Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Two column figure placement in REVTeX

[thepuddingmaster]

Hi
I have been struggling to position my figures that span two columns (using REVTeX style package). I can include them using

Code: Select all

\begin{figure*}[htpb]
	\includegraphics{...}
...
\end{figure*}

but this places them usually in an awful position (a couple of pages after where I put the code, on their own page) I have tried multiple combination of h, t, p, b and h!.
I have tried using the float package

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\usepackage{float}
\begin{figure*}[H]
	\includegraphics{...}
...
\end{figure*}

but I don't think this works with {figure*} as the figure just disappears. It works with figures I have without the *.

I also tried using \minipage but then I can get it to span the two columns without looking messy (text overlapping etc.). As REVTeX doesnt work with multicol, I have tried using the built in \onecolumngrid and \twocolumngrid commands.

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\onecolumngrid
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth} 
	\includegraphics{...}
...
\end{minipage}
\twocolumngrid

I tried as before but with (and [t]) to try and position the minipage at the bottom but nothing changed (not sure if this is correct though).
I think it would solve some of the text overlap problems if I could set the minipage to appear at the bottom of a page successfully (the text only overlaps on the bottom right section)

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\begin{minipage}[b]{\linewidth}

Basically I want to be able to position the figure across two columns, preferably at the top or bottom of a page, without it being a float and being moved around (in other words I would like to be able to force it onto a certain page).

Hope this is clear / not too long winded.
Cheers

EDIT: On further investigation, I can stop the overlap when using \onecolumngrid by adding space with \vspace{..} in the minipage. However I noticed the minipage caused the flow of text to go above-left -> above-right -> below-left -> below-right. Any ideas how to get text to flow above-left -> below-left -> above-right -> below-right

[aharel]

Just run into the same problem and found this question.
Too bad no one answered it

[lamantin]

Hi,

I have a plain, but working solution:

\documentclass[twocolumn,...]{revtex4}

\begin{document}
twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text...

\onecolumngrid

\begin{center}
\begin{figure}[h]
\includegraphics[scale=1.0]{myfig.pdf}
\caption{mycaption}
\end{figure}
\end{center}
\twocolumngrid
twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text,twocolumn text...

\end{document}


figure* environment: forget it, it places your figure at the end, does not respect [h] placing
widetext environment: makes lines, that I don't like, it is a bit matter of taste.


HTH,

Lamantin

[methylstopheles]

So, I'm facing a similar problem, but not the same. (Eventually, I want to be able to use the tabbing environment or the minipage environment to span a column across a mostly two-column document.) I am not using the REVTeX package at present.

I tested the \onecolumngrid, \twocolumngrid, and center environment solution listed above. As it stands, this did not initially work, even though I was only using simple text. It spat back an "undefined control sequence" complaint for both the \onecolumngrid and \twocolumngrid commands.

So I looked on the wiki (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Pag ... lumn_pages), which advised using the package multicol. (apparently this allows you to have up to 10 columns, of whatever width and spacing you choose, as well as locally changing these settings.)

Removing the twocolumn argument from the preamble and defining most of the text within the multicols(2) environment is working just fine, but remember that in this case, calling \newpage won't act like a column break, like it would in a standard twocolumn document. This did require a bit of shifting the column spacing manually, as apparently the default spacing for twocolumn and for multicols(2) is a bit different. The first column ended up narrower than it had been as a twocolumn document.

At this point, I can report that the minipage, tabbing, and tabular environments all work pretty easily this way. I have not checked how a figure works, but the wiki does mention how figures and floats should be handles in this context, so I'm confident it shouldn't be too difficult.