like google, would do the trick. I can usually find anything
> with google.

Even googling often needs a similar amount of "intelligent guesswork".
And I would imagine that those who don't look in the FAQ don't google
either.  On the other hand, you could, indeed, replace FAQ with Google
in all my comments above.

>        Indeed, typing "wrap text around figure latex" in the google
> command line gave me a wealth of clues, including some latex packages.
> I'm sure that using the FAQ and typing in the name of one of the
> packages with the FAQ search engine will do the trick.

Cordialmente,  Philip G. Ratcliffe

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." --
Thomas Edison