General ⇒ General floating object with caption

[Herder]

Hi,

is there a way to define a general floating object, for which one can define a border and a caption? All I want to do is having a sentence, which is centered, bordered and has a caption.

Thanks in advance,
Herder

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Herder,

you could use the standard figure environment, like:

Code: Select all

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\fbox{Text}
\caption{Test float}
\end{figure}

Alternatively the float package provides commands for the definition of new floating objects, it's boxed option could do what you are looking for.

Stefan

[Herder]

Hi Stefan_K,

this is exactly what I searched for, thanks.

But: Is there a way to omit the automatically generated prefix of the caption (e. g. "figure 1.3: text ...")? And can i define a own tag that will be used when referencing that figure?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Herder,

have a look at the caption package, it is designed for the customization of captions, provides many features and is very well documented.

Stefan

[Herder]

Ok, combining the caption and float packages works well. There is only one little thing left, I don't get managed:

When i define my own floating object using the floatstyle "boxed", this boxed object always spans the whole site width. But i want it to dynamically adjust to its content, so that i don't have large boxes with only little content in it.

Let me illustrate it:

Now:

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------
|                     Text                          |
-----------------------------------------------------

Wanted:

Code: Select all

-----------
|  Text   |
-----------

[Herder]

Another drawback: the \label{} command doesn't seem to work in self-defined floats. There will be undefined references when referencing a label of such a float. Any idea how to fix this?

[gmedina]

Hi,

the following code (that uses nothing more than Stefan's suggestions) seems to do what you expect:

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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{caption}
\captionsetup{labelfont=bf,font=small}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to automatically generate some text

\newfloat{Myfloat}{htbp}{myf}

\begin{document}

\begin{Myfloat}
  \centering
  \fbox{text}
  \caption{a simple example}
  \label{myf:test1}
\end{Myfloat}

\begin{Myfloat}
  \centering
  \fbox{\parbox{8cm}{\lipsum[1]}}
  \caption{another simple example}
  \label{myf:test2}
\end{Myfloat}

\newpage

Just a test. As you see in \ref{myf:test1}...

\newpage

And as you see in \ref{myf:test2}...

\end{document} 

[Herder]

That is exactly the way I use these packages. Is there a problem with setting references before the use of such a floating object? Example:

Code: Select all

Just a test. As you see in \ref{myf:test1}...

\begin{Myfloat}
  \centering
  \fbox{\parbox{8cm}{\lipsum[1]}}
  \caption{another simple example}
  \label{myf:test1}
\end{Myfloat}

[Herder]

I just noticed, that all my references are undefined since I added the caption/float stuff.

Any ideas, why?

[Herder]

I figured out, that it has something to do with the caption-package. Using the caption2-package solves the problem of having undefined references, but there is no way to format the captions of my freshly generated floating objects. Thus, the captions of the standard floats figure/table have another style than the captions of my own floats ... Arghhh, time consuming stuff ...