[reportlab-users] Flowables in Platypus and LaTeX

Dinu Gherman reportlab-users@reportlab.com
Tue, 8 Oct 2002 11:29:24 +0200


Hi,

This is just a note probably coming from my unconscious mind which
isn't quite finished writing an article about the RLTK, although
the article itself is long done and will appear in a few weeks.

Despite having used LaTeX for years, it occurred only recently
to me that the concepts of Flowables differ between LaTeX and
Platypus. This might be worth a note since Platypus was intended
to mimick LaTeX flowables as much as it seemed useful.

The difference is that in LaTeX the final "destination" of a flow-
able (a figure, say) cannot be fully anticipated with respect to
its own immediate "context." In other words, LaTeX might decide
to place a figure in the *middle* of a paragraph, especially when
the figure ends up at the top of a page. Platypus won't do this
because it doesn't use any heuristics of what makes a page look
"good." It would be interesting to know how other text processors
do behave here?

Regards,

Dinu

PS: Robin, this is not a feature request! ;-)

--
Dinu C. Gherman
......................................................................
"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours." (Bob Dylan)